CINEMATOGRAPHY

Cinematography- a general term for all the manipulations of the film strip by the camera in the shooting phase and by the laboratory in the developing phase. In most cases the filmmaker can select from the range of tonalities, manipulate the speed of motion or transform perspectives.

The Range of Tonalities

This is something that deals with how something looks on screen. Is it too bright? Is it too dark? Is the red showing a little too strong are all types of question about tonalities. How strong or weak certain colors look on the screen and what it says about the film itself impact the tonality.

                                      All the different colors and shapes create a range on tonalities.

Speed of Motion

When you watch something a lot of times the action is seen differently than how it originally happened. An example of this is slowing down a sprinter running to the finish line or speeding up film of people constructing a house over multiple days. It’s calculated by frames per second. Today’s 35 mm cameras can do anything from 8-64 frames per second with specialty cameras offering a wider array of options.

                                      This still photo is taken during filming creating a freeze frame

Perspectives

Perspectives can be described as the way in which you see something on screen. If you look straight ahead you may see train tracks recede as they do further and further along the horizon. However you know this isn’t the case so why does it happen? It’s because your eyes shows a perspective view of the scene as a set of special relations organized around a particular viewpoint and that’s the same as what a lens does. It gathers light from the scene and transmits that light onto the flat surface of the video chip to form an image.

Focal length: the distance from the center of the lens to the point where light rays converge to a point of focus on the film. It alters the size, proportions of the things we see as well as the depth.

                                   This particular still from the video is shot from a zoomed in perspective.

1)   Short focal length lens- 35 mm in focal length (wide angle lens) (background stretched apart)

      2)   Medium length lens- (35-50) mm (not stretched apart or squashed together

      3)    Long length lens- 100 mm (magnify action at a distance like in sports)

Depth of field- a range of distances within which objects can be photographed in sharp focus, given a certain exposure setting.