Everything you wanted to know about Cinematography

I have a midterm exam on Tuesday and I'm kind of procrastinating and I'm trying to put that procrastination to some use, so from memory let me list out what I know about the art of Cinematography.

First things first, the Cinematographer wields a very powerful weapon - the lens. The lens allows you to force others to view things in a specific way, allows you to force focus in a way that no other performing arts allow you to do really. In the theatre, people can look at what they want to look at. But the Cinematographer combines a number of variables to elicit a specific emotional response which serves and supports the story. In this sense, every shoot is actually an experiment. Cinematography requires a Artistic Technician - one who has imagination and inspiration, but then also is conversant in enough of the science to be able to control the image (allow the picture in the imagination translate onto screen) and also be able to repeat this image over and over again (avoid happy accidents, you cannot make a great film or a great career out of happy accidents). So you need to know the science behind the things that elicit an emotion response, to serve the art and the story,

Basically, the motion film camera consists of the following major parts.

Body
Gate
Movement
Shutter
Motor
Lensmount
Magazine

Almost any camera you get will consist of these major parts, and they are even relevant to most DV cameras as well, although the stuff said here primarily relates to color motion picture negative film.

The body is quite simply the casing of the camera, and what everything attaches to. It really only has one major requirement, and that is that it be light tight, not letting ANY light in other than what comes in through the lens and the aperture. Some older cameras might need to be wrapped in electrical tape to ensure that they are light tight. If they aren't, the film could get fogged and come out a washed out gray.

When it comes to 35mm Motion Picture cameras, there are really ONLY 2 manufacturers of note. Panavision and Arri.

Panavision was founded by a man who created one of the first adjustable lens. Way back in the early 1900's, if you wanted to use a wide angle shot or a telephoto shot, you'd have to lug out another lens and attach it, wasting time. But the founder of Panavision changed that and made a load of money. Then FOX films had made Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and spent way too much money on it and they were on the verge of going bankrupt, so they sold most of their film cameras. Panavision bought them all and retrofitted them so that they were one consistent system. The lenses always were compatible, all the parts were compatible. Since them, Panavision has become the dominant player in major motion picture filming. One unique aspect of Panavision is that they lease their equipment, they do not sell it. So you'll rent the Panavision system for a film.

Arri is a French company. In contrast, they will sell their cameras. And also, when they come out with a new camera, it's likely that attachments from past cameras will no longer fit.

Other 35mm camera systems are mainly specialty cameras. Such as a stop motion camera, used for filming animation, which specializes in holding the register rock solid through multiple shots. And hi speed cameras, which will shoot from 150-300 frames per second (normal films are shot at 24 frames per second). Being able to shoot at such high speeds allows for the crazy "bullet through the apple" shots and stuff like that. But not with a cost. A whole roll of film can zip through it in about 10 seconds, and THEN a specially trained technician will have to take about an hour or more to clean out the camera and get it ready for another shoot, because the film moves through at such speed that it shatters the film and leaves a residue. The US Military has hi speed cameras that can shoot up to 8000 frames per second. Wow, think about that. So they can really analyze exactly how deadly are those deadly inventions that they use and defend against.

Another specialty camera is the stunt camera, "or the slam cam." This is normally an old US military surplus camera left over from WWII put into a super strong metal casing. Then they'll be used in the car for a car crash or something like that. Once the smoke dies down, they'll sift through the debris hoping the film is undamaged.

Anyway, when it comes to 16mm, there are a couple more players. Arri is the king of 16mm. And Panavision is second. In additional, there is Bolex, which I believe is a swiss company. The notable thing about the Bolex camera is that it does not record sound, and you actually have to crank it and then film for 1-2 minutes. There are some other companies but I don't remember them, guess I have to study that part a little better.

Let's talk about Film Stocks for a second. Why 35mm? Well, the answer is simple. At the time motion picture film was being invented by Kodak, still cameras photography was already well established. And still camera's format of choice was 70mm. Now 70mm in motion picture film would be too expensive, but in order to still be able to use the same production machinery and processes with a few modifications, they just chopped the film in half.

Then consumers wanted to get in on the act, but 35mm was too expensive. So what did they do? They basically chopped it in half again, and you got 16mm film. 16mm film used to actually be shot on 35mm. Meaning the cameras would expose half of the 35mm film, then you would rewind it and expose the other half. Then in the lab they would develop it and cut it in half for you.

Incidentally, though it was originally developed for consumer use, 16mm is now used in many professional productions -- mostly television where the increased resolution is not needed since it's not being projected onto a huge screen. (By the way, 35mm film is much more "high definition" than digital HD). The first TV show to use 16mm was "Young Indiana Jones" back in the 80s. Once this show proved it was a viable format, many other shows jumped at using it too (saving a lot of money).

But consumers wanted their film even cheaper, so the 8mm format was developed. Yes, once again, chopped in half. Problem here. .. now the quality was really getting bad. So what did they develop, Super 8! Why was it "Super"? Because the perforations on either side of the film (that the cameras and projectors used to advance the film) were made smaller, so more of the film surface could be dedicated to the image, increasing the resolution. Super, indeed!

Let's talk about the "Gate." Simply, the gate is the part through which the film runs to get exposed (through the aperture). It consists of a "film channel," which is where the film is actually located, and a pressure plate, which pushes the film from behind to keep it the proper distance away from the lens. If it gets too far away from that lens, the focus will become blurred. Not good!

It will also normally have two different claw like mechanisms, one will advance the film at a regular rate, and one will hold it in place so it doesn't shift left to right at all while the shot is being exposed.

That regular rate part is important. Old films (when the technology was first invented), were advanced by handcranks, so actually the frame rate was not consistent. They normally hovered between 16 and 18 frames per second. Which pretty much looked fine for the time, and a 2 frame per second deviation is pretty hard to discern so it basically looked ok. That being said, a camera operator had to have a very good sense of rhythm. Anyway, you wonder why old films from this time look all fast and almost comic when we see them today? Because we're now playing them at 24 frames per second. Back then, the projectors played them back at 16 or 18 frames per second, and the motion looked completely normal.

Why the change to 24 frames per second? (which is, by the way an expensive change because it requires more film.) Sound. Sound could not be adequately reproduced at 18 frames per second, and "talkies" were becoming an important part of film. So the "industry" asked the experts what the bare minimum requirement would be in terms of frames per second so that sound would work (not optimal, just passable). 24 fps is the cheapest they could go, and still incorporate sound. So this become the new standard.

Frame rate can be a very important variable in eliciting an emotional response. For instance, filming the fight scenes in the Matrix at 20 or 22 frames per second instead of 24, but playing it back at 24, gives the illusion that the fighters are faster and stronger and more sure than they actually are. This is, by the way, called Undercranking. Likewise, filming a dance scene at 26 or 28 frames per second but playing back at 24 can give the impression that those dancers are just a little more graceful and smooth. This is called Overcranking.

One thing to bear in mind though when under or over cranking is that both have an effect on the amount of light that is hitting the film, and thus the exposure. So adjustments will have to be made to the stops to still get the correct exposure. You might even have to make these adjustments on the fly if you want to over or under crank mid scene, which is often done.

Let's talk about the movement for a second. The movement is the way the film moves through the camera. In motion film cameras, the movement is both continuous and discontinuous. It's continuous because the film must move at the standard constant frame rate. Yet the film must stop for a moment (even if only 1/100th of a second or less) behind the aperture to get a proper exposure. The way the system does this is by using Latham Levers, which leave a little slack of film on either side of the gate so that the film is constantly getting bunched and pulled and the camera can allow for both the necessary continuous and discontinuous movement.

On to the Shutter. In the most basic terms, the Shutter is what opens or closes to allow the light through the lens to hit the film and expose it. It's shaped like a circle, and part of it is open, and the other part is actually a mirror. The mirror allows the light to bounce into the viewfinder when it's not exposing the film so that you can see a reflexive image of what the film is seeing through the taking lens. This is very important, because in early Hollywood movie making, the viewfinders could never see what the taking lens was actually seeing, and huge amount of mathematical equations had to be performed in order to "know" what exactly was and wasn't being filmed.

The standard setting for a shutter is 180 degrees, meaning that half of the circle is open to the film, and half is closed. But it is adjustable, and can achieve very dramatic effects.

A formula for determining how shutter angle relates to "shutter speed," which is a much more familiar concept to still photographers is as follows.

1 open angle
-- X -------- = xth of second.
fps 360

So, if you're shooting 24 frames per second with a standard shutter opening. ...

1 180
-- X ----- =
24 360



1 1
-- X ----- = 1/50th of a second shutter speed (i know it's 1/48th, but we round these numbers!)
24 2

Now thinking again about still photography, when you have the shutter open for more time, what kind of images does it produce? The motion will blur more, right? And when you have a very fast shutter speed, it will freeze the image and cut down on the motion. The same is try with motion cameras, but what you adjust here is the shutter angle.

Think about Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg was trying to approximate the "otherworldly" aspect of battle that so many WWII Veterans described. He and his Cinematographer decided that they wanted to make all the battle action much more detailed and less blurring. So they cut the shutter angle to 90 and 45 degrees. The opening scene, the D Day landing is all shot this way, and it's a great effect. If you pause the film at any specific frame, you can see individual pieces of dirt in the air. On a normally shot film, that same dirt will be blurred on a frame. Hollywood liked the effect, and now you see it in many other films, even commercials (Gladiator, for instance). Likewise, if you wanted to push the blurriness of a scene you would open the shutter angle more. Keeping in mind of course, that you will have to adjust stops for all this because you are effecting the amount of light that hits the film.

When I keep talking about stops, I'm referring to "f-stops" or apertures. In other words, the size of the hole that lets the light in. One stop up allows in exactly double the light from the previous one. One stop down allows in exactly half the light. Exposure is effected by this tremendously, as it controls the intensity of the light. In filming, they are called stops. A very important concept to remember is the following:

Exposure = Intensity x Time.

Intensity is affected by stops (and filters) and time is affected by frame rate and shutter angle. You combine these variables to get the exposure that you want for a particular shot.

One thing that is very interesting is that most of these things abide by what is called the "double-half rule." Meaning that if you double one of these variables, you can half the others and still arrive at the same exposure. So let's say I'm shooting at 24 frames per second with a stop of 5.6 and a shutter angle of 180. Oh but now I want that cool Saving Private Ryan affect, so I adjust the shutter angle to 90. I have now allowed in a lot less light, (in fact, I've cut the light by half), so I need to double it somewhere else. So I go down one stop - to 4 - and double the light again to compensate. All of those variables play but the double half rule, meaning if you double one you can half another, and vice versa, to keep the same exposure.

OK, I need to get back to studying. . .. if you've read this much you should be here with me learning all this. It's pretty cool.