Cinematography/Lighting

Roger Antony Deakins, ASC, BSC is an English cinematographer best known for his work on the films of the Coen brothers and Sam Mendes.

• Simplistic lighting design, often using only one or two lights

• Only shoots films using spherical lenses

His primary hobby is taking still photographs. Before he entered the National Film School, he spent a year in North Devon, England, documenting the way of life on the farms and in the villages. This cemented his passion for still photography that continues to this day. On the rare days that he is not in his boat while in Devon, he enjoys traveling to various places to augment his growing series of images.

www.rogerdeakins.com/

Film Analysis: Reading Film Language & Creating Meaning

Shot Composition: Glossary Of Terms

Camera Shots and Lighting Guidance On Blog

There is a glossary of camera shots with sketches available on the 'Shot and Lighting Page' under the blog banner so that you can confirm shot types. There are also helpful tutorial videos for framing, camera movement and lighting. Use these resources if you are unsure of any of the key terms when analysing your film clips.

There is also an 'Editing & Sound Page' under the blog banner for guidance concerning other aspects of analysis.  

Camera Angles: Character Positions & Dominant Framing (Power Relationships)

'Drive' (2011): The Quadrant System

Cinematic Techniques

Cinematography/Sound: Music Video

A good way to test your analytical abilities is to consider cinematic and sound techniques in music videos. Some, although not all, try to creatively challenge the viewer by 'breaking away' from the traditional format and exploring new possibilities in the medium. 

Watch the this video of 'A Song For The Lovers' by The Verve's Richard Ashcroft. 

It was premiered in May 2000 and was directed by Jonathan Glazer.

The video is of narrative style. It is shot in real-time with an element of diegetic sound unusual in most music videos. Diegetic sound was used previously by Glazer for "Rabbit in Your Headlights".

The video appears to take its cue from the first lines of the song:

I spend the night, yeah,

Looking for my insides in a hotel room,

Waiting for you.

It shows Richard Ashcroft shirtless in a hotel room, having apparently just showered. The hotel room is decorated with a large amount of Native American imagery, featuring framed photos of tribal chiefs and a large mural in the bedroom. Ashcroft turns on a stereo and "A Song for the Lovers" starts playing. He makes an enigmatic, mumbled phone call, ending with the complaint, "It's been half an hour."

Signature Shots from the Films of Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick’s filmography, a towering, multifaceted edifice of sheer craft, offers many patterns for attentive fans to spot. Those unschooled in photography or other types of image composition may feel what the video means to shows them without being able to put it into words. All these shots — from films as varied as 2001, Paths of Glory, Barry Lyndon, and A Clockwork Orange — use what’s called “one-point perspective,” which you get when “the painting plate (also known as the picture plane) is parallel to two axes of a rectilinear (or Cartesian) scene – a scene which is composed entirely of linear elements that intersect only at right angles.” In other words, all the visual lines in these shots appear to converge on a single point, usually dead ahead.

Edited from: openculture.com

Shot by Shot: 'The Untouchables' - Train Station Sequence

Wes Anderson: 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' (2004)

Film Noir: Documentary

"All movies express social values, or the erosion of these values, through the ways in which they depict both institutions and relations between people. Certain institutions are more revealing of social values and beliefs than others, and the family is perhaps one of the most significant of these institutions. For it is through the particular representations of the family in various movies that we are able to study the process whereby existing social relations are rendered acceptable and valid." – John Blaser

Double Indemnity is the quintessential movie of its time. With the end of WWII, Double Indemnity used cinematic tricks and an authentic and strong story to control the audience. For the first time in films, Billy Wilder created a climate where the audience became sympathetic to the killer. Could these characters and plots be representative of American culture? How does the end of the War effect filmmaking? What were War torn viewers looking for in a movie? 

The classic noir film Double Indemnity (and others in the genre), explores the historical and social impact of the social climate of the 1940’s and 1950’s and has helped shape modern day cinema and its representations ever since.

Analysis of the Hitchcock Style: The power of the close-up

Analysis of the Hitchcock Style: point of view (shots/editing/narrative)

Camera Shots: Framing & Meaning

Watch this instructional video to learn how filmmakers/directors select camera shots & movement  to create meaning within film sequences. You will be applying this technique when analysing scenes for your first coursework essay.

MTFilm2 - What Does the Camera Do? from Max Tohline on Vimeo.

Lore (2012): Foreign Language Film (German)

Lore is a 2012 Australian-German war thriller film written by Robin Mukherjee, co-written and directed by Cate Shortland. The film had its Australian premiere at the 2012 Sydney Film Festival.

Plot
In southwestern Germany during the dying days of World War II, five destitute siblings must travel 900 km to their grandmother's Husum Bay home after their Nazi parents are arrested by Allied Forces.Cast

The film had its international premiere at the Festival del film Locarno in August, where it won the Piazza Grande audience award, the Prix du public UBS. At the Stockholm International Film Festival, in November, the film was awarded four awards, including the Bronze Horse for best film. It was selected as the Australian entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist.