Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Very often in a more casually photographed film, the
soundtrack is utilized to smooth cuts between poorly
matched shots. Since the earliest days of narrative film
in a rudimentary way, and since the 1930s with more
sophistication, one of the functions of film lighting has
been to guide viewers in pinpointing the narratively
central material and details in a scene. From a uniformly
accessible visual field, particular material is selected in
this way for dramatic emphasis. For example, in the
conclusion of Orson Welles’s (1915–1985) celebrated
Citizen Kane (1941), a child’s sled is picked up from a
pile of objects and thrown into a blast furnace. Gregg
Toland’s (1904–1948) camera zooms into the furnace
door to pick up the sled being consumed by the flames.
Because of the overall darkness of the surrounding area,
and the intensity of the light produced by the flames,
special key lighting had to be used on the sled in order
for the viewer’s eye to discover it as a special object in the
already bright visual field.
In addition to planning with the director and the
designer of a film before shooting, cinematographers
work collaboratively during the principal photography
stage. Sets must be built or locations selected with the
cinematographer’s needs at least partially in mind. For
example, a ‘‘wild’’ wall is a part of a set that can be
removed easily so that a shot can be taken from that
point of view; for Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) virtually all
the walls of the single penthouse set were wild, since the
film was to be shot (by Joseph Valentine [1900–1949]
and William V. Skall [1897–1976]) in eleven-minute
masters, with continuous camera movement and no discernible
cuts. Conversely, Clint Eastwood (b. 1930)
prefers to eliminate wild walls, so that the cinematographer
is always placed—like the characters—inside the
situation where he will have to find a ‘‘natural’’ point
of view. Cinematographers do not always work with sets
fixed inside buildings or locations; for Spike Lee’s Get on
the Bus (1996), for example, Elliot Davis had a specially
rigged bus, with light boxes fixed behind the seats and a
camera track mounted on the luggage racks.
As well as set architecture, the colors of sets and
costumes will affect lighting and film stock selection.
Since the concluding ballet sequence of An American in
Paris (1951) required bizarre and theatrical transitions
with extreme, colored light, and since no work was going
to be done optically in the lab, all the transitions had to
be effected through set lighting. To get stark and saturated
color effects, John Alton (1901–1996) used color
film stock with lighting typical of black-and-white movies.
In addition, the cinematographer’s team requires
time to set up for shots. Both the director and assistant
director, one of whose tasks it is to plan shooting schedules
efficiently, must collaborate closely to ensure that
Cinematography
complicated setups are practical from the budgetary point
of view.
A team of grips is under the cinematographer’s
direction, in order to unload pieces of the camera and
dolly, set up the photography equipment, and move the
camera and dolly during shots: the chief member of this
team is called the ‘‘key grip’’ and has principal responsibility
for camera movement. A particularly spectacular
case of prodigious grip technique is to be found in the
party scene of Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), in which
Robert Burks shoots from a vantage point on the balcony
overlooking the spacious foyer of an estate house, where
dozens of well-dressed socialites are mingling. As the
doorbell repeatedly sounds and a uniformed butler opens
the door to various guests, the camera moves, in one fluid
crane shot with perfectly modulated focus, twenty feet
down to floor level and forty feet forward to swoop into
the face of Sidney Strutt (Martin Gabel), the very last
person anyone wants to see appearing at this soiree, as he
stands stiffly on the doorstep.
Another team, the gaffers, of whom the chief is given
the special title, ‘‘best boy,’’ handles unpacking, wiring,
setting up, filtering, adjusting, and moving all of the
lights. A particularly fascinating challenge for gaffers
was the ‘‘wake-up’’ scene of Jerry Lewis’s The Ladies
Man (1961). In it Wallace Kelley’s camera shows coeds
waking up bedroom by bedroom in a huge boardinghouse;
then it pulls back to observe them marching out
of their rooms, down the hallways to the stairs, and
downstairs to the breakfast room; then it pulls farther
back to show this happening on many floors simultaneously,
then farther back to show the entire structure like a
giant dollhouse, then even farther back to show the entire
sound stage. All of the areas, from the stage to the
individual rooms, had to be lit for optical coherence.
The rooms had to have lighting for Technicolor unaffected
by the very high lights that would ultimately show
the entire set.
The camera operator works under the cinematographer
to operate the camera during shots. He or she is
assisted by one or more focus pullers, who must measure
the lens-to-performer distances the shot will require,
establish a schedule of focuses for the shot, and achieve
consistent focus as the scene continues. It is solely within
the province of the cinematographer and his team to peer
through the viewfinder of the camera, although in the
United States union regulations forbid cinematographers
from actually operating cameras.
THE CINEMATOGRAPHER’S TOOLS
Collaborating with the director in terms of the vision
sought for a given scene, the cinematographer will direct
the lighting, select from a variety of film stocks, and
SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 287