Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

For the same director’s Zabriskie Point (1970), a
lavish mountaintop house in the California desert was
to explode in one character’s imagination. To produce
the explosion, the director had a second residence built
identical to the house that was being used for the location.
Seventeen 35mm cameras were set up, many of them
overcranked, so that at the moment of the detonation
seventeen different angles could be covered, many in slow
motion. The cinematographer, Alfio Contini (b. 1927),
used a walkie-talkie system to direct the work of his
seventeen camera operators. In the screen sequence, the
house is seen to blow up again and again and again and
again, from every imaginable angle, from a distance and
in closeup.
Contemporary cinema is making new cinematographic
demands. Very fast film stocks are used with
computer-controlled camera mounts and remote-control
focus systems, making it possible for the cinematographer
to be at a greater distance from the camera. Shooting
Francis Ford Coppola’s (b. 1939) One from the Heart
(1982) from a trailer off-set, for example, Vittorio
Storaro (b. 1940) could make use of an offshoot of the
video assist system invented in the early 1960s by Jerry
Lewis in order to obtain excellent control of lighting and
camera movement while at the same time intensively
economizing on printing expense (since it was not necessary
to wait until the screening of dailies in order to
determine the best shots). Also, with more lightweight,
more mobile, and more intensive lighting systems, it was
possible to systematically produce the effect of being
inside the action of a fast-paced dramatic event: this is
typified in the large-grain contraband-video-style opening
sequence by Matthew F. Leonetti (b. 1941) for
Strange Days (1995).
To shoot live-action footage so that it will blend
with computer-animated effects is often a challenge in
itself. For Minority Report (2002) Spielberg’s cinematographer
Janusz Kaminski managed the problem by overexposing
the live footage so that when projected onscreen
Cinematography
it is overly bright and hazy. The special effects seem to
float out of a dream reality. The early requirement of
cinema for restricted space in which the actors and
camera crew could gain precise control of behavior and
lighting is virtually obviated by the technical development
of small and lightweight camera units, highpowered
but portable lighting, and high-speed film
stocks. Increasingly, cinematographers are experimenting
with high-definition video, a format which is so light
sensitive that it is possible to pick up richly colored
details of wallpaper from twenty-five or thirty feet away
with no direct lighting at all.
SEE ALSO Camera; Camera Movement; Collaboration;
Color; Crew; Film Stock; Lighting; Production
Process; Technology
FURTHER READING
Almendros, Néstor. A Man with a Camera. Translated by Rachel
Phillipo Belash. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.
Alton, John. Painting with Light. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995.
Fielding, Raymond. The Technique of Special Effects
Cinematography, 4th ed. New York: Hastings House, 1985.
Gunning, Tom. D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American
Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Higham, Charles. Hollywood Cameramen: Sources of Light.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970.
Malkiewicz, Kris. Cinematography: A Guide for Film Makers and
Film Teachers, 3rd ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.
Maltin, Leonard. Behind the Camera: The Cinematographer’s Art.
New York: Signet, 1971.
Thompson, Andrew O. ‘‘Magic Bus.’’ American Cinematographer
(November 1996): 56–66.
Turner, George. ‘‘Hitchcock’s Acrophobic Vision.’’ American
Cinematographer (November 1996): 86–91.
Murray Pomerance
SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 297