Cinematography-Theory-And-Practice

to a neutral card. This would likely be the most desirable route withlighting you can’t control, such as in an office with fluorescent lightingyou can’t change. Up until the eighties, it was conventional toprecisely color balance all lighting sources in a scene. Now with constantlyimproving video cameras, better film stocks, and most of all,changing visual tastes, it is common to mix slightly, even radically,different color sources in a scene (see the chapter Color for examples).In making these decisions you will need to pay close attention toexposure, color balance, filtration, correct processing (for film), andalso important in the mood and tone of a scene (Figure 7.3).ShapeFlat front lighting (Figure 7.11) does not reveal the shape and formof the subject. It tends to flatten everything out, to make the subjectalmost a cartoon cutout: two-dimensional. Lighting from the side orback tends to reveal the shape of an object — its external structureand geometric form.This is important not only for the overall depth of the shot, butit also can reveal character, emotional values, and other clues thatmay have story importance. Naturally, it also makes the image morereal, more palpable, more recognizable; this is important not onlyfor each subject in the frame, but to the overall picture as well.SeparationBy separation, we mean making the main subjects “stand out” fromthe background. A frequently used method for doing this is a backlight.Another way to do it is to make the area behind the main subjectssignificantly darker or brighter than the subject. In our questto make an image as three-dimensional as possible, we usually try tocreate a foreground, midground, and background in a shot; separationis an important part of this.Figure 7.2. (top) Color plays a majorrole in imagemaking: issues of colorbalance in relation to camera whitebalance are crucial to achieving theimage you want. If the camera andmonitor are not properly calibrated,your task is going to be much moredifficult.Figure 7.3. (above) Out of theordinary color is frequently appropriatefor sci-fi, horror, or fantasysequences.lighting basics105