Cinematography-Theory-And-Practice

with selection of locations, art direction, and costuming. After thatcomes selection of time of day to shoot and lighting and grip control.It is always best to use the simplest means to achieve a goal. Primarycolors tend to desaturate less noticeably than pastel colors whenusing some sort of desaturation technique. Skintones are generallypastel; they will lose their color much faster than a primary color inthe frame.Some DPs use a contrast/desaturating technique such as flashing(exposing the film to small amounts of light before or during shooting),and then use a silver retention printing technique to restore theblacks in the prints. Two of the earliest films to use some of thesetechniques to were McCabe and Mrs. Miller, shot by Vilmos Zsigmond,and Heaven’s Gate, photographed by Nestor Almendros andHaskel Wexler.The primary technique used in Heaven’s Gate was the simplest oneof all: many of the exterior scenes were shot during morning orevening magic hour when the light is soft and even. This is a simplemethod but a very expensive one. Few productions can afford torestrict exterior filming to a few hours a day. Also, the farm locationin Alberta naturally had a lot of dust in the air, which acts like smoketo soften the light. Almendros also used negative flashing and printflashing together to soften the colors and contrast.On Saving Private Ryananti-reflectioncoating stripped off some of the lenses to make them reproduce someof the internal flares that were characteristic of lenses of the warperiod. These internal reflections also lower contrast. He also useda combination of on-camera flashing (the Panaflasher) and the ENRtingheavy from the bleach-bypass. Seven combined flashingtrastcontrol on the film The Thin Red Line, black smoke was usedto create artificial clouds. Staging of scenes within the sunlit andshadow areas was also done with great care. City of Lost Childrenand a carefully controlled palette, all of which was facilitated by thefact that it was entirely a studio film. Paybackprocess, combined with shooting without the 85 filter outdoors ontungsten stock, and using a blue filter indoors. The blue-bias on thenegative ensured that skintones would be consistently desaturated.The print was timed to the blue side to keep any reds from becomingmore saturated.Bleach-BypassBleach-bypass is the oldest of the special processing techniques ofthis type. It involves simply skipping all or most of the bleach stepof processing. Bleach-bypass was first used on the film 1984, pho-have variations on the bleach-bypass technique. Fotokem can performbleach-bypass on prints, original camera negative, and interme-Silver Tint. It comes in two different levels: Standard and Enhanced.It can be used at different stages of print production.In Silver Tint Enhanced, 100% of the silver is left in the print. InSilver Tint Standard, less silver is retained. This produces increasedcontrast, deeper blacks, and desaturated colors.image control249