Cinematography-Theory-And-Practice

penetrates the dusty darkness of ignorance in the tavern, so the shadowsare equally important — ignorance, lethargy, and wasted lives.As we discussed in Visual Language, they also form negative spaces thatare important compositionally.It is a powerful painting that carries depths of meaning and contentfar beyond its mere visual beauty — the kind of thing we strive forevery day on the set. All that is missing is a producer in the backgroundsaying, “It’s awfully dark; couldn’t we add some fill light?”LIGHTING AS STORYTELLINGIn visual storytelling, few elements are as effective and as powerful aslight and color (which is discussed more fully in later chapters). Theyhave the ability to reach viewers at a purely emotion gut level. Thisgives them the added advantage of being able to affect the audienceon one level, while their conscious brain is interpreting the story atan entirely different plane of consciousness.Film NoirCertainly, one of the highlights of lighting as storytelling is the eraof film noir: American films of the forties and fifties, primarily inthe mystery, suspense, and detective genres, nearly all of them inblack-and-white. The noir genre is best known for its low-key lightingstyle: side light, chiaroscuro, shadowy (Figure 5.6). This was, ofcourse, only one of the various elements of visual style: they alsoused angle, composition, lighting, montage, depth, and movementin expressive new ways. Many factors came together to influencethis style: technical innovations such as more sensitive, finer-grainedblack-and-white negative film stock; lenses better suited to darkershooting conditions; smaller, more mobile camera dollies, cameraslight enough to hand-hold, and portable power supplies, all perfectedduring World War II, alleviated many of the logistical problemspreviously connected with location filming.These enabled filmmakers to get out to the dark, mean streets ofthe city with its shadowy alleys fraught with unknown dangers,blinking neon lights reflected on rain-soaked pavement, and all ofthe mystery and menace of the city after dark. Beyond just the grittyreality and groundedness that come with actual locations, the challengesand various difficulties of lighting in and around real structurestend to force cinematographers to experiment and be bolderwith their lighting; there is less of a tendency to just do it the sameold way it’s always been done back in the studio.But all of this is more than just visual style: it is inherently a partof the storytelling, an integral narrative device. “A side-lit close-upmay reveal a face, half in shadow, half in light, at the precise momentof indecision.” (Silver and Ward). Beyond narrative, it becomes partof character as well. Noir was the birth of the protagonist who isnot so clearly defined as purely good or evil. As with Walter Neff inDouble Indemnity or Johnny Clay in The Killing and so many others,they are characters full of contradiction and alienation. In their verybeing they may be pulled between good and evil, light and dark,illumination and shadow. This reflects the confusion and sense oflost ideals that returned with the veterans and survivors of the war.It also reflects the “zeitgeist” of the times: the growing undercurrentthat not all things can be known, “...the impossibility of a single,stable point of view, and thus the limits to all seeing and knowing.”( J.P. Tellotte, Voices in the Dark) — that what is unseen in the shadowsmay be as significant as what is seen in the light.Figure 5.3. (top) The Black Maria,developed by Edison and Dickson,the first method of controlling lightingfor filmmaking.Figure 5.4. (bottom) D.W. Griffithand his cameraman Billy Bitzerexamine a piece of negative in frontof some Cooper-Hewitt tubes, one ofthe earliest artificial lighting sources.For a more extensive discussionof the history of film lighting seeMotion Picture and Video Lighting, bythe same author, also published byFocal Press.visual storytelling69