1 The Director of Photography – an overview

114 Practical Cinematography
Figure 12.1 How scene tones
relate to the sensitometric curve
Density Created on the Negative
8
of the film. With a little practice you will be able to imagine the brightness
in the final image as it relates to the nearest of the three cardinal
positions you have set against the stop you have put on the lens.
Adjusting the tones
If you find that there is an important part of the scene that has read a
little above the maximum white but you wish to photograph it, one relatively
simple solution is to light the subject’s face a little brighter. This
will enable you to stop down enough to bring the highlight within the
recordable tonal range. You will now need to recheck your shadows to
make sure none of them have now fallen outside the film’s tonal range.
More simply, if there are some shadows that fall below the recordable
tonal range, then by simply adding a little more fill light you will
bring them up to a recordable level. On an exterior this might simply
be done with a reflector, for instance.
Control for television
9
18%
Reflectance
Logarithm of Exposure created by Brightness of scene
Three-point image control works just as well when filming for television
transmission. The only difference is that you have only two and
two-thirds stops of recordable image below the reading on an 18 per
cent grey card and two and one-third above. In practice, with modern
film stocks, you can approximate this safely to three stops below and
two stops above.
4