post modern lit

1. Film Analysis :
Photography
By : Abir Arbi & Oumaima Chouchene

2. The outline
1: Introduction
2: Realism & Formalism
3: The shots
4: The angles
5: Light and Dark
6: Color
7: Lenses, Filters and stocks
8: The digital Revolution

3. 9: The Cinematographer
10: Conclusion
11: References

4. Introduction

6. Realism
-Realism is a particular style =physical reality is the source of all the
raw materials of film
-Realistic films attempt to reproduce the surface of reality with a
minimum of distortion.
- Less style in a realistic movie = the artist tends to be self-
effacing,invisible.
-Realists try to preserve the illusion that their film world is
unmanipulated = an objective mirror of the actual world.
- Aim for a rough look in images, one that doesn’t prettify the
materials with a self-conscious beauty of form.
-The realistic cinema specializes in art that conceals its artistry.
-The subject matter is always supreme =anything that distracts from
the content is viewed with suspicion.
- Tends to documentation + actual events & people

7. The Lumière Brothers;
The Arrival of a Train
(mid 1890)
- Short movies dealing
with everyday life.
- capture the flux
and spontaneity of
events as they were
viewed in real life.

8. Formalism
- Focuses on style and manipulation of reality.
- The stylization calls attention to itself: It’s part of the
show
- The stylization calls attention to itself: It’s part of the
show
- directors are concerned with expressing their
subjective experience of reality, not how other
people might see it
- Formalists = expressionists
- concerned with spiritual and psychological
truths

9. Georges Méliès :
A Trip to the moon
(1902)
- Fantasy Film
- Pure imaginative events
- Mixtures of whimsical
narrative and trick
photography.

10. The most common methods of
classification of are by style and by type :
The three principal styles—realism,
classicism, and formalism ;
The three types of movies—
documentaries, fiction, and avant-garde

11. Classification chart
of styles and types of film.

12. HEARTS & MINDS
(U.S.A., 1975) directed
by Peter Davis.
Documentary

13. PARADISE NOW (Palestinian
Territories, 2005)
with Kais Nashef and
Ali Suliman,
Directed by Hany Abu-Assad.
Realism

14. MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN
(U.S.A., 1936) with Gary
Cooper (with
tuba), directed by Frank
Capra.
Classicism : Fiction

15. THE SEVENTH SEAL
(Sweden, 1957)
with Bengt Ekerot and Max
von Sydow.
cinematography by Gunnar
Fischer
directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Formalism

16. ALLURES (U.S.A., 1961)
directed by Jordan
Belson.
Avant-Garde

17. The Shots
-The shots are defined by the amount of subject matter that’s
included within the frame of the
screen
-shots are determined on the basis of how much of
the human figure is in view
-The shot is not necessarily defined by the distance between the
camera and the object photographed
-There are 6 kinds of shots : (1) the extreme long shot/ (2) the
long shot/ (3) the full shot/(4) the medium shot/(5) the close-up/
(6) the extreme close-up.

18. The extreme long shot
-An extreme long shot in the trailer to the 1963 film Cleopatra
expansive overview
view of the set.

19. The long shot
Road to Perdition ( 2002)

20. The medium shot
The Shawshank Redemption

21. The close-up shot
the shining 1980

22. The Angles
-The angle from which an object is photographed can often serve as an
authorial commentary on the subject matter
- These camera angles are used commonly to help convey different
perspectives.
-They enable audience members to recognize them and understand
what is being communicated to them
-Film realists tend to avoid extreme angles
-Formalist directors are not always concerned with the clearest image of
an object, but with the image that best captures its essential nature =
Extreme angles involve distortions

23. Birds Eye View
The most disorienting of the 5 angles, this involves
filming a scene from directly overhead. This angle is
seldom used as it often renders the subject matter
unrecognizable and abstract. When used correctly
however, it can be considered very expressive. It’s
great for making those filmed seem small and
insignificant while giving the audience an ‘all
powerful’ feel implying a sense of destiny or fate.

24. Requiem For a Dream (2000)

25. High Angle
Not nearly as extreme or disorienting as the bird’s eye, the high
angle is usually shot from a crane or high in a building. They provide
a great overview of a scene while avoiding the overwhelming effect
often gotten from the bird’s eye. Objects being filmed appear
reduced in height and movement can seem slowed down and
tedious. While the importance of environment is increased, we lose
the sense of speed and importance of the subject as it can appear to
be swallowed by the landscape.
High-angle shots can make the subject seem vulnerable or powerless
when applied with the correct mood, setting, and effects.

26. The Lord of The Rings

27. Eye-Level
Eye level shots are simple and as neutral as
possible, allowing the audience to choose their views
and opinions of the characters. Realist in nature,
some filmmakers will only use eye level shots as
they feel the other angles are too manipulative.

29. The Low Angle
Sporting the opposite effect of the high level shot, low angles can
make your actors appear taller. This is particularly useful for short
actors, or trying to make someone appear more intimidating. Motion
appears to be sped up and the sky or ceiling fills the background
which can come in handy. The over all scenes may come across as
more confused with a low angle – great for building suspense which
is why you will often find them in propaganda films (Battleship
Potemkin) or in scenes where the hero enters to save the day.

30. Inglourious Basterds (2009 )

31. Oblique Angle
A tilted angle, this gives the effect that the actors
are leaning, almost falling to the side. The most
common use for this angle is point-of-view shots as
it helps suggest imbalance as though one was
drunk. The oblique angles can suggest tension and
movement but can be disorienting to the viewer so
they are used with rarity. Except of course for
violent scenes in which they are key!

32. INCEPTION (U.S.A., 2010)

33. Light & Dark
-Through the use of spotlights, which are highly selective in their focus
and intensity, a director can guide the viewer’s eyes to any area of the
photographed image.
-Motion picture lighting is seldom static, for even the slightest
movement of the camera or the subject can cause the lighting to shift.
-Lighting is important in video and film production because cameras do
not respond to lights in the same way that the human eye does
-The correct lighting can determine the mood of the scene and can
evoke a more dramatic or subtle palette for the film
-The more advanced the video and film production, the more advanced
the lighting behind it.

34. -There are a number of different styles of lighting. Usually designated as
a lighting key ;
-Comedies and musicals : tend to be lit in high key, with bright, even
illumination and no conspicuous shadows.
-Tragedies & melodramas : usually lit in high contrast, with harsh shafts
of lights and dramatic streaks of blackness.
-Mysteries, thrillers & gangster films : are generally in low key,
with diffused shadows and atmospheric pools of light.
-Lights and darks have had symbolic connotations since the dawn of
humanity. The Bible is filled with light–dark symbolism.
-Lighting can be used realistically or expressionistically

35. provide definition and subtle
highlights around the subject's
outlines. This helps separate the
subject from the background and
provide a three-dimensional look.
. It is used to fill the shadows
created by the key. The fill will
usually be softer and less bright
than the key.
It is usually the strongest and
has the most influence on the
look of the scene. It is placed to
one side of the camera/subject
so that this side is well lit and
the other side has some
shadow.

36. MR.BROOKS (2007)
The source of light can
radically alter
our response to a character.
The low
light source of this image,
for
example, creates a sinister
effect, despite the fact that
Kevin Costner is a handsome
man. He doesn’t look
handsome here, just creepy.

37. Side lighting can be a useful technique
to symbolize a character’s divided
nature, plunging half his face in
darkness, the other half in light.

38. High-contrast lighting is aggressively theatrical, infusing the
photographed materials with a sense of tension and visual
anguish.
(Only God Forgives - 2013)

39. Color

40. • Color in film didn’t become commercially widespread
until the 1940s.
• The original version of “The Birth of a Nation” (1915)
was printed on various tinted stocks to suggest
different moods.
Sophisticated film color was developed in
the 1930s, but for many years a major problem was its
tendency to prettify everything.
• In the 1980s, a new computer technology was
developed, allowing black-and-white movies
• to be “colorized”—a process that provoked a howl of
protest from most film artists and critics.

41. The Birth of a Nation
(1915)

42. ➢ Color tends to be a subconscious element in film. It’s
strongly emotional in its appeal, expressive and
atmospheric rather than intellectual.
➢ Psychologists have discovered that most people
actively attempt to interpret the lines of a composition,
but they tend to accept color passively, permitting it to
suggest moods rather than objects.
➢Lines are associated with nouns ;color with adjectives.
Line is sometimes thought to be masculine; color
feminine. Both lines and colors suggest meanings, then,
but in somewhat different ways.

43. SAVAGE NIGHTS (France, 1993) with
Cyril Collard and Romane Bohringer,
directed by Collard.
AMERICAN BEAUTY (U.S.A., 1999) with
Kevin Spacey and Mena Suvari, directed
by Sam Mendes.

44. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (U.S.A., 1993) with
Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis,
directed by Martin Scorsese
THE GOD FATHER (U.S.A., 1972) with Marlon
Brando (red rose), directed by Francis Ford
Coppola.

45. Lenses, Filters, and Stocks

46. • Because the camera’s lens is a crude mechanism compared to
the human eye, some of the most striking effects in a movie
image can be achieved through the distortions of the
photographic process itself. Especially with regard to size and
distance, the camera lens doesn’t make mental adjustments
but records things literally.
Realist filmmakers tend to use normal, or
standard, lenses to produce a minimum of distortion. These
lenses photograph subjects more or less as they are perceived
by the human eye.
Formalist filmmakers often prefer lenses and
filters that intensify given qualities and suppress others.

47. • There are literally dozens of different lenses, but most of them are
subsumed under three major categories: those in the standard
(non-distorted) range, the telephoto lenses, and the wide angles.
• The telephoto lens is often used to get close-ups of objects from
extreme distances. For example, no cinematographer is likely to want
to get close enough to a wolf to photograph a close-up with a
standard lens (1–11a).
• The longer the lens, the more sensitive it is to distances; in the case
of extremely long lenses, objects placed a mere few inches away
from the selected focal plane can be out of focus. This deliberate
blurring of planes in the background, foreground, or both can
produce some striking photographic and atmospheric effects.

48. RUNNING SCARED U.S.A./
Canada/Germany, 2006)

49. • Some telephoto lenses are so precise they can
focus on a thin slice of action that’s only a few
inches deep. Note how the gun and Walker’s
hand are radically blurred, as is the
background behind him. Our eyes are forced
to concentrate on the face of the character
during a decisive moment of his life. (New
Line. Photo: John Clifford)

50. • Filters
• Filters are big part of cinematography .A
filter used before lenses to distort image.
You are mid day of the shoot and want to
film a scene like sunrise then filters can be
used for that.

51. A CINDERELLA STORY (U.S.A., 2004) with Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray,
directed by Mark Rosman.

52. • Check out the lights in the background. A
shrewdly chosen filter makes them look
blurry, floating dreamily like woozy fireflies.
Do we need to hear the dialogue to know that
these two are falling for each other? Do we
need to be told that the movie is a romantic
comedy? The filtered photography says it all.
• (Warner Bros. Photo: Ron Batzdorff )

53. Stock
oFilm stock is an analog medium that is
used for recording motion pictures and
animations .
o It is a strip or sheet of
transparent plastic film base coated on
one side with a gelatin emulsion
containing microscopically small light-
sensitive silver halide crystals.
oThe emulsion will gradually darken if
left exposed to light, but the process is
too slow and incomplete to be of any
practical use.

54. The Digital Revolution

56. • In the space of ten years, digital technology has
radically changed how movies are photographed,
how they’re edited, how they’re distributed, and
how they’re shown to the public.
• Introduced in the 1980s and refined in the 90s,
digital technology has, for all intents and
purposes, replaced the celluloid technology that
dominated the motion picture industry for over a
hundred years

57. • Film was a chemical and mechanical medium—
that is, movies were recorded on film emulsion,
chemically processed, and then transmitted to
audiences on mechanical projectors that
consisted of moving gears.
• Digital cinema combines television and computer
technologies and is essentially electronic in
nature. The images are not stored on a filmstrip,
but on memory cards and hard drives.

58. • Digital images can have a higher degree of clarity
and resolution than celluloid.
• Digital images are composed of “pixels” (short for
picture elements), which can be seen as tiny dots
on the TV monitor.
• Somewhat like the dots of an Impressionist
painting, when the viewer steps back from the
image, the pixels fuse, producing a unified effect.
• The more pixels that make up an image, the
closer it resembles the subject being
photographed, with a minimum of distortion

59. THE GREEN WAVE
(Germany/Iran, 2011) directed by Ali
Samadi Ahadi.

60. • Digital technology has been a huge
influence in advancing the cause of
democracy.
This film, directed by an
Iranian expatriate, combines documentary
footage, drawings, and animation.
It is a harsh indictment of the repressive Iranian
regime during the 2009 “Green Revolution.” Scenes of
official brutality against peaceful protesters were captured
with the IPhones of ordinary citizens, then broadcast to the
world via the internet.
The same technology was instrumental in toppling
the entrenched tyrants of Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya during
the “Arab Spring.”

61. AVATAR
3-D Movie

62. • Because these pixels can be easily
manipulated by computer, digital technology
has revolutionized special effects in movies.
• In the past, whole scenes often had to be
reshot because of technical glitches. For
example, if a modern auto or telephone wires
appeared in a period film, the scene had to be
re-cut or even re-photographed.
• Today, such details can be removed digitally.
• So can a microphone that accidentally dips
into the frame. Even sweat on an actor’s face
can be effaced.

63. THE MATRIX
(U.S.A., 1999)

64. MULTIPLICITY
(U.S.A., 1996)

65. STAR WARS
(U.S.A., 1977)

67. • The cinematographer or director of
photography (DP) is the person in charge of
actually shooting the film. He is the head of
the camera and lighting departments, and as
such he has a big role in the making of any
movie.

68. • Cinematographers often comment that the
camera “likes” certain individuals and
“doesn’t like” others, even though these
others might be good-looking people in real
life.
• Highly photogenic performers like Marilyn
Monroe are rarely uncomfortable in front of
the camera.

70. • The visual impact of a film is driven by the
creative choices a cinematographer makes.
These guys make the big decisions about the
use of different lenses, filters, lighting
techniques and camera movements to create
dramatic effect and prompt different
emotional responses from the audience.
They’re also responsible for making decisions
about aspect ratio, digital effects, image
contrast, and frame rates.

72. • If we were to view a scene similar to this in
real life, we would probably concentrate most
of our attention on the people in the wagon.
But there are considerable differences
between reality and cinematic realism.
• Realism is an artistic style. In selecting
materials from the chaotic sprawl of reality,
the realist filmmaker necessarily eliminates
some details and emphasizes others into a
structured hierarchy of visual significance.

73. • Cinematographers get involved throughout
the entire production lifecycle. Before filming
starts, they dissect the screenplay, conduct
extra research into different styles and motifs
which relate to the subject matter of the
script, and liaise with the director to discuss
their creative ideas.

74. CONCLUSION
Photography is art, it is mastered by practice and determination, the
use of the right tools, having the right background and philosophy. The
person behind the camera is aiming to capture his vision in one
creation, however the ultimate aim is for viewers to understand and
share that same vision.
“Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.”
-Peter Adams-

75. Sources
• Understanding Movies by Louis Ginnetti
• https://www.allaboutcareers.com/careers/job
-profile/cinematographer
• https://www.investopedia.com/financial-
edge/0512/how-to-invest-in-movies.aspx
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Geor
ges-Melies