Idea Post: Gaining Inspiration from the World of Film 10.21.10

Most people relate to music, books, and poetry in the way that I almost solely relate to film. Ever since I was a child, I remember being nicknamed "Kid Video" and my poor parents were terrified of my addiction to film. I vividly recall my experiences with each film in the most acute detail. I simply could not be pried away from the tube. They scurried back and forth to our local video store, "First Video" to satiate my appetite for movie watching.

More recently I have been trying to utilize my knowledge and love for the moving image (film) as a means to translate my ideas into stills.



Cinematography- is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for the cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography. Many additional issues arise when both the camera and elements of the scene may be in motion, though this also greatly increases the creative possibilities of the process.

Role of the cinematographer

In the film industry, the cinematographer is responsible for the technical aspects of the images (lighting, lens choices, composition, exposure, filtration, film selection), but works closely with the director to ensure that the artistic aesthetics are supporting the director's vision of the story being told. The cinematographers are the heads of the camera, grip and lighting crewdirectors of photography or DPs. on a set, and for this reason they are often called

Directors of photography make many creative and interpretive decisions during the course of their work, from pre-production to post-production, all of which affect the overall feel and look of the motion picture. Many of these decisions are similar to what a photographer needs to note when taking a picture: the cinematographer controls the film choice itself (from a range of available stocks with varying sensitivities to light and color), the selection of lens focal lengths, aperture exposure and focus. Cinematography, however, has a temporal aspect (see persistence of vision), unlike still photography, which is purely a single still image. It is also bulkier and more strenuous to deal with movie cameras, and it involves a more complex array of choices. As such a cinematographer often needs to work co-operatively with more people than does a photographer, who could frequently function as a single person. As a result, the cinematographer's job also includes personnel management and logistical organization.

---

Cinema Studies (Article)

By Joerg Colberg
May 22, 2007

After reading this interesting article by Arthur Danto about the MoMA Jeff Wall show it occured to me what really confused me about discussions like this one (and many others I’ve seen recently): Reviewers and writers often spend considerable time on explaining why certain photography in fact isn’t really photography but, instead, painting or cinema. It’s almost like these reviewers and writers restrict photography to something that, in essence, is really quite mundane, and whenver a photographer falls outside of that mundane, then it’s not photography any longer. So we are told we are looking at a photo by Jeff Wall, but it isn’t really a photo, because a photo can’t possibly have the complexity that we see (some of the discussion of Andreas Gursky’s work falls into the same category). I can’t accept this, and I think part of it might be a generational issue: I never grew up thinking that photography’s role is restricted to the mundane.

It’s interesting how this whole complex has so many facets - just look at how people use “photography” and “painting”, with the latter always treated like a true art form, whereas the former still always can’t really be because… Yes, why? Maybe it is not because there is something inherent in photography that makes it more simplistic than painting but, instead, because we think there is.

Having said this, I think the one big step that is still missing for contemporary photography really to become an established and accepted art form is to get full acceptance for it, so that people might say how similar some photography is to painting (just like a movie might be poetic, or a symphony might evoke images), but they won’t write any longer that some photographer’s work really isn’t photography but painting or cinema.

Colberg, Joerg. "Cinema Studies." Conscientious Blog (2007): n. pag. Web. 21 Oct 2010. .

Jeff Wall

Insomnia 1994
Transparency in lightbox 1722 x 2135 mm
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
Cinematographic photograph
© The artist

The set for this work is an exact replica of the kitchen in Wall’s studio. The man seemingly suffering from a nightmarish episode of insomnia is an actor. The claustrophobic atmosphere is emphasised by the awkward positioning of the furniture – tables and chairs are placed at angles that defeat their function, and appear to block the fridge and cooker from opening. The door and cupboard, half ajar, could be read as metaphors for the mind, in its struggle to find an escape into sleep.

"Insomnia." Tate Modern: Jeff Wall Photographs 1978-2004. Web. 21 Oct 2010.

Put the Days Away by Sun Airway from Secretly Jag on Vimeo.

This is one of the most inspiring cinematography I've seen in a while. This independent film has a great, story, soundtrack and beautiful cinematography.

Cinematographer: Tim Orr