Cinematography Blog

Nine Variations on a Dance Theme is a short film by Hilary Harris. This black and white film shows the dancer Bettie Jong perform a slow moving routine as she is being continuously filmed. The camera follows Bettie’s movements, each time she goes through the routine, a different angle and positioning of the camera makes each time look different. I found this film to beautifully made. Having danced for a number of years  myself I can definitely appreciate the simplicity and beauty that comes with her choice of movements as she starts out laying on the floors and gradually makes her way stretching, turning and extending her body. As a photographer, the light streaming through the open windows, the wooden floors and the positioning of Bettie Jong’s body makes a wonderful composition. The music is at a very steady tempo, as the film progresses, her movements are closer up, giving a more abstract like view to her dancing.  The camera follows her hand, and the movements steadily become more fragmented, giving more of a tense mood to the film as well as the music changing to a more serious tone.

 It’s amazing how a simple routine can be interpreted and filmed in so many different ways. The distance between the camera and subject matter varies greatly as we get to see close ups of the dancers face, her arms, legs, muscles and she takes up space in the room. I enjoyed watching this film and enjoyed the simple and complex elements that Hilary Harris created with her subject matter, shots and use of beautiful lighting, and movements.

Film Dream Sequence.mov (by khom815)

Kristen Hom Project 2.mov (by khom815)

Kristen Hom Project 1.mov (by khom815)

In this black and white silent film, Meshes in the Afternoon scenes and actions are repeated time and time again. The imagery used throughout the film is very literal: a flower, a knife, a hooded figure with no face etc. A woman starts to follow the hooded figure, then she turns suddenly and enters a house where the door is unlocked, she wanders through the house, climbs up the stairs and sees the hooded figure place the flower on the bed. The hooded figure disappears. After a certain number of repeated actions, the woman now has two clones that sit in the dining room area. After awhile I was quite confused on what was reality and what was fantasy, and maybe that’s what the director was trying to do. At one point, a man started repeating the same motions as the woman, and at the very end of the film the woman was shown dead, bleeding in a chair in the living room. After a while I knew what was going to happen next, but yet each time the angles of the rooms that were filmed, changed slightly, the actions and who appeared in the house varied. Overall I didn’t enjoy this film as much as the others, the filming was well done and the angles and imagery were all well depicted for a silent movie but as a whole, not my favorite film we have seen in class.

Visions of Light: the Art of Cinematography is a film made in 1992 which consists of a series of interviews, movie clips and explanations made by cinematographers and filmmakers. Cinematography is a lot more complex than I could have ever realized. The work, thought process and creativity that goes behind filming is truly a masterful art form. What I found truly interesting was the large variety of films that this documentary covered, the peoples thought processes and innovative techniques to convey to the audience a certain type of mood they wanted to portray in a particular film.

In one example The Last Emperor, color was a very important part of the film. The filmmaker described how red represented death, orange represented the value of family, yellow represented happiness and childhood and green represented intelligence. I found it very interesting on the movement of the camera and how it follows the actors in a certain amount of space is also a very important factor when thinking of the type of film you want to produce. There are so many aspects to filmmaking that I had never even considered before taking this class and watching this documentary.

In Days of Heaven an ideal time for shooting was after the sunset, but enough light still remained that gave the film a “magical” like quality. Although production could only get twenty minutes of good shooting time before it got too dark, what footage they were able to get from that ambient lighting made it look spectacular.

As a photographer I can appreciate cinematography and how the films shown in Visions of Light are great examples as to what makes a great film so moving. Photography and film go hand in hand when setting up a scene and telling a story through images. Cinematographers must take into consideration the setup of a shot, how the camera moves throughout the scene, the type of lighting that is to be used as well as so many other small minor and major details.

I found Visions of Light to be a very interesting film and would recommend others to watch it as well.

Camera Plan

Storyboard

Watching this short film by Stan Brakhage’s wife giving birth was both disturbing and intriguing at the same time. I applaud him for being able to produce something that creates so much power while also going against what society believed at the time; which was considered controversial.

As someone who someday would like to have children I would never want to be filmed the way Brakhage filmed his wife. The shots he filmed were very artsy and I did notice the rhythm of the shots was linked to the emotion and pain his wife was feeling before and during childbirth. At first when the film started with his wife in the bathtub I thought this is where she was going to deliver her baby. But it was just Brakhage filming a window and the light that came streaming into the bathroom with his wife fully exposed in the bathtub with a very strong red filter on his lens.

Quick shots of a window is what we first see, then a woman getting into the bathtub. he also films closeups of her stomach, breathing and sleeping. Then it starts to get a little gruesome. He begins filming her vagina and the blood slowly starting to flow out of her vagina. I know this is supposed to be interpreted in an artistic form, which Brakhage does do successfully but still, this does not make it any less disturbing. It says the only way Stan Brakhage could be present for the birthing of his first child was to focus on the filming aspect, otherwise he was afraid he might faint.

The rhythmic pattern of shots varied between different angles of the stomach, and then images of the woman’s face screaming in pain, gripping the sheets on the bed and flashing back and forth between the baby being born, the blood, and her face. At times you could feel the tension, the fear and excitement of the baby giving birth. As you saw the crowning of the head, flashbacks were made to show when the wife was still pregnant, her wet stomach shining in the sunlight, her hand and her husband’s resting on her belly But even so I still felt no personal connection to the wife, husband or baby, it was hard to get emotionally involved in this film, I felt very detached. Overall Window Water Baby Moving  I would give it a 5 out of 10.