4 - Cinematography

Question 1

-Contrast

Answer 1

Contrast refers to the comparative difference between the darkest and lightest areas of the frame

Question 2

-Different film stocks

Answer 2

A crucial way to alter the tonalities in the image is through exposure. Exposure regulates how much light passes through the camera lens were suited for filming news events in actual conditions. Others gave a richer, wider contrast range

Question 3

-Exposure

Answer 3

A crucial way to alter the tonalities in the image is through exposure. Exposure regulates how much light passes through the camera lens

Question 4

-Tinting/Toning

Answer 4

Tinting is accomplished by dipping the already developed film into a bath of dye. The dark areas remain black and gray, while the lighter areas pick up the colo
Toning worked in an opposite fashion. The dye was added during the developing of the positive print. As a result, darker areas are colored, while the lighter portions of the frame remain white or only faintly colored

Question 5

-Hand-coloring

Answer 5

Hand colored film

Question 6

-Fast motion cinematography

Answer 6

As the silent films indicate, if a film is exposed at fewer frames per second than the projection rate, the screen action will look speeded up. This is the fastmotion effect sometimes seen in comedies

Question 7

-Slow motion cinematography

Answer 7

The more frames per second shot, the slower the screen action will appear. The resulting slow-motion effect is used notably in Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera to render sports events in detail, a function that continues to be important today.

Question 8

-Ramping

Answer 8

sometimes filmmakers choose to call our attention to changes in the speed of capturing the action. The technique, which varies the frame rate during shooting, is called ramping.

Question 9

-Time-lapse cinematography

Answer 9

sometimes filmmakers choose to call our attention to changes in the speed of capturing the action. The technique, which varies the frame rate during shooting, is called ramping.

Question 10

-Focal length

Answer 10

he main area of choice involves the focal length of the lens. In technical terms, the focal length is the distance from the center of the lens to the point where light rays converge to a point of focus on the film. The focal length alters the size and proportions of the things we see, as well as how much depth we perceive in the image.

Question 11

-Wide-angle lens

Answer 11

In 35mm-gauge cinematography, a lens of less than 35mm in focal length is considered a wide-angle lens. It’s called that because it takes in a relatively wide field of view. But in capturing the wider field, these lenses tend to distort straight lines lying near the edges of the frame, bulging them outwardLess obviously, a short focal-length lens exaggerates depth, making figures in the foreground seem bigger and those in the distance seem farther away

Question 12

-Medium lens

Answer 12

A common length for a medium lens, in 35mm and high-end digital cinematography, is 50mm (5.31). This lens seeks to avoid noticeable perspective distortion. With a medium lens, horizontal and vertical lines are rendered as straight and perpendicular. (Compare the bulging effect of the wide-angle lens.) Parallel lines should recede to distant vanishing point

Question 13

-Telephoto lens

Answer 13

Wide-angle lenses stretch space along the frame edges, but longer lenses flatten the space along the camera axis. Cues for depth and volume are reduced. The planes seem squashed together, much as when you look through a telescope or binoculars (5.32). (For this reason, long lenses are also called telephoto lenses.) Long lenses take in a narrower angle of vision than wide-angle or normal lenses do.

Question 14

-Zoom lens

Answer 14

In taking snapshots you’ve probably used a zoom lens to enlarge some part of a shot. You may not have noticed that the lens changes focal length as well as framing, but that’s what a zoom is—a lens designed to provide variable focal leng

Question 15

-Retro/Dolly zoom

Answer 15

Placeholder

Question 16

-Depth of field

Answer 16

Every lens has a specific depth of field: a range of distances within which objects can be photographed in sharp focus, given a certain exposure setting

Question 17

-Selective focus

Answer 17

He or she may opt for what is usually called selective focus—choosing to focus on only one plane and letting the other planes blur.

Question 18

-Deep focus

Answer 18

In Hollywood during the 1940s, partly because of the influence of Citizen Kane, filmmakers began using lenses of shorter focal length, along with more sensitive film stock and higher light levels, to yield a greater depth of field (5.48). This practice came to be called deep focus

Question 19

-Racking/Pulling focus

Answer 19

Just as a zoom lens lets the filmmaker change focal length while filming, focus can be altered within a shot by racking focus, or pulling focus. This is commonly used to switch our attention between foreground and background (5.52–5.53), making one plane blurred and another sharp.

Question 20

-Superimposition

Answer 20

The most unrealistic sort is superimposition. Here images are laid over one another, creating multiple perspectives within the frame.

Question 21

-Rear projection

Answer 21

One solution was to simply project footage of a setting onto a screen, then film actors in front of it. The whole ensemble could then be filmed from the front (5.55). This was called, logically enough, rear projection (or process work), and it was very widely used

Question 22

-Front projection

Answer 22

A later modification, front projection, used angled mirrors to summon up more realisticlooking backgrounds.

Question 23

-Matte work

Answer 23

A matte is a portion of the setting photographed on a strip of film, usually with a part of the frame empty. Through laboratory printing, the matte is joined with another strip of film containing the actors. It was common to have expert artists paint an image of the setting, and the painting was then filmed, leaving a blank space in the frame. The footage was combined with footage of action, filmed to fit the blank area. Several long shots in The Wizard of Oz exemplify classic matte painting (Fig. 2.20).

Question 24

-Aspect ratios

Answer 24

The ratio of frame width to frame height is called the aspect ratio. For example, an image that is twice as wide as it is high is said to be in a 2:1 ratio.

Question 25

-Masking

Answer 25

The simplest way to create a widescreen image is by masking it at some stage in production or exhibition (5.78). This masking is usually called a hard matte.

Question 26

-Split screen imagery

Answer 26

In this process, two or more images, each with its own frame dimensions and shape, appear within the larger frame.

Question 27

-Offscreen/onscreen space

Answer 27

As viewers we help the filmmaker with this task, because we know that what’s in the frame is part of a continuous world. If the camera moves away from a person to frame someone else, we assume that the first person is still there, outside the frame. Even in an abstract film, we can’t resist the sense that the shapes and patterns that burst into the frame come from somewhere. So the filmmaker can imply the presence of things out of frame. You can have a character look or gesture at something offscreen. As we’ll see in Chapter 7, sound can offer potent clues about offscreen space. And something from offscreen can come into the frame.

Question 28

-Straight-on/high/low angle framing

Answer 28

. In this shot from Se7en (5.101), a high-angle framing looks down the staircase. A low-angle view places sailors and a machine gun against the sky in

Question 29

-Canted/Dutch angle

Answer 29

If the framing is tipped to one side or the other, it’s said to be canted

Question 30

-Extreme long shot

Answer 30

In the extreme long shot, the human figure is lost or tiny (5.105). This is the framing for landscapes, bird’s-eye views of cities, and other vistas

Question 31

-Long shot

Answer 31

In the long shot, figures are more prominent, but the background still dominates

Question 32

-Medium long shot/ Plan américan

Answer 32

Shots in which the human figure is framed from about the knees up are called medium long shots

Question 33

-Medium shot

Answer 33

The medium shot frames the human body from the waist up

Question 34

-Medium close-up

Answer 34

The medium close-up frames the body from the chest up

Question 35

-Close-up

Answer 35

The close-up is traditionally the shot showing just the head, hands, feet, or a small object. It emphasizes facial expression, the details of a gesture, or a significant object

Question 36

-Extreme close-up

Answer 36

The extreme close-up singles out a portion of the face or isolates and magnifies an object

Question 37

-Point-of-view shot

Answer 37

Shot from a character’s point of view

Question 38

-Pan

Answer 38

The pan (short for panorama) movement swivels the camera on a vertical axis. The camera as a whole does not move to a new position. Onscreen, the pan scans space horizontally, as if the camera is “turning its head” right or left

Question 39

-Tilt

Answer 39

The tilt movement rotates the camera on a horizontal axis. It is as if the camera’s head were swiveling up or down. Onscreen, the tilt movement yields the impression of unrolling a space from top to bottom or bottom to to

Question 40

-Crane shot

Answer 40

In the crane shot, the camera moves above ground level. Typically, it rises or descends, often thanks to a mechanical arm that lifts and lowers it. A crane shot may move vertically, like an elevator

Question 41

-Steadicam

Answer 41

Steadicam is a brand of camera stabilizer mounts for motion picture cameras invented by Garrett Brown and introduced in 1975 by Cinema Products Corporation. It mechanically isolates the operator’s movement, allowing for a smooth shot, even when the camera moves over an irregular surface.

Question 42

-Handheld camera work

Answer 42

Instead of anchoring the camera on some support like a dolly or a stabilizer, the operator simply walks with the camera braced on the shoulder.

Question 43

-Reframing

Answer 43

the camera movement is quite minimal

Question 44

-Shot duration

Answer 44

The length of time a shot lasts before switching to another shot

Question 45

-Long take

Answer 45

Renoir and his peers showed that unusually lengthy shots—long takes, as they’re called—represented a powerful creative resource

Question 46

-Sequence shot

Answer 46

A sequence shot is a shot, a long take, that includes a full narrative sequence containing multiple scenes in its duration, meaning different locations or different time periods. The term is usually used to refer to shots that constitute an entire scene.

Question 47

-Filters

Answer 47

Exposure can be affected by filters—slices of glass or gelatin put in front of the lens of the camera or printer to reduce certain frequencies of light reaching the film.

Question 48

tracking or dolly shot

Answer 48

the camera as a whole changes position, traveling in any direction along the ground—forward, backward, diagonally, in circles, or from side to side