Monthly Archives: April 2018

The cinematographer is one of the film’s founding members who is in charge of film photography modeling and is responsible for the creation and technical processing of photographic art.

Two famous and unbelievable Korean films are the reason I started to pay more attention to Korean film in these years, one is called The Host, the other one is called Memories of Murder. At the meanwhile, these two great Korean films created by the same director Bong Joon-ho and cinema photographer Kim Hyeong-gu.

Kim Hyeong-gu studied photography at university, he has his own understanding about the relationship between film and photography. In an interview in 2009, Kim Hyeong-gu said that: There is no difference between movies or photos. However, I majored in photography in college, and I am familiar with photography and photography. A few years ago, I shot a movie featuring Long Take or Long Short. So, I did not move the camera, close up, move the person in it with one shot fixed. It was obviously a movie, but I worked on the idea that I would take pictures. When you take a picture, you have to focus more on the picture than on the movie. In that regard, when making Long Shot Long Short films, you have to make it really complete (정리 김성훈,2009-10-13, http://www.cine21.com/news/view/?mag_id=58206).

What he believes about the relationship between film and photography, is something I really agree. I believe that film is actually some dynamic photos, in other words, thousands or millions of photos being put together could make a video or a film. It’s necessary and significant to form and find our own aesthetic and style since an aesthetics and styles with our own style can help us stand out. Learning photography is the best way I personally think.

In the creation of a movie, the cinematographer is responsible for the creative task of using various technical means to achieve the modeling of movie images. Based on the content of the film and the intensions of the director, the cinematographer carefully designs and organize the implementation of the light, color, composition of each scene, and operate the movement of cameras in the shooting process. As a means of recording, the cinematographer is the key to transfer the scripts to images which is the most important aspect of the essence of film. However, as a means of art, the cinematographer also largely helps to demonstrate the story, characterize the characters, express the environment, enhance the atmosphere in a film. The artistic level of a movie is shaped cinematographer to a large extent.

In most films crews, cinematographers do not talk directly to the director of the film. They follow the order from the ‘Director of Photography’(PD). Usually, a PD is also from a cinematographer. When a cinematographer reaches a certain level of skills and aesthetic, it is natural that he would be in charge of the overall situation and it is not necessarily for a PD to actually operate a camera.

Also, he said that” The film on the other hand is entirely a director’s work. If you hang on only a visual aesthetic, your work dies. The shots should not shine. ” His filming philosophy followed. “I first see who the director is in selecting the work. I work with a coach who can communicate. After choosing a piece of work, I wonder what the director wants to express, what the director wants, and how the director can best convey the message he wants ” (Jong Dae Yong, 2006, http://ny.koreatimes.com/article/20061111/348741)

All in all, cinema photographer is a significant part of filming creation team, it needs many communications between the director, actor, actress and so on film worker. To understand what they are thinking, to combine with the reality, finally visualize the story and present its aesthetic.

Before I started to write this reflection of our presentation, I heard of that some of our classmates they made a mistake that they thought this is the American Novel call the outsiders, the truth is, this book called The Stranger by Albert Camus. Albert Camus was a famous French philosopher and author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.

It’s not required to present what the book talks about or the deep meaning and theory of the story in our video since we only film the final small part of this story. The video we will edit will be long about 2-3mins. However, it’s very important for every member to read carefully and make notes because we maker needs to get really close to the main character Meursault, even Camus, to provide details of personality of Meursault.

Talks about Meursault, talks about the cast, Paul suggests us that we could use not only one character but some, and the Meursault doesn’t have to be a man. To be honest, we discussed it before the presentation also in the meeting after we heard from Paul. However, we used to imagine how a woman to act, whether it would be better than to let a man act. The result is we chose a man to act Meursault since the strong impression in our mind from this book. But regarding do we need the other characters, we are still thinking about it.

For location, in the beginning, we wanted to film only in a black room with only two lights. One is the key light, and the other one is side light to fill Meursault. Paul gave a advice that we can try different location with the same Meursault, even same actions. It’s really a good advice, we believe it, but this is difficult to achieve. We only have few weeks to go, moreover, in May we do not only have this assignment. Schedule everyone’s available time to film and meet up will be a really an annoying thing. Finally, we decided to add a sea beachside as our second location because Meursault went to enjoy the sea in the book for many times.

Except for the two questions that Paul put forward in the class, there is the last question which is about the design of lights. When we are in the black filming room, the only natural light that we will use is the direct sunshine to make high contrast (we are still imagining how the screen looks like). Currently, we are worrying about how we can get the power to charge the lights when we film on the beach in the early morning and evening.

On 28^th March, we did our exercise 8. It was scene 27 called “The Misunderstanding”, we shoot it in the west foyer of Building 9. We spent more time on the 1^st part than the 2^nd part, and of course, we met more challenges for the 1^st part.

For the 1^st part, we used the light Kino Flo light indoor as the small area was dark.

The Kino Flo Light did make this area bright up but the question comes that the Light seems to be too focus and too much in this small and cabined indoor area. We can see that the red wall on the right side is bright and also the strong reflection of light on the lift door, they were very unnatural. People can obviously find the location of the light. I think we should try with some soft or half soft frost to control the light balance. But something interesting is this scene has a little bit future sense of technology, like a sci-fi movie.

Except for this one, there was an obvious question that everyone saw in the class that the color temperature isn’t balanced in different shots.

Color temperature change strangely and uncomfortably between shots which makes the whole video looks uncoordinated. How to solve this problem? I am thinking that we can use some orange color filter to adjust the indoor environment since we can’t do something outdoors. Also if we use the color filter, we need to cooperate with other lights there because they have a blue color which affects the whole environment.

When we came outside, we found that the sunlight was very bright to negatively affect our filming. From the dark area to the bright area, we figured out a method that adjusts the aperture while they are walking from the one side to the other side. With the formula that the larger the aperture (the smaller the number of apertures, the larger the aperture), the greater the amount of light entering. In fact, this method can also be tried and used on our 2^nd part to solve the overexposure question.

Move to the 2^nd part, the entrance was more bright than the 1^st one so the Kino Flo Light was not required. When we were shooting there, the light indoor was as bright as the light outdoor as I seen, at least the difference won’t be too much, but the final video shows me the horrible overexposure.

Even the over-exposure grind the edge of my face.

What can we do in this environment with limited equipment?

I think a lot.

First, we can use multiple lights indoor to omnidirectionally fill the whole indoor environment (because we are moving from side to side).

Or we can change the location of the camera, just like what another group has done.

To summarize, we were practicing how to adjust lights and camera in dynamic range and circumstances. How the lights set up if many things in the shot are dynamic? Personally think that at that time, we should pay more attention to the whole environment rather than is the light on his/her face look very soft and natural because that’s unnatural if someone’s face always has a soft light on it.