Mid-semester Presentation Reflections

Cinematographer Research

Assignment 3 Reflections

I’m very intrigued by the light and colours in the film of The Last Emperor (1987 Cinematographer: Vittorio Storaro), because the light and colours drastically help the film shape the protagonist’s (Pu Yi) personal traits and also convey his own subjective mood/feelings.

Vittorio Storaro used massive natural light in the film, while a portion of them was resourcefully simulated, as a result, the Forbidden City appears classic and eastern-appealing. The most of scenes in the Forbidden City were filmed at the ‘Magic time’ which is the period of sunrise and sunset. Therefore, the light in general turns out more red and orange at the beginning part of the film that the hue of red symbolises the new birth of emperor and the hue of orange represents Pu Yi’s childhood; Meanwhile, the hues of red and orange are both warm colours that imply the Forbidden City is his home. In Vittorio Storaro’s opinion, different colours can shift audience’s emotion such as red can increase their blood pressure. However, he asserts that he didn’t use those colours in The Last Emperor as a type of specific symbolic language, instead to depict the different stages of Pu Yi’s life by different colours. Yellow implies his royal identity of emperor and it’s the colour of sun; Green is his British teacher’s bicycle and hat’s colour that implies the western knowledge brought to him; Red comes back to screen when Pu Yi had his first wedding implying another new start; Blue implies depression when Pu Yi’s second wife wanted a divorce with him. Near the end of the film, Pu Yi’s life in the prison came to the end. And he had completed his own inner journey, bringing all the feelings and impressions together. When Vittorio Storaro combined all the colours together, the hue turns to white in the scene of Pu Yi got a special pardon and became free at the snowing courtyard of the prison. At the end of the film, as if a miracle Pu Yi returned to the Forbidden City; And the last part lighting is a vibrant naturalistic style that covers all the colours of the spectrum. The approach of filming The Last Emperor by Vittorio Storaro was to let audience empathize with Pu Yi’s subjective mood/feelings by using the different colours, which highlight the dramatic evolution of Pu Yi’s life from an emperor to a prisoner, and eventually becoming an ordinary person.

Vittorio Storaro asserts that the light is not only a physiological need for young Pu Yi who was always surrounded by shadows but also a significance of freedom for him being an emperor who was actually trapped in the Forbidden City. With the growth of the little emperor and progressively becoming more aware of the world, he started to realise how helpless he was because all the constant changes outside of the Forbidden City had far surpassed his real authority and control. In this transition, the light development is from the little emperor was completely surrounded by shadows, to gradually adding the natural light on him, and finally creating the shadow on his face. And last but not least, Vittorio Storaro introduced hard light to illuminate Pu Yi’s face in order to create a dramatic effect (Grief and indignation). Additionally, the low-key lighting, side lighting, Rembrandt lighting, and backlighting were applied to the film for many times to create the Chiaroscuro effect, since the high lighting ratio fits well with many scenes especially when Pu Yi was in a dilemma.

https://youtu.be/SY_GFZsmgcA

Reflection #1

Exercise 8 “The Misunderstanding”

On Monday week 5, we watched some scenes from A Clockwork Orange and several French movies, all coming across with a ‘long take’ (One shot lasting much longer time). All of the elegant long takes relied on elaborate blocking/staging, styled mise en scene and significant camera movement. Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwanese film director) once said that ‘It can’t be regarded as a real film if there is not a long take within it’. So I couldn’t wait to experiment a long take to cover the whole scene of Exercise 8 “The Misunderstanding” as graceful as it can be.

On Wednesday set, we neither used any core board and reflector nor set up any light, since the west foyer of Building 9 was fully lit well by daylight. However, when we reviewed it on screen in class, I started to think that isn’t the outside of the window over exposure a problem? If it is, then I think I have two approaches to solve it out. One is to shoot with a tighter shot. Another one is to light up the entire set inside and lower the outside and inside exposure down as a whole. In practice, we did control the outside exposure by shifting aperture whilst Andrew and Adelle were walking out of the foyer.

The ‘long take’ actually consists of three different shots, from the starting point of an over shoulder shot (Andrew) slightly tilting down to become a common two shot (Andrew and Adelle), and then panning towards the right to follow up they walking out of the foyer. I told Andrew to bend his knees down all the time before he turned to leave, in order to have a nicer look frame respectively in the over shoulder shot and the two shot. We marked up two positions in relation to the camera for Andrew, and one stop mark for Adelle, so they both knew where to start and where to stop. Meanwhile, Andrew and Adelle were both told to deliberately turn their bodies more towards the camera, as a result, we can see a bit more their body language.

The long take caused to have less camera coverage, as we don’t have a view from outside of the foyer to see them exit and head up the road. And last but not least, shooting the long take cost as much time as shooting with three different shots, because it required more rehearsals to ensure the performance, blocking and camera movement are all correct and accurate at the same time.

Reflection #2

Scene 11 “CLASSROOM”

On Monday week 7, I did the sound recording for this exercise. For sound recordists should always know where the key light comes from and what the shot looks, in order to avoid blocking the key light and mic/boom pole getting into the shot.

We didn’t set up any artificial light for this scene, instead the whole classroom was entirely lit by daylight from outside the window. After I reviewed the shots, I noticed that the light on the background (White wall) of Aria’s shot is slightly brighter than Brian’s one, due to the two sides of the classroom with windows. Even though we turned the blinds down behind Brian, there was still more light reflected from the background behind Aria. Besides that, if we had more time permitting, we could have done a better production design. We were supposed to put some chairs behind Brian and Aria to make their backgrounds consistent. However, we actually see the chairs’ legs (Black) in Brian’s shot, whereas we can only see the chairs’ back (Red) in Aria’s shot.

I personally think the shot for Aria looks nicer in terms of the light on her face. We introduced some negative fill in the shot by holding up two black core boards very close to the fill side of Aria. As a result, it gave her a little bit more extra dimension and more contrast, and especially it became more effective on account of Aria’s relatively flat face and her black outfit.

For Brian’s shot, it’s a nicer over shoulder shot, as we can clearly see the soft edges on Aria’s left shoulder and cheek, which is attributed to that we “feathered” the key light off her by holding up a core board a bit far (About three meters) away from her. Since “feather” implies that it can only affect a specific portion of the frame, it doesn’t help Brian’s face look softer and more even.

For the third shot (Aria’s close up), we did this shot in a rush, so it turned out very rough. It’s crossing the line and with an imperfect exposure. If we had more time, we could have tweaked it by shooting from a better angle and diffusing the key in order to get rid of the shadow of Aria from the wall.

A summary of the content of our Presentation:

Our idea is to imitate the baseline scene in Blade Runner 2049 to do an individual interview with a guy who responses to himself. Since we are all intrigued into the ‘Water Refraction’ scene in Blade Runner 2049, we are basically going to experiment how we can manipulate light to create an uncommon and extraordinary sight meanwhile captured by the camera. A lot of the references/examples we have chosen were achieved through the techniques such as shaping or distorting light whether through water or smoke/fog or carved up core boards. To find a curved and relatively big colored wall as the background can help us to accomplish a more distinct scene between the bright area and dark area. Logistics: book the studio in building 10 level 1 as our main shooting location and film our project after Mondays’ and Wednesdays’ class.

A reflection on another group’s presentation:

Adelle’s group: having a generic script from Robin and filming an achievable scene with a specific atmosphere (Mood). They want to continue investigating the techniques have been exercised in FILM FLIGHT in depth and with blocking characters while experimenting how to technically connect the movement of subjects with light (Mise-en-scene). Shooting the most parts of the scene in black and white can help experiment how artificial lighting could influence the light and shadow on subjects. Low key lighting and the Chiaroscuro effect can be applied to their project.

Michael’s group: their idea is to simultaneously make two different videos in a same shooting/cinematography style. Video #1 is a night scene in Car Park Exterior. Video #2 is a day scene in Kitchen Interior. So how can they make the two videos related to each other? The production design is very important. For the warm environment in Kitchen, they can take all the cold stuff out and put an orange gel on the available windows meanwhile they will more or less diffuse the daylight(Sunlight). And for the cold environment in Car Park with spotlight will anyway look blue and sharp in camera, so concerning about the texture in such a low light place is necessary. In addition, grading process in the post is a good approach to achieve what effects they want.