Film Lesson Plans

Cinematography, Painting and Film Noir

Cinematography literally means “lighting in movement”. It is often referred to as painting or writing with light. The cinematographer on a film, otherwise known as the Director of Photography or “DP”, has a wide range of options when it comes to selecting how the film will be shot and how the “look” of the film will be determined. The use of tonality, speed of motion and perspective are included in these options, as is lighting.

Lighting is central to cinematography and can have a number of functions in a film’s narrative; for example, it can highlight a number or important characters or objects within a frame by drawing the audience’s attention to them with the use of a bright light source. It can also create a range of atmospheric qualities in a scene, which can contribute to both characterisation and setting.

The cinematographer (an alternative term is ‘lighting cameraman’) is the principal operator within the camera crew. This lesson will cover:

  • Three-point Lighting
  • The Influence of Rembrant
  • From German Expressionism to Film Noir
  • Painting with Light: John Alton

Three Point Lighting

Introduction

The classical Hollywood studio film is an example of three-point lighting – key, fill and back lights used in combination to light the subject. Three-point lighting is the most commonly used lighting scheme and it can enable us to understand how lighting affects one’s perception of a character or a setting.

  

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Viewing Extracts

Flying Saucer and Rock and Roll 3
This black and white sequence is an example of low-key lighting. The director employs this lighting style throughout the film to creates a mood of threat and danger.

The Influence of Rembrandt

Introduction

For cinematographers, as well as generations of art lovers, Rembrandt is the acknowledged master of light and shadow. His chiaroscuro technique has influenced some of the most important light-cameramen in cinema history. In her study of the relationship between painting and the cinema, ‘Moving Pictures’, Anne Hollander argues that without the paintings of the 17th century Dutch master, many of the masterpieces of the cinema would not have been possible.

 

  

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From German Expressionism to Film Noir

Introduction

The term Expressionism has a deep resonance in the history of the cinema. As Thomas Elsaesser explains in ‘Weimar Cinema and After’, it is not just a stylistic term for some of the films from the early 1920s, but “a generic term for most of the art cinema of the Weimar Republic in Germany, and beyond Germany, echoing down film history across the periods and genres, turning up in the description of Universal horror films of the 1930s and film noir of the 1940s.”

  

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Painting with Light: John Alton

Introduction

John Alton is considered by many to be the greatest of all noir cinematographers. Alton perfected many of stylised camera and lighting techniques of film noir, including radical camera angles, wide-angle lenses, deep focus compositions, the baroque use of low-level cameras and a sharp depth of field. His groundbreaking work with director Anthony Mann on films such T-Men, Raw Deal and He Walked by Night is considered a benchmark in the noir genre.

  

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