Cinematography: Theory and Practice, 4th Edition

11image control

GETTING THE LOOK YOU WANT

Let’s take a look at the tools we have available to control, and manipulate our images. In front of the camera:

• Lighting.
• Choice of lens.
• Filters.
• Mechanical effects (smoke, fog, rain, etc.).
• Choosing time of day, direction of the shot, weather, etc.
• In the camera:
• Exposure.
• Frame rate.
• Shutter speed.
• Shutter angle.
• Gamma.
• White balance.
• Color space.

And of course, in shooting film, you have the option of choosing the film stock and perhaps altering the processing and changing the look by color correcting during printing. These options are not only available when shooting digital, we now have much more control than before.

As always, we can dramatically change the nature of the image in the camera ...