Cinematographic Techniques

I know about the Kuleshov Effect.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Yes, this one right here. It bugs me to no end when things get introduced in a movie/tv show/book and are never referenced again. It's the mark of a true amateur.

Keep up the excellent information, btw. This was a great thread idea and you are posting some top notch content.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

The Kuleshov effect

If you are not interested in reading, Iroquois has been kind enough to put an 8 minutes long video on the subject (first topic of the 3rd page).

First, who is Kuleshov?
Well Lev Kuleshov is a Russian mastermind. I will not spoil you too much and let you discover his biography because it is so worth it. I will simply say that he became a teacher at the National film school in Moscow at only 19. He his with Sergei Eisenstein the most influential Russian theoretician of that era. He also strongly believe in the montage and believe it is the key to cinema art.

What is the Kuleshov effect?
Well the Kuleshov effect is a cognitive bias. It state that depending on the context (mostly images but work also with music) in which a face is shown the interpretation of the emotion will change. As always, an example is far better. I will show the original footage made by Kuleshov.




Since then, numerous directors and psychologist have done the experiment with different faces and even with music instead of images. The effect was first used to demonstrate the effectiveness of film editing. It works because the viewers interprets their feelings to the image.

Since then, many directors started to think that the content of the image was not what mattered but more how they were being combined. I say many because obviously not all directors thought that way. For instance, Andrei Tarkovsky thought that editing was simply a tool because the meaning of an image is in the image (the shot, the time and the intention) and not in the context of an image related to another one. You can find his entire way of thinking in the book Le temps scellé (sorry I couldn't find the english title.

Fascinating stuff, Oliver. I'm getting a free beginner's course in cinematography! Cheers.

it's a pleasure

what should the next topic be

I've noticed that there is much more use of high aerial shots in the past year or two. Is it because of the advent of drones, making it much easier to capture all kinds of aerial shots that probably couldn't be done even with a helicopter?

Any comments on that subject?

One technique I loved in older movies is the crash zoom, where it's a faster zoom over a large area, to establish certain things but you never see that anymore either. Probably because filmmakers don't want to use telephoto lenses as much as they use to, again.

I really don't know but it remind me of a conversation I had with ironpony about the use of telefoto lenses in the 80's compare to now. We stated a lot of hypothesis and one of them was the passage of time and the change of fashion. I do believe that now with drones it is easier for low budget movies to do aerial shot but in high budget movies, directors always used aerial shot by using cranes and choppers. So I think what might explain the explosion of aerial shot is the tendencies and the fashion. Perhaps in 10 years they're will be less used of aerial shots but as I said, I don't have the answer sorry.

Oh, well I do filmmaking projects to, and the problem I have with drones is the look. Telephoto lenses have really nice compression, but with drones, everything is so spread out, because the lenses are wider, and I don't like that. Maybe it's just personal preference, but the compression looks much more cinematic to me.

indeed

Low angle shots vs High angle shots

Low angle and high angle shots are both very often used. In fact, depending on the moments, we can even call them cliches. Let's start with Low angle shots.

Low angle shots

History of low angle shots
The first famous used of low angle shot is in <<M>> by German film maker Fritz Lang but has been widely popularized by Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. By digging <<traps>> in the ground, they were able to make even lower angles. Also, before Citizen Kane, it was very hard to do low angle shots in interior sets because the angle of the camera showed the spotlights and railing that were attached to the roof. For Citizen Kane, the roof used in the set was made of fabrics to let the light true without seeing the spotlights.


Why using a low angle shot
Many directors have used the Low Angle Shots (let's call them LAS it will be shorter) for many reasons. The first one and perhaps the least interesting is to look <<cool>>. In fact, they're is a sub category of LAS called Trunk Shot. They are shots filmed from the inside of a car's trunk. Sometimes they do bring a meaning but often they are present just to look nice.


However, most LAS have a purpose in term of staging. In fact, many low angle shots's purpose is to show how strong, powerful and imposing a character is.



I early said they can be cliches and the reason is simple. In many horror movies, to show that a character is mean they will shot the actor with a small focal length, back-lit and with a low angle shot.

Low angle shots vs High angle shot

History
The high angle shot has emerged in the 1920's in France with movies like L'auberge or even Maurice L’Herbier’s L’inhumaine. Ever since, many director have used this technique for many reasons. In this topic I'll treat 3 of them.

1
The first way is the most known. In fact many use the HAS as the opposite of the LAS. Many high angle shot make the character look vulnerable and small. The most famous ones are in Shawshank redemption or in Psycho.



2
The second reason often used as well, is to set the location of the movie. In fact, the HAS allowed us to have a view from the sky.


3
The third way to use HAS is to give a feeling of being watched to the characters. It is very well used in Taxi Driver where Travis is in a diner and is being watched by pimps or in 1974's The conversation where during the final credits we can still feel the hero's privacy being invaded.

Check out the rotating camera in Ordet.

When it comes to Ozu, choosing to shoot on the 180 line, how come his technique hasn't caught on as much? Is it because other filmmakers like using multiple cameras, which makes it tough?

I really don't know I haven't watched enough ozu movies yet

VERY nice effect...

is there any topic you guys would be interested in.

What do you mean by "topic?" As apposed to cinematography in general?

By the way, Olivier, you really should watch some Ozu. He's one of the most studied filmmakers as far as I know, especially for his cinematography.

I know it's in my list. I only watched one ozu so far: good morning and I loved it so yeah the next one is tokyo story of course.

And by topic I mean anything from edit mentallity (russian way vs western way) or filming technique or scenario technique, etc...