History of Cinematography and D.O.

P’s

INTRO

With nearly 80 percent of the population watching TV on a given day it’s clear that we all
enjoy films. From Tik Tok skits to feature length productions they are all a form of
Cinematography.

Cinematography is the art of photography and camerawork in filmmaking. Cinematography

plays a crucial role in the development, feel and look of movies and television, through the
use of lighting and camera techniques.

The magic motion pictures that entices the audience in and captivate us, is all because of the
Cinematography. But the movies we see today are very different from the movies that were
created at the start of filmmaking and we will continue to progress the way we can tell stories
in the future because of technological advancements.

MAIN SCRIPT

In the 1880s, multiple inventors began working on various sorts of moving picture cameras
or motion picture cameras. The French inventor, Louis Le Prince created the first ever
moving picture that shows actual consecutive action and this was recorded in 1888. The film
was titled Roundhay Garden Scene.

The footage features Louis's son Adolphe Le Prince and other family members in the garden
of Oakwood Grange, leisurely walking around the premises. Sarah Whitley, Louis’s mother-
in-law, is seen walking or dancing backwards, with her husband who’s coat tails are seen
flying as he turns.

He also experimented with projection techniques and was due to hold his first public
screening in New York in 1890. But he never got there. While visiting his brother Albert in
France with two friends, Le Prince was said to have boarded a train from Dijon to Paris in
September 1890. He was never seen again.

The film he created marked the start of filmmaking, however people didn’t start making films
with stories behind them for some time. Louis would just film mundane activities, as the
audience was still mesmerized as they had never been able to watch anything from the past.

Four years later in 1894, Antoine Lumiere, the father of Auguste and Louis, saw a
demonstration of Edison’s Kinetoscope. The elder Lumiere was impressed, but reportedly
told his sons, who ran a successful photographic plate factory in Lyon, France, that they
could come up with something better. Louis Lumiere’s Cinematographe, which was patented
in 1895, was a combination movie camera and projector that could display moving images on
a screen for an audience. The Cinematographe was also smaller, lighter and used less film
than Edison’s technology. The first commercial movie screening took place at the Grand Cafe
in Paris, on the 28th December 1895. The film was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere. The
Lumiere brothers unveiled their invention to the public with a brief film showing workers
leaving the Lumiere factory. This new advancement in cameras made it more accessible for
cinematographers to start focusing more specifically on the lighting and camera angles, as the
now they could capture the action more clearly.  

Orson wells was another extremely influential director, actor, producer and screenwriter who
created some of the most innovative movies of all time. One of his most famous films is
called Citizen Kane.

Citizen Kane was a film made in 1941 about a reporter trying to uncover a mystery. The story
was loosely based on William Randolph Hurst, an American newspaper magnate known as
one of the richest Americans of the time. However, the real story is of a character who lives
the American dream, but deep down is very troubled. This immediately shows the audience
that wealth doesn’t equate to happiness. This idea was very controversial at the time, as it
contradicted one of the fundamental beliefs of the nation.

The politics behind the film wasn’t the only bold change that effected how people viewed this
movie. Set design was another important part of the film. Citizen Kane lives in a house that is
the size of a castle. This is implying to the audience his success, but it also shows that he
finds protection in his house and may be fearful of the outside world.

The set design was also extremely important in the film. As the set was meant to echo the
lonely and empty undertone that is in the film. Kane should be full of joy because he has
lived the American dream. This depressing undertone is shown right until the end of the film,
as Kane dies with the word rosebud on his lips. Rosebud was the name he gave to his sledge
as a child. As that is known to have been the lsat time he experienced happiness.

The cinematographer, Gregg Toland, had already been experimenting with lenses and
lighting schemes to achieve and expanded depth of field. Orson encouraged him to pursue
this approach, which meant that the idea of deep focus photography, with richly detailed
backgrounds and foregrounds alike, was born.

Deep focus allows subjects close and far away from the camera to remain in focus. This early
scene in Citizen Kane is a great example of the deep focus found in the film.

Citizen Kane became such a popular movie because of the range in camera angles, it was one
of the first movies that was shot with low angles so that you could see the ceiling. In other
movies the lights would all be mounted to the ceiling so that they would never be seen.
Citizen Kane then instantly felt more realistic as the audience was able to see the entire room
that the scene was shot in giving the movie a more natural feel.

Then came the Technicolor process, perfected in 1932, it originally used a beam-splitting
optical cube, in combination with the camera lens, to expose three black-and-white films. The
light beam was split into three parts as it entered the camera, one beam for the red areas of
the film, one for the green, and one the blue. Each image was captured simultaneously on a
separate band of black-and-white film for each colour. Then the three strips were developed
separately and when printed they were then laminated together; they produced a reasonably
good natural colour. In a later version of the process, only one tri-pack colour negative film
was needed, and this reduced the time it took post-production as they only had to develop one
set of film instead of three. 

This had a massive impact on the films to come, as colour added so much more to a movie
the any other development. Filmmakers were now able to focus on the colours of props,
costumes and lighting themes, as you could now portray feelings and emotions through the
lens without a character telling the audience themselves.

On April 10, 1953, the horror film The House of Wax, starring Vincent Price, was featured at
New York’s Paramount Theatre. It was released by Warner Brothers and was the first movie
from a major motion-picture studio to be shot using the three-dimensional, or stereoscopic
film process. It was also one of the first horror films to be shot in colour. This was
a revolutionary film as there had been earlier attempts made, but nothing as effective as this
film. 

The 3-D filming process involved using two cameras, or a single twin-lensed camera, to
represent both the right and the left eye of the viewer. Images from the two cameras were
then projected simultaneously onto the screen. The audience had to view The House of
Wax through special stereoscopic glasses to see its full 3-D effect. The lenses were specially
tinted so that the viewer would see the right and left-eye images only with the eyes for which
they were intended. The 3-D processes were very effective during the film’s climactic chase
scene, in which the cloaked killer pursues Kirk’s character through a series of gas-lit streets
and alleyways, with the viewer following along behind them. 

Audiences watching the film, felt like they were in the action for the first time, rather than
just watching someone else live through the adventure of the film. As the 3D effect brought
the experience into the present. A large number of movies are now shown primarily in 3D as
the filmmakers want people to be immersed by the action to fully enjoy the movie.

The dolly zoom was made famous in 1958, in the Alfred Hitchcock film called Vertigo. The
dolly zoom was a game changer in the film industry, as the effect created a supernatural
uneasy feeling. The dolly zoom is created by pan in or out with the camera and countering
that with a zoom in or out with the lens, or in the edit. This will give a warp effect to the shot
and create a discomforting sense to the audience. Hitchcock created this effect in his film to
emphasise the height of the staircase. The zoom made the audience understand the fear that
the character felt as they were stood right next to the drop. The experimentation with the lens
in this film inspired many other films to try the same technique. The vertigo effect has also
been seen in Jaws, Poltergeist, Quiz Show, Marnie and Apollo 13.

After scouting locations for “Rocky,” the director John G. Avildsen still had no idea how to
pull off a crucial scene. Then his assistant cameraman invited him to view a demonstration
reel for a new piece of equipment. It included a shot of the inventor’s girlfriend running up
the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The iconic shot of Rocky running up the
museum steps was made possible only by the Steadicam, a camera stabilizing system first
used in a feature film four decades ago — Hal Ashby’s “Bound for Glory” in 1976. The
Steadicam revolutionised how D.O.P’s could shoot certain shots as they could now get fast
dynamic action shots smooth and seamless.

It changed the way Directors looked at scenes as they could now follow the characters and
create a more realistic point of view style of shot, rather than stationary shots of the
characters walking across a set. This broader amount of creativity was the only reason why
cinematographers are now pushing the limits on how they can film whilst having a smooth
looking shot. Steadicams are now strapped to cars, cranes and planes to show off a scene in
its most realistic form. Audiences also felt as if they could follow along side their favourite
characters as the film developed, as now the camera could follow where the character goes.

In the Matrix they use a technique called bullet time, this completely changed the game, as it
gave a slow-motion effect with the camera being able to pan around the subject at a normal
speed. This was used in the Matrix to show Neo dodging individual bullets. For the filming of
The Matrix they used 120 still film cameras and scanned each image into the computer
separately. The development of bullet time improved further in the modern Matrix films, as
in the later ones they were able to use a computer program to join all the images together, and
in some cases some of the scenes required near 12,000 frames per second!

This technique allowed the cinematographers more freedom and a more effective way to
move the camera around the scene as quickly as they wished whilst the slow-motion was
taking place. This changed the way films were created going forward using slow motion, as
there were now no limits on how dynamic the camera could be. Bullet time also allowed the
audience to understand these slow-motion shots more effectively as the camera could pan
around the subject or focus point to highlight exactly what was going on.

Parasite is one of the more recent developments in film. Parasite one a BAFTA for Best
Original Screenplay and Foreign Language Film, and has been recognised for its story telling,
even though the film is in subtitles. This shows that audiences are now looking for more
unique and less westernised films. Parasite is based off many of the older original Japanese
films, which had completely new ways of storytelling that were simpler but a very effect way
of approaching a story. The cinematographers focused on the lighting, camera angles and set
design to help the audience to understand the full story.

For example, in the basement house that the poorer family lived in, the cinematographers
used the only small window that was available to shine light through. This gave the room a
dingy and unpleasant feel to it. However, this lighting also helps us understand the motivation
for the actions that the poor people did. Set design in the poorer family’s house was also
extremely important. In their bathroom, the audience sees the toilet raised up on a higher
platform. This well thought through set shows the audience that because the house is in a
basement the toilet has to be above the drainage system for it to flush. When it floods and the
sewage pours out of their toilet the audience gets reminded of their awful living conditions
are.

Another subtle effect the cinematographers used in Parasite, is the distance between the
actors and the cameras. There is an extremely small amount of distance between the poor
family whilst they are in their house. This creates a cramped and claustrophobic feel and
immediately shows to the audience that it is an unpleasant place to live. When they move into
the rich family’s house the camera angles suddenly change to wide spacious shots as now the
audience sees the characters walk across frame.

In comparison, the film 1917, directed by Sam Mendes was extremely focused on the
techniques used in the film. The film was created to look like it was taken in one continuous
shot. However, it can be said that this limits the ability for storytelling as we can't see every
character’s responses and reaction to certain incidence in the film. This means that it is harder
for the audience to grasp the story, as the limits of the one shot stops the viewer from seeing
establishing shots showing us where the scene is located.

CONCLUSION

All these developments bring us to today, as now cinematographers are set with the task of
creating an aesthetically pleasing image that engages the audience and connects us with the
characters in the film world. However, because of the revolutionary techniques in each of
these films we can still enjoy movies like Citizen Kane even though it’s not in 8K quality, all
because of the new concepts that the cinematographers created. I am sure that the 80 percent
of people that watch media each day will continue to increase because of these fantastic new
productions.