The cinematic look, something every filmmaker dreams of, a thing that has been hyped about, a thing that many tools advertise for – to offer one-click solutions to achieve.
But what is the cinematic look ?
I think beyond the buzz word not many people actually have given it much thought in recent years.
Historically films have been shot for a longer period of time in black and white than color, yet a lot is advertised as being color science related. Slap a LUT conversion onto moving images and its instant cinema ?
In this posting I would like to dive a bit deeper into the subject and dissect it more systematic, than which product to buy.
History:
First off – learn your film history !
This does not mean you need enroll in film school or write dissertation of film history, but study some relevant films and the context they where made in.
Looking backwards at previous made films in history, is not the only thing you ou need to do, understand the time, zeitgeist and context of where the film was.
Richard Pena – former program director of the Film at Lincoln Center and New York Film Festival put it into perspective during his masterclass I attended with in 2017.
Take Stanley Kubrick’s ‘a space odyssey 2001” for example, made at the hight of the cold war, just shy of the first moon landing, he portrait space travel in great details – unthinkable and futuristic from 1968 point of view. In retrospect a carefully crafted film with great care to cinematography. Go few steps backwards in Kubriks history and look at “Dr. Strangelove”, surreal at best and comedic in todays context – highly provocative and out this world at the time the film was conceived.
A a lot of the look and cinematic appearance stem from the framing of each shot, camera or even set movement (zero gravity interior shots). Color schemes are based on the clean look of a space station, practical lighting in various sets etc..
At its time it was ground breaking and deviating form the norm, provocative and hard to sell to a studio for financing.
Much earlier in common film history, each studio was know for their look.
Glossy glamorous images where the signature look of Paramount studios, gritty stark looks of Warner Brothers. At no point was there a clear cinematic look.
Key takeaway – rules are meant to be broken in film – if adequately justified. If it works for your picture, you will define a cinematic look on your own.
Aspect Ratio:
One of the primary elements that invokes cinematic perception is the the size and shape of the silver screen. Cinema screens are not 4:3, but rather much wider 2.35:1, with many different historical flavors in-between.
35mm film was based on a 35 x 24mm frame for the easiest times in motion picture history. With the invention of sound tracks embedded into the film strip, the aspect ratio had to change, 1.375:1 was adopted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1932 – the Academy ratio.
In 1953 20th Century Fox invented the anamorphic process of capturing images onto standard 35mm film with a much wider aspect ration of 2.35:1, allowing for conventional projection processes to gain a much wider viewing experience.
Film history is full of such changes and studios competed with techniques and technology to stay apart from one another.
Yet today we think one format to make our pictures cinematic.
With aspect ratio in mind, framing your shots from the get-go is a good start. Most lower tier cameras do not allow for different ratios – but they don’t need to.
As long as the shots are framed correctly, cropping and re-sizing can be achieved in post.
It is as simple as gaffer taping the preview screen as frame guide.
Composition:
With a wide screen in mind, composition of the frame is vital. A close-up shot of somebody face does not fill the frame, careful choice of lens and resulting depth of field, is a vital part of cinematic story telling.
With depth of field comes lighting.
Lighting:
Most smaller productions do not pay adequate attention to lighting, while feature productions have large teams of gaffers surrounding the DOP to achieve a desired look and narrative.
Lighting a scenes is work, actually most of the work related to image goes into lighting if done properly
Lighting is not about evenly lighting a frame, or making sure the talent is lit in a pretty way.
Lights have different qualities, they travel from source to destination and interacting with its surroundings and finally the lens. Some lighting effects are straight forward.
Light emits from a source, travels trough a projection lens, diffuses, bounces off surfaces and scatters in the scene. Interacts with filters, flags, diffuses in the air and hits the different surfaces.
A very important property of light is its volumetric interaction with the air. Cinematic shots show often visible light rays, blooming of light around windows or sources, that seemingly fill the volume of space – hence its name.
Volumetric light is mostly a result of dust or haze in the air, like found in a smokey bar or early morning air.
Productions use a smoke machine or hazer to generate subtle amount of haze in the air, that will pick-up light traveling trough it. This effect can practically not be recreated with post effects, hence they are an important element in the desired cinematic look.
Diffusions filters on the lens, before or even behind the lens further soften the look of the captured image.
Lights further interact with the lens, most prominently in lens flares or anamorphic artifacts. While historically disliked and a thing to avoid, recent decades have used it ad-nauseum and lens flares have become a synonym of the cinematic look.
Lens flares alone are not the full story, light illuminates the inner glass of a lens, that can tint the image, lead to chromatic aberrations – colorful fringes around objects, or halation around light sources.
Working with lights is where the true magic of cinematography lays. Carefully balancing practical lights found on set, with fill and key lighting of talents.
Motion:
In feature films the camera is rarely still, the industry has gone through great lengths over the decades to free up camera movement.
Once fridge sized boxes within sound proof enclosures that could not be moved practically, they have evolved to pocket size devices that can fly on drones, move by cranes, move with actors in action scenes and much more.
Just take the most recent award winner 1917 – where the camera never stands still and takes never end.
Choosing the right motion of the camera conveys a lot more than just an image. It is part of the cinematic experience, when a camera cranes up into the air to an ultra wide shot, in a one sweeping motion. Pushing slowly into a talents face to convey emotional connection and depth goes a long way.
Look at a shot from Pearl Harbor (2001), where Ben Affleck stands with the ship yard in the background, the camera pulls away reveling air crafts attacking from the sky. A seemingly boring shot on its own, but add the dynamic of aircrafts, a film score to underline it and you have a epic cinematic moment.
Frame Rate:
Historically film was presented at the minimum frame rate required to retain smooth motion, to conserve resources and cost.
Film history has some very good examples of that the traditional 24fps are not the only way of telling a story. Gladiator (2000) made use of under cranking the camera for fights scenes, essentially removing frames, while other movies opted for higher frame rates for greater detail.
Nevertheless the gold standard is 24fps in acquisition and presentation, leading to a certain degree of motion blur on moving objects. Giving images the fluidity that we attribute with cinematic experience.
Due to the nature of film and how optical cameras work, there is very little rolling shutter jello effect in traditional film, compared to digital cameras.
Shooting with cameras that have a sensor capable of global shutter – meaning capturing all pixels at once, rather than in a scan line, will bring footage closer to cinematic looking images.
Frame rate and resulting motion blurs can not be an afterthought, since the optical effects resulting from it can hardly be achieved in post production by simple addition of filters and effects.
Film Grain:
Film grain, a personal favorite of mine, but in the same time overrated as mandatory for a filmic look. There have been enough feature films shot in the past two decades that had crips imagery, absent of noticeable grain.
Traditional celluloid film grain did not just add noise or fuzziness to an image, each grain is formed from chemical crystals in the film stock that scatter light in a slight different density and way, no grain is the same.
While digital film noise most alters luminosity, analogy stock grain changed much more in the image, by dispersing colors and intensity in a three dimensional plane of the film strip.
Dynamic Range:
Dynamic range, or the ability in which a sensor can capture from lowest to highest brightness levels within one frame, is one of the most differentiating attributes between film and digital.
But then – the majority of box office, cinematic films released of late are shot digitally. Oscars have been won by films shot on mobile phones with little dynamic range to write home about.
Dynamic range can be ‘easily’ controlled outside of the camera.
A good cinematographer knows how to add lights and more so subtract it where its not needed. Until a balanced frame is achieved that falls within the dynamic range capabilities of the camera sensor in use. Tinting or draping windows where needed are some practical things a good DOP does to work within the margins of the used medium.
Different acquisition profiles, such as LOG can help in giving more range in shadows, pull down highlights before they clip and compress the mid range so it remains pleasing.
Neutral Density filters, polarizers modify the light before it is captured by the sensor.
Good lighting, the right camera profile, the right filters for the scene, all lead to good images captured. But it requires careful preparation before and image gets closed to an post production facility where it can be bombarded by effects and filters.
Color:
Color is where most people see the cinematic look. It is also one of the easiest market segments to sell products and services, particularly when it comes to effect and LUT packages.
No LUT or processing can bring back to the image what was not captured, it can hardly add most of the above criteria, in the best case it can mimic some of it.
Color is vital, in the old days film stock was chosen for many reasons other than light sensitivity, a thing that most people today either don’t know or have forgotten.
Higher sensitivity film is attributed with greater film grain, lower sensitivity daylight film with finer barely noticeable grain. One thing that remained with the static 24fps shutter speed was exposure time, or how much light struck the film per given frame. Hence the only way to modify the captured image was by controlling light, or choosing a different film stock.
Also there are film stocks with different color profiles, not only black and white or color.
A thing digital cameras can only achieve by the use of LUT workflows today.
Historically there was film stock and processes of so much variety, it is not possible to list them all here. It started with black and white, went through monochromatic films that received color by hand dyeing prints, to various different competing chemical processes. Each one led to their own particular look and feel.
Analog to todays sensors, film stock was chosen by color temperature of the scene, or lights where filtered to adapt to the film stock used – and everything in between.
In history every major studio had their own look, based on film, lights, taste and many more factors.
Color grading today is a very powerful tool, that compensates for many of the steps and techniques used in the past. From technical adjustments to match exposure or color temperature, to adapting changing weather or time-of-day situations.
Further color grading has become a tool of style, applying creative looks and color schemes in post production. Yet several cinematically appreciated movies could not rely alone on color grading tools to achieve the desired look we appreciate on screen.
Makeup enhancements, choices of wardrobe colors, set design colors, are a few of the things that are captured in-camera, to make the end result what its is. A good example is ‘Mad Max Furry Road’, where the stark orange look had to be enhanced physically and not one digitally.
Sound:
A very strong element in the perception of a picture in theater, is sound. Sound is often said to be equally important to picture. in that sense a fifty fifty devision.
Sound design and film scoring both enhance or distract from the screen. Sound carries the emotional component of the story to be told.
Careful crafting of the both image and sound lead to a strongly cinematic experience.
Theory:
I came up with my own theory of what is cinematic over the years, or how to break down a given scene an give the individual components weight.
If one takes the total experience on screen as a 100% score, then it can be devised into different factors. Image, Story, Sound are the basic building blocks that are important.
How this three blocks are weighted is the secret alchemy of cinematic creation.
A documentary style film, survives with flying colors if story dominates, with decent images and even crappy sound.
A typical blockbuster has little story, great images and sometimes even greater sound design and scoring, it keeps us on the edge of the seat.
Insignificant movies mix it all the wrong way, or try to patch one thing up while the other was never developed.
Conclusions:
A square frame, with medium grey and some grain can be as cinematic, as a great sweeping shot over Pearl Harbor. It all depends on intent and story that accompanies the frame.
Having said that, the conclusions should not be, to have sloppy images, distracting colors just because the story is not great.
The great skill of creating cinematic experiences requires the care of all the above elements, most likely even beyond, considering what happens outside of the technical realm in film.
It does neither required analog celluloid film cameras, nor expensive production cameras. Anything can be achieved by tweaking parameters in creative ways, most of the time by simply learning the tools and not by spending money on cinematic look packages.
The cinematic look is one wrinkle in the fingerprint of a great film. The totality of decisions taken towards the totality of the experience is what is cinema.
Provoke, deviated, invent and tell great stories.
SaKiE 