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And God Made…. The Cinematographer

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In the spirit of some of my favorite blogs, I would like to inject a bit of humor into this next post. But I promise, there are relevant points that I’ll address from which we can all learn. And that main lesson will be… don’t take yourself too seriously!

The following video comes from the EFTI School of Cinematography in Spain. It attempts to explain what a cinematographer does. It has been (rightly) parodied and I will include the parody following the original. Here’s the original:

And here’s the parody:

So what happened in that first video to make it so incredibly ripe for ridicule? First I’d like to examine some of the visual techniques employed.

There’s nice matched action at :10 seconds showing the cinematographer rising off his bed and then a camera being picked up and rising in the same direction. At :34 there’s a wide shot of the cinematographer in an empty studio, staggering around in a circle as he beholds the empty canvas before and around him. It’s followed by a matched action cut to a close up of his face as he ponders the endless possibilities before him.

There’s also a bookend effect of sorts as the wide shot of the cinematographer looking off into the distance from a rooftop at :11 is mirrored at 1:55, only this time he’s looking directly into the camera, as if to say “now you know me.”

There’s lots of jump cuts of hurried movement on set, intermixed with slo-motion cuts of the cinematographer gesturing, riding a bike, and even simply smiling to himself.

But what makes this over the top, a step beyond “professional” and “impressive”, and instead a disgraceful foray into pretentiousness?

Well it’s probably a combination of the voiceover and music.

The voiceover, in no uncertain terms, is comparing the job of the cinematographer to that of God. The set is as blank without his help as the world “before God conceived it.”  He even discredits the benefits of modern technology, rendering them useless without his artistic vision. (Although if he really had lights “more powerful than the sun” at his disposal, you’d think he’d ditch the movie business and go into solar energy right?)

In addition to the assuming narration, the choice of overly dramatic music combines to produce a very heavy-handed effect upon the overall piece. Restraint and subtle-ty are not on display here.

That being said, the cinematography is beautiful. Ultra-wide shots of purple-pink sunsets, lens flares that are exaggerated by unmotivated camera moves, and slo-motion imagery all combine to give the look of the piece a very professional air.

As we strive to create technically flawless pieces, let us use this example as inspiration to not get too carried away with our own talents. If we use only beautiful shots, for example, and in doing so undermine the major themes of our pieces, that would be a prideful decision instead of a story-motivated decision. The cinematographer in this video is correct that his expertise lends life and vision to a film. But let none of us mistake our technical acumen as a replacement for real story.

If we are doing our jobs correctly, then the skills we perfect as cinematographers will be employed to advance the points in our stories, and not the personal prowess of our DPs.

 

 

 

94 Comments

on “And God Made…. The Cinematographer”
94 Comments on “And God Made…. The Cinematographer”

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