International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Cinematography is the technique of photographing motion pictures. The art of cinematography involves working with three distinct sets of tools: the camera, the film, and the lighting. We can make useful distinctions among cinematography, mise en scène , and editing. Whereas mise en scène involves the arrangement of details in front of the camera, cinematography involves the act of capturing this arrangement on film (→  Film Production ). The result of this process is a set of shots that can be cut together in the process of editing. Although these distinctions are not always clear-cut, cinematography is one of the major components of a film's visual style, playing a powerful role in shaping the spectator's experience of cinematic time and space. In the area of camerawork, the cinematographer can shape the appearance of an image in several ways. For instance, a lens with a short focal length captures a wide angle of view, while a lens with a long focal length (also known as a telephoto lens) captures a narrower angle of view. The resulting images have distinctive characteristics. It is often said that a telephoto lens “flattens” the image, while a wide-angle lens will produce more apparent depth. In Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert (1964), cinematographer Carlo Di Palma alternates between wide-angle and telephoto lenses to produce a disorienting sense of space, shifting back ... log in or subscribe to read full text