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What is "Cinematography," Now That an 80% CG Movie Has Won Its Highest Honor


K Borowski

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Nice try. You can jerk the lure all you want, but I am not going to bite on it.

 

 

I use these things as an efficient means of communication and data transfer. People like you want to LIVE in one. There are expensive video games for that, or are they "cinematography, just in a digital domain," I wonder?

 

 

I want to be out there shooting film contributing important work to our society's cultural and artistic heritage. When you and your friends write a program that can replicate the look and feel o fthe real world, THAT's when I'll take my own life, not before then.

Edited by Karl Borowski
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I want to be out there shooting film contributing important work to our society's cultural and artistic heritage. When you and your friends write a program that can replicate the look and feel o fthe real world, THAT's when I'll take my own life, not before then.

Wow. Threatening to commit suicide if technology and tools offer new areas of work. That's the most pathetic, mentally unstable comment I've heard in a long time. I think that's a better conclusion than I could have ever conceived.

 

You heard it people. Cinematography isn't Cinematography in the virtual world and if it ever gets refined, Karl here is going to commit suicide because he'll have... nothing left to live for?

 

And a nice insult on top of that to an entire industry of people with the exact same goals as you but different methods! Way to encapsulate the essence of douche bag so succinctly. I couldn't have asked for you to express it any better. Well if you'll excuse me I'll go back to working on unimportant video games while you save the world with natural unadulterated sunsets. Because as we all know, you can't save the world on a sound-stage (Please ignore just about every film of any significance ever made, it doesn't fit into Karl's narrow little world of cinema verite and Dogma-95 films being the only movies of importance.)

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This is just an argument about semantics.

'Cinematography' used to mean filming things in the real world, but now general usage of the word has loosened to include animation and CGI.

 

Words change their meanings over time. Saying that what was done in Avatar isn't cinematography is like saying the word 'gay' doesn't mean homosexual.

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Threatening to commit suicide if technology and tools offer new areas of work. That's the most pathetic, mentally unstable comment I've heard in a long time. I think that's a better conclusion than I could have ever conceived.

 

You heard it people. Cinematography isn't Cinematography in the virtual world and if it ever gets refined, Karl here is going to commit suicide because he'll have... nothing left to live for?

 

 

I didn't mean it literally, a**hole. I am going to get the F out of this industry though when you need to know how to write code to "improve the craft." Real improvements are still in lens design, camera control systems, REAL WORLD stuff. Audiences are getting sick of CG. There's no more wow factor of Star Wars to exploit Gavin.

 

 

You keep itching for a fight. I'm not going to comply, but don't misread what I'm saying. Many of us would rather tell cinematography to fu** off than live in an industry as you imagine it. . .

 

 

 

 

 

Ansel Adams would have loved digital manipulation, but I bet he still would've been shooting film and scanning it. He wouldn't be creating the sh** in his mind or in software and using that as equal to GOING OUT THERE AND FINDING BEAUTY IN THE REAL WORLD. That is the point I have to make in my field.

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Audiences are getting sick of CG. There's no more wow factor of Star Wars to exploit Gavin.

 

I think audiences are sick of CG in movies with derivative scripts that don't challenge the audiences or the filmmakers - it's a tool like any other that can be misused in the hands of the wrong director. I'm pretty sick of the shaky-cam look, but I don't think that's the fault of the cinematographer in a lot of instances - it can very well be that they're just executing the director's vision.

 

And, for reference, of the top-50 grossing films of all time, every single one (with the exception of 'The Passion of the Christ') is a visual-effects heavy film. Audiences love spectacle; and when you combine that with a nice story, you've got yourself a hit.

 

I'm not sure where this idea developed that cinematography is just about the practical - it's what ends up on the cinema screen. It sounds like you're confusing this with photography. Painted backdrops in studios are not 'real', but they have been an important tool in crafting cinematic images. Matte paintings have been cinematographic tools since the birth of the medium. Digital effects today are no different - they're a powerful set of tools in the hands of talented artists that help shape the images that end up on a cinema screen.

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...I'm not sure where this idea developed that cinematography is just about the practical - it's what ends up on the cinema screen. It sounds like you're confusing this with photography...

 

 

That makes a lot of sense, think of it as CINEMAtography.

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I'm pretty sick of the shaky-cam look, but I don't think that's the fault of the cinematographer in a lot of instances - it can very well be that they're just executing the director's vision.

Shaky cam? A courageous editor cuts it all off, and fertig.

 

Enters the director, outraged: You can't do that!

 

Editor: As everybody sees I can do that very well.

 

Cinematographer: Are you kidding or what?

 

Editor: Alright, you two, let's trade places. You do my work this afternoon, I'll be watching tomorrow right here in this screening.

 

Silence for three long seconds

 

Producer: He's right, I don't like all the shaking either. You're all a bunch of fools. And I'm not gonna spend one more cent for any footage like that. It's gotta be outstanding. This looks like everything else from Calcutta to Calgary.

 

To be continued

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CG has definitely opened up a whole new world of cinematographic options, but what it's taken away for me is the magic of moviemaking.

 

It used to be I'd see something incredible, an effect or an impossible camera move or a giant set with 10 000 extras and it would leave me thinking - how did they do that? Like a beautiful sleight of hand trick.

 

Now the answer is almost always the same - CG.

 

It's not to say the the people doing the CG are less than massively talented and hard working individuals. And their work is frequently beautiful.

 

Like that third and seventh short people are throwing around - it's impressive, sure, and pretty.

 

I just miss the magic sometimes.

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Cinematography is shot with a camera. Film or, now, video. With lights, mostly with sets, dollies, grips...

Cinematography is not difficult to define. It has been around since before 1900.

It is not made inside a graphics computer. That is called 'Digital Special Effects."

 

Digital Special Effects have been around for a while now. There are lots of people getting paid well to sit and do this.

 

The issue is why so many want to call Digital Special Effects "Cinematography".

 

Because it potentially frees them from the "small-ego" bondage of being "graphics artists/computer geeks" and allows them to be called......Cinematographers. I wish I were kidding.

 

Whenever a set defitiniton or job function that has been proven through decades is under heavy attack, there is usually a good reason that very often goes beyond both facts and debating points and into whose...equipment.....is bigger. Or whose job is seen as more "glamorous." Or, sadly, as a chance to ride the coat-tails.

 

Digital Special Effects are now, for the first time in film history, being compared to Cinematography.

And that in itself is silly enough, even without the desperate hairsplitting to get the "gray area" wide enough that they be seen as the 'same thing.'

Edited by Claus Harding
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Cinematography is shot with a camera. Film or, now, video. With lights, mostly with sets, dollies, grips...

 

Cinematography is not difficult to define. It has been around since before 1900.

It is not made inside a graphics computer. That is called 'Digital Special Effects."

 

 

I agree entirely with Claus' statement. Maybe I should put it up on Wikipedia, so someone can cite it back to me :rolleyes:

 

 

I'd consider Avatar to be more in the realm of digital animation than CGI, as they were to my knowledge working in a 3D environment ala "Toy Story." CGI I think of more as 2D inserts into a live-action movie.

 

Ironically, some of the best other-worldy live-action images are now being praised by the mob as "Wow, that looks like CGI, that couldn't be real. [!]" I recall someone saying that about the new "Oceans" nature documentary. So I think we have come full circle where the animation is almost as real to the audience as the live-action material we see. This has been coming a long time though, with "Toy Story" in 1995 and films like "Final Fantasy."

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That makes a lot of sense, think of it as CINEMAtography.

 

Well, the fact that you've found a homophone is irrelevant, because the word literally means "painting with motion."

 

 

That doesn't really "define" anything though. Modern dance could fit that definition. Is it cinematography?

 

 

Jackson Pollock (sp?)'s painting style would probably qualify too, as would lots of different types of performance arts.

 

 

 

Cinematography is created with a camera, it's capturing light from the physical continuum we inhabit and sculpting and shaping that light, in some cases, to suit the structure of a visual story that is being told.

 

That someone has invented an interface that mimics the real-world lens and light choices in cinematography is irrelevant to me. Virtual reality is still. . . virtual.

 

This is like someone arguing that holodeck characters in one of the Star Trek episodes were real.

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I am going to get the F out of this industry though when you need to know how to write code to "improve the craft." Real improvements are still in lens design, camera control systems, REAL WORLD stuff.

 

You don't have to know how to write code. How many times do I have to say that. But writing code is no more technical (in fact it's far less so) than designing a lens coating, engineering a focus mechanic or designing a shutter.

 

If you think a virtual cinematographer is writing code then you grossly misunderstand modern digital cinematography.

 

As to it being "Visual Effects" I strongly disagree. Visual Effects describes something specific. It means creating an element of the shot. Not all CG lighters are cinematographers. Most VFX shots are just matching the existing look as closely as you can. A visual effects artist is analogous to a grip, set/prop builder or gaffer. They might be creating elements of the shot. They might be adjusting lights and trying to execute the cinematographer's vision but they are a very separate position and roll.

 

To say that you lose the REAL WORLD is ridiculous. So you've never built a set? That's as real as any digital set. You've never used a matte painting in a film? That's as real as a matte painting in an all digital shot. Whether your set is constructed of plywood or polygons it's still fake.

 

Whether your lights emit digital photons or real ones seems completely irrelevant to me. You have a light. You point a light. Light comes out. You flag it. You diffuse it. You gel it. You move it around. You scrim it. The process is the same. The skillset is the same. The outcome is the same. Cinematography is about the vision not the tools.

 

Digital Effects is not cinematography.

 

If I light a car in a studio or I light a car in a virtual studio you approach it exactly the same. The rigging is just easier and cheaper.

 

He wouldn't be creating the sh** in his mind or in software and using that as equal to GOING OUT THERE AND FINDING BEAUTY IN THE REAL WORLD. That is the point I have to make in my field.

Then again in your narrow definition of "cinematography" you don't even include anything manufactured because it doesn't have the "beauty in the real world". So a photographer who takes pictures of watches or cars isn't a photographer since they aren't finding BEAUTY IN THE REAL WORLD?

 

If Third and Seventh was shot with a real camera would you agree it's cinematography? But because the sets and the lights are virtual it's a "Visual Effect". I wouldn't categorize anything in that short as a "visual effect". That's a very different skill-set. I consider cinematography framing and lighting a moving image. What tool you use to frame and light is irrelevant IMO. Just as your subject matter is irrelevant to whether it's cinematography. If you machine a gear and hook it up to a motor and light it and compose a shot it's cinematography.

 

Which brings up the next question. If the real world is so great. If synthetic, man made fake lighting is so offensive do you only use available light? Why do we have setups like this:

http://www.hallifordfilmstudios.co.uk/imag...truction-01.jpg

 

Someone really went out there and found some Beauty in the Real World!

 

I'll concede virtual cinematography isn't cinematography when you concede that any scene shot on a set or that even uses a bounce card also isn't cinematography.

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Gavin,

 

The digital VFX cinematographer’s only limitation is their mind. The limitations of a live action cinematographer are endless. Assuming the standards of last years Oscars, the two cannot possibly compete in the same award category or the digital VFX cinematographer will smoke it every time.

 

So, if they leave digital VFX cinematographers in, then they should not include live action cinematographers. Maybe they could give the live actions guy a less prestigious award off camera. Then at least they’d have a shot at winning something.

 

I totally agree the guy working in the digital world and the guy working in live action are on a level playing field as far as their visual imagination (put Robert Richardson and Martin Scorsese in a room with a fantastic digital VFX artist and they would certainly give Avatar a run for it’s money), but when it comes to actual execution, they are not.

 

No doubt it’s a grey area, but I’m talking specifically about movies mostly created in post – like eighty percent or more as in the topic title. So no, I’m not counting Lord of the Rings, but when Toy Story 10 gets a cinematography nod for how beautiful the POV of the toys going over Niagara Falls in a barrel looked – I knock.

 

Ya hear what I’m scream’n? ;)

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Gavin,

 

The digital VFX cinematographer’s only limitation is their mind. The limitations of a live action cinematographer are endless. Assuming the standards of last years Oscars, the two cannot possibly compete in the same award category or the digital VFX cinematographer will smoke it every time.

 

I hear ya' but like I said earlier, then you also should exclude everyone who uses a techno-crane a bank of 100 20k spots to light 14 square miles of desert and a silk 4 miles long. Sure it's expensive but if you look at some of the Troy lighting diagrams! 8(

 

Does your budget exclude you from competition? You could make the same argument for any award. "As a physical go-motion animation studio how can we compete for best VFX with CG?" "As a composer who only writes for wind instruments how can I compete with someone with no limitations on what sounds they can create?"

 

I find it a huge double standard to say that cinematography is the one film making craft that can't be digitized.

 

Composers synthesize instruments, Editors edit almost exclusively digitally, Animators now animate digital models, painters now use Photoshop and Painter, Sculptors are starting to adopt Mudbox and Zbrush, Photographers use digital dark rooms, top name photographers are now shooting and lighting on green-screen and digitally creating backdrops. We still refer to them as Composers, Editors, Animators, Painters, Sculptors and Photographers. The current challenge for virtual cinematography isn't the rendering it's the capture.

 

It's horribly inefficient to create an entire world when the real one is sitting right in front of us. Once that challenge is overcome then you'll see the big shift. So you like what nature provides? Fine. Capture it. Bring it back to the studio and render it there. And those who don't shift with it might be put at a disadvantage but those films are already at a disadvantage. They often don't have the time and resources that a large production has. They don't have the amount of crew that a large production has. Take a film like Ben Hur. Anyone have a few thousand extras at their disposal? Or how about a large gladiatorial stadium? I might be able to afford to virtually shoot in such a setting but the cinematographer on Ben Hur probably has far fewer limitations even than I do today, even with a computer at my disposal just due to time. And Ben Hur had no shortage of matte paintings itself. Should any film which has a $80m set and prop budget be denied the title of cinematography just because the production can afford to create a fantastical environment to shoot in?

 

And it's not like normal films shot 90% practically aren't already employing virtual cinematography to get those same impossible shots. How many 'impossible' shots do you want to put into a film anyway? If you need some shots that can't be shot except in a computer, shoot those 10% virtually and shoot the other 90% practically. I haven't really seen any huge limitations on what traditionally shot films are capable of. I predict a traditional film will win the Academy Award next year.

Edited by Gavin Greenwalt
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Then you have a film like Coraline. How can Coraline compete for best Animated Film? By offering a great film! Sure there are things Pixar can do that they couldn't do on Coraline without CG but that doesn't make it a different category. Stop motion animation is animation. CG Animation is animation. Printed CG Animation as Stop Motion Animation is animation. Look at what Jim Henson studios did with the advent of CG. They took their skill-set and they applied it to the computer. They even employed the same puppet controls to drive CG puppets. Look at what Tippett studios did. They took their stop motion skill-set and applied it to CG. It didn't make them any less talented animators and it didn't create something that 'wasn't animation'. They just moved their environment from the stage to the virtual stage.

 

If cinematographers concede control of their work as soon as it's shot virtually then they're going to be giving up authorship of a large portion of their films to the CG artists. Someone has to compose the shots. Someone has to light the shots. If DPs just 'offer some comments through email' they might as well do the same to the live action portions of their films. If it's "Just VFX" as soon as it's in the computer then be prepared to have no say of the outcome. Do really want to declare Virtual Cinematography the domain of the VFX supervisor? Not to knock VFX supervisors but that's what you're doing. By not acknowledging it's also cinematography you're saying it's not your responsibility to direct it. You're conceding control of (in the case of Avatar) 80% of your film to someone else who might not share your vision. It might turn out great. But so might a film lit entirely by your electricians without any supervision.

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then you also should exclude everyone who uses a techno-crane a bank of 100 20k spots to light 14 square miles of desert and a silk 4 miles long.

 

Do you know what a drag it is to deal with a techno-crane, with a bank of a hundred 20k spots? Trust me when I tell you, that stuff sucks and no matter what the budget, we compromise. Compromise is the biggest problem live action DP’s have to deal with. CG guys don’t have that problem… right?

 

It’s funny, cause I was at a party last night with one of the lighting guys from “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” and he was really drilling me about “real” lighting cause I guess I was the only working cinematographer/gaffer in the room. He asked what it would take to light the room we were in with (the look of) sunlight. I explained we were on the second floor, so we would have to get the light in the air with a scissor lift or whatever, then because of the depth of the place, the smallest lamp would have to be a 12k par to an 18k par that’s lined up out the window (cause there were like eight big windows lined up in a row and this place was deep)

 

Literally he laughed in my face……….. and said, “I would just push a button….” Then laughed more.

 

It’s a different category… Right???

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Do you know what a drag it is to deal with a techno-crane, with a bank of a hundred 20k spots? Trust me when I tell you, that stuff sucks and no matter what the budget, we compromise. Compromise is the biggest problem live action DP’s have to deal with. CG guys don’t have that problem… right?

 

No we just have a hundred other ones. :D There is always compromise. In the practical world it's time and rental budget. In the CG world it's just time. I do mostly commercial work. When it's practical you have the widget. You give it a nice polish and stick it on a stand. Less than an hour and you're done. (Yes it took a factory a few days to manufacture the thing, but that's not my concern). With CG you have to model it. Then someone has to pay close attention to all the surface properties and recreate them as accurately as they can. That can take days or weeks of one person's time. At that point if I don't like the way a light is playing across the surface I can change the very nature of the object itself. I can make the paint flecks a little more contrasty and bright while leaving the clearcoat untouched. I can have a chrome bit reflect a bounce card while having a glass piece not see it. Now you could say that's "no-compromise" but all of that takes time and time is a valuable commodity. What's possible and what you have time to do are two very different things. But that's true of practical shooting as well. If you have a motion control rig you can shoot multiple passes and then separate out reflections and lighting. It's unlikely you'll be able to get a custom finish or paint but it's certainly possible, just not financially feasible. Most of the limitation practically is budget. There are real world costs to doing something. You need more lights. You need to physically move a wall to make a composition better. In CG you run into a lot of time constraints, although those keep getting reduced year over year by improving technology. You also have to take render time into account. Sure you can create the gorgeous lighting setup but while each additional light on set costs $$ every light you create costs time to render.

 

CG: Given enough time anything is possible.

Practical: Given enough money anything is possible.

 

Time/Money, really just two sides of the same coin when you get down to it.

 

Can you do things that are impossible practically? Sure. But you'll be able to do impossible things to real footage in the DI suite in the not too distant future as well. I highly doubt we'll stop calling it cinematography just because sophisticated post-relighting and re-framing technologies become practical.

 

It’s funny, cause I was at a party last night with one of the lighting guys from “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” and he was really drilling me about “real” lighting cause I guess I was the only working cinematographer/gaffer in the room. He asked what it would take to light the room we were in with (the look of) sunlight. I explained we were on the second floor, so we would have to get the light in the air with a scissor lift or whatever, then because of the depth of the place, the smallest lamp would have to be a 12k par to an 18k par that’s lined up out the window (cause there were like eight big windows lined up in a row and this place was deep)

 

Literally he laughed in my face……….. and said, “I would just push a button….” Then laughed more.

 

It’s a different category… Right???

 

Yeah but you could also just... shoot during the day. ;) And the location is already built!

 

Besides the cinematographer isn't the one that's going to be out there on the scissor lift or condor running cable. He's going to say "I need a bunch of 18ks out these windows." The producer is going to scrunch their forehead thinking about the cost and a bunch of people will run off and get it done. He doesn't even have to push a button! It responds to voice commands.

 

It's the electricians who should be really threatened by CG not cinematographers.

 

If there is one thing that I think does give CG an enormous advantage over practical it's that you can have 5 setups being worked on simultaneously. You don't have to break down lights for a closeup you can be lighting the close up and the wide shot on separate 'stages'.

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Excuse me for my blunt idiocy but what is a digital dark room?

 

A non-trademarked term for digital photo manipulation software.

 

Usually in reference to either Aperture or Lightroom. RAW processing software.

Edited by Gavin Greenwalt
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Does anyone else feel a slap in the face to our craft?

 

 

The Cinematographer's work, whose name escapes me, aside, this feels as awful to me as if Star Wars Episode I had wone an award for best cinematography ten and a half years ago.

 

 

Clearly, the people voting don't know what the F--- cinematography is. It is photographing, "painting" with light.

 

It really, really ought only apply to the practical parts. Parts that involve blue-screen lighting, computer programming, and CGI, or optical effects too, shouldn't be privy to this award.

 

2nd Unit work ought not be honored with a nod to the cinematographer who had nothing to do with it, except a phone call.

 

MY OPINION

 

 

Mr. Borowski,

 

I must say I have to agree with your opinion, but it is much more than just "CG". This whole business of making movies on digital video is not "cinematography" in the strictest sense, which as you say is PHPTOGRAPHY-- celluloid, photochemical processes, not bits do computer data. I laugh inwardly everytime I see a movie shot on DV (or even HD for that matter) and they have the credit fade in "A Film by________________" Really funny. I call it videography myself, and just refer to the whole business as "moviemaking" rather tahn "filmmaking" as this is a much safer term as regards accuracy. Anyway, I guess we're just two sour old dinosaurs--haha!

 

God Bless!

 

Mark King

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