Hi everyone,
my name's Handoyo. I'm a fourth year media communication student in Greater Vancouver area. I'm not sure if my question really merit your top-professional attention, but I'll ask anyway. I need to ask about how people in Oscar awards and movie critics actually evaluate on a movie's cinematography.
I have learned about editing, directing, acting and cinematography but I really have difficulty in how to actually do criticism on them, especially cinematography. I mean, I know about the different movie angles, camera movements, cuts, etc. But, how do 'best cinematography' award actually works? (Doesn't every film has different needs and thus different cinematography styles to properly capture it? If so, how is it possible to claim one style is better than another, much like how is it possible to compare if one hit by a boxer is better than one hit by a Southern-Shaolin style martial artist?)
Also, how do you differentiate between the different responsibilities of directors and DP's since both of these two positions seem to overlap a lot. Who actually make the last call on how to lit and shot a scene since in all of my student projects with my peers, the two really isn't distinguishable at all (and thus, there had always been much authority conflicts).
Additionally, how do you distinguish between the shots that are taken by the cinematography department and those that are taken by the editing department since I recall "Romeo + Juliet" editor explain that the editors added some cutaway shots on their own call. Do editors make the last call on how to edit the shots and how to color the movies?
My questions are perhaps very basic but they have almost always been a knotted-drag among my film project groups. If someone can explain how such things work in the real movie industry, that will be great. Thank you everyone.