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Who do you think 81th Academy Award for Best Cinematography, will go to?


Ben Brahem Ziryab

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No, I'll think we should seperate technical and artistic quality very carefully, this award was given purely to it's artisitc quality - the technical execution was heavily flawed in my eyes - worse than with regular 3CCD-systems. This camera isn't even capable of true HD without color interpolation!

 

If that is the away the award is given, solely for artistic quality without any considerations for technical execution, then the award itself is flawed.

 

To even be considered for an artistic award, the technical execution should be flawless!

 

I mean, imagine a pictorialist painting that won an award even though the paint dripped, or a Mona Lisa that won an award despite the fact that there was an unmotivated black brush-stroke across the canvas. . .

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I don't agree that technical flawlessness or perfection is a requirement for an award in Cinematography. Lots of movies that have been nominated or have won over the years have technical mistakes in them.

 

In fact, this old-fashioned notion of "technical perfection" is probably one reason why the old-timers in the Cinematography Committee failed to nominate either Godfather 1 or 2. I remember one guy cracked "It looks like Gordon Willis tried to get Rembrandt lighting with a 25-watt lightbulb."

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I don't agree that technical flawlessness or perfection is a requirement for an award in Cinematography. Lots of movies that have been nominated or have won over the years have technical mistakes in them.

 

Could you give me some examples?

 

Again, I've never seen "Slumdog Millionaire", but I would expect a well-grounded technical execution to be a requirement for a cinematography nod. After all, this field is as much art as it is science.

 

I'm not saying a soft shot or a bad focus pull should automatically preclude a film from the nomination (were that the case, "Dark Knight" would have been disqualified too), but surely you agree that a film has to master the technical aspects before it can really rise to the level of artistic mastery.

 

I think that what you refer to in the case of the first two "Godfather" films is more of a bias against certain lighting styles than anything "bad" about the lighting technically.

 

Again, I guess I need to see the film before I can effectively pass judgement, but something that bothers me right off the bat is that this film was often shot with available light only, documentary style.

 

I feel that dramatic film-making should showcase the controlled-environment opportunities that documentary films don't have, rather than vice versa.

 

Feel free to disagree David. You are certainly entitled to do so. But I feel, that awarding a film that resorts to available lighting (regardless of what it is shot on) is just as disrespectful to the art and craft of cinematography as Ben Stiller cracking jokes during the award presentation, perhaps even more so.

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I think that what you refer to in the case of the first two "Godfather" films is more of a bias against certain lighting styles than anything "bad" about the lighting technically.

 

I'm pretty sure he was referring to rampant under-exposure, which I suppose is bad science, especially for the early 70s, right?

 

But I feel, that awarding a film that resorts to available lighting (regardless of what it is shot on) is just as disrespectful to the art and craft of cinematography as Ben Stiller cracking jokes during the award presentation, perhaps even more so.

 

What does using available light have anything to do with technical expertise or not? I was speaking with a guy who's been around quite a long time, and was looking at my work, and a particular shot that was absolutely lit all with available light, and he said "even if god lit it, it's still your work, and it looks great." I think using available light to make a scene look good is harder than if you have 6 12ks on the truck... And, yes, Slumdog lit a ton with available light. So Did The Wrestler, that won the Indie Spirit Cine Award.

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"Days of Heaven" was mostly shot in available light and it won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.

 

Using mostly available light is no slight on the skills of the cinematographer and should be no deterrence to getting nominated or winning. You don't want to equate artistic achievement to the amount of artificial lighting used. Some of the most famous art photographs in history were taken in natural light after all.

 

The trouble with making technical excellence some sort of standard or bar to reach before consideration is that no two people are going to agree as to what that means. "The Godfather" was underexposed by a stop and a half, and pushed a stop... for some old-timers on the nominating committee, that was probably a technical no-no, that thin, somewhat grainy texture.

 

I'm sure some of them objected to nominating "Cabaret", which broke a lot of rules in regards to shooting musicals, with it's use of smoke and fog filters, underexposure.

 

Technical excellence is a meaningless standard when it's not judged against artistic intent. What seems like a technical mistake in one case -- like graininess -- can be an artistic statement in another. It's better to simply judge whether the cinematography "works" -- i.e. enhances the cinematic experience for the viewer, tells the story, provides aesthetic pleasure, whatever, rather than grade it by the number of technical mistakes it has.

 

"The English Patient" won the Oscar for Best Cinematography -- I recall one scene that was accidentally underexposed and had grain problems in the blacks, clearly not an intentional artistic effect. Should that one mistake have disqualified it for consideration? Should it be "three mistakes and you're out"? You see the whole problem with the idea of requiring "technical excellence" as a criteria for getting nominated. Sure, it's always going to be a factor in how people judge something, but it should not be codified or standardized, it should merely be a factor in consideration that may be driven out by other factors in the right circumstances.

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No, I don't think it should be "three strikes, you're out", but then why haven't any documentaries (or have there been?) won for best cinematography? Have any 16mm films won?

 

I don't think technical considerations should outweigh artistic ones. But, they shouldn't be discounted entirely either. Doing something technically "wrong" intentionally shouldn't disqualify one from winning a cinematography nod, but I don't think a defense that "we made it ugly intentionally" should suddenly make that ugliness award-worthy.

 

Think of it in terms of figure skating. . . You don't have to do a quadruple or triple spin in the air, but even if you intentionally do a good double in the air it doesn't get you as many points as a successful triple. The harder something is to do, the more risk there is in it not working out, but there should also be more of a reward the greater the technical complexity.

 

Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder, but if using "God's lighting" can win you an award, why use any lights, ever?

 

"Slumdog Millionaire" is a more and more surprising choice the more I read into it.

Edited by Karl Borowski
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I'm sure the French Academy painters found the Impressionists technically inexcusable too -- you just want to avoid a stultifying conservatism that would come to dominate any awards committee. I think this whole discussion is only taking place because some people feel that "Slumdog Millionaire" was not technically adept enough to deserve an award, which is why I am cautioning against this sort of attitude that technical problems will disqualify something that is clearly the work of an artistic DP. Chris Doyle is another DP whose work is not always technically polished yet it is exciting artistically.

 

No doubt next year's Cinematography award will go to some gorgeous period epic as some sort of backlash or natural pendulum swing... and no doubt someone will complain that some exciting but roughly-made indie movie had more interesting cinematography to it than the winner. It's the basic unsolvable problem with ALL awards, simplifying judgments of artistic merit to a near useless degree by forcing movies to compete which are radically different in artistic aims.

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Feel free to disagree David. You are certainly entitled to do so. But I feel, that awarding a film that resorts to available lighting (regardless of what it is shot on) is just as disrespectful to the art and craft of cinematography as Ben Stiller cracking jokes during the award presentation, perhaps even more so.

 

 

I totally disagree. Manipulating available light and doing it well is probably one of the hardest and most difficult things to do in cinematography. Trying to cover a scene or execute a difficult shot at dusk or a certain time of day is extremely stressful and difficult for the cinematographer, crew, and cast.

 

Cinematography is about light and camera in the service of story. The Academy thought Slumdog did the best job regardless of the technical aspects of the film. If technical is your mindset, example: to simply awarding a film like Dark Knight because it was shot on 65mm and is hard logistical action sequences totally asinine to me. Artistic considerations outweigh technical ones and I hope it always stays that way. Don't artistic choices dictate the technical ones?... wouldn't the story dictate your artistic choices?

 

Cinematography by definition is "The art of making Motion Pictures.".

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Cinematography is about light and camera in the service of story. The Academy thought Slumdog did the best job regardless of the technical aspects of the film. If technical is your mindset, example: to simply awarding a film like Dark Knight because it was shot on 65mm and is hard logistical action sequences totally asinine to me. Artistic considerations outweigh technical ones and I hope it always stays that way. Don't artistic choices dictate the technical ones?... wouldn't the story dictate your artistic choices?

 

Yeah, but they didn't manipulate it: no reflectors, fill cards, supplemental lights. Run-and-gun.

 

Do you think it is fair that the first dramatic film to be filmed in IMAX, and to do a damn good job of it, doesn't receive any awards or recognition for a true cinematic first? I mean, obviously, I don't just think it should have won because it was IMAX. Otherwise I would have been harping about "Panorama Blue" not having gotten an award in 1974 because of the mere fact that it was hard-core pornography.

 

I have never seen shots as amazing as in "Dark Knight" in any other film I've seen on the big screen. "Dark Knight" was a cinematic first; haven't seen "Slumdog Millionaire" but I doubt I'd be as blown away by it.

 

Honestly, I think it is pathetic that people have to juice up their chances of winning by playing their movies as late in the year as possible. Maybe "Dark Knight's" release date has more to do with its loosing than it's origination format.

 

I mean, if you were judging films nominated in a specific category, wouldn't you watch them all, on the big screen, on the same day to be as objective as possible about it? Some people must be taking a very non-objective stance for there to be such a bias towards end-of-the-year films as there is.

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I totally disagree. Manipulating available light and doing it well is probably one of the hardest and most difficult things to do in cinematography. Trying to cover a scene or execute a difficult shot at dusk or a certain time of day is extremely stressful and difficult for the cinematographer, crew, and cast.

 

Another question for you: Why hasn't there been a single documentary winner then for best Cinematography?

 

They qualify, right?

 

This comes down to a question of form over function, or does what is in the frame matter more than how the frame is presented?

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Do you think it is fair that the first dramatic film to be filmed in IMAX, and to do a damn good job of it, doesn't receive any awards or recognition for a true cinematic first?

 

"The Dark Knight" got nominated for an Oscar for its cinematography -- isn't that an honor and a recognition of its quality? Only five movies get nominated. The fact that the general AMPAS membership gave to award to "Slumdog" is less relevant -- it's not a rejection of all the other nominees, that they somehow didn't measure up.

 

Didn't someone else on another thread say that "Che" should have been nominated under the logic that it deserved it because it was the first movie shot on the RED? So why is that any different than arguing that the first narrative movie to use IMAX photography deserves to win the award, not just get nominated?

 

Wally Pfister in fact was nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA, and an ASC award for "The Dark Knight", plus won three critics awards -- how does that not count as "receiving recognition"???

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To even be considered for an artistic award, the technical execution should be flawless!

 

 

It's so sad that you think this. Where do you think innovation comes from ?

 

I love making mistakes. It's when the most exciting things happen, and the best lessons are learnt.

 

It's even sadder that everyone is talking about the camera/s that it was shot on, or the fact that it was a mainly digitally originated.

 

How about giving credit to the DOP who actually won this award and made these choices ? Anthony Dod Mantle won the award, not the camera. His body of work stands out, and it's fresh.

 

Why is it that all the most militant naysayers' of slumdog haven't actually SEEN it !?!

 

jb

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well the most deserved ...... got it.

the cinematography for 'SDM' was so organic . . . in the sense the shooting format was selected based on

what the script required and not on the budget.

the film was initially planned 70% film and 30% digital...but later interchanged the percentage

based on the requirement of the script....70% in digital!

the challenge for Great Cinematography is in working for the script no matter what the format is...

they infact have used a Canon still camera for few sequences in the film. Now..Isnt that path breaking

in the mainstream feature film.....and also Breaking the mind barriers of cinematography!

not praising for the heck of it ... but how fantastically that technique worked subliminally for those scenes......

isnt that the crux of great cinematography!.......rather than just to achieve good looking images!

thanks.

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Yeah, but they didn't manipulate it: no reflectors, fill cards, supplemental lights. Run-and-gun.

 

Do you think it is fair that the first dramatic film to be filmed in IMAX, and to do a damn good job of it, doesn't receive any awards or recognition for a true cinematic first? I mean, obviously, I don't just think it should have won because it was IMAX. Otherwise I would have been harping about "Panorama Blue" not having gotten an award in 1974 because of the mere fact that it was hard-core pornography.

 

I have never seen shots as amazing as in "Dark Knight" in any other film I've seen on the big screen. "Dark Knight" was a cinematic first; haven't seen "Slumdog Millionaire" but I doubt I'd be as blown away by it.

 

Honestly, I think it is pathetic that people have to juice up their chances of winning by playing their movies as late in the year as possible. Maybe "Dark Knight's" release date has more to do with its loosing than it's origination format.

 

I mean, if you were judging films nominated in a specific category, wouldn't you watch them all, on the big screen, on the same day to be as objective as possible about it? Some people must be taking a very non-objective stance for there to be such a bias towards end-of-the-year films as there is.

 

Asserting a reflector, fill card, and lights simply because those are the tools is an very arrogant way to dp. Forcing your style over a story because you think that is apart of the job I would consider bad cinematography. I think the absents of all these things are why a film like Slumdog is getting recognized. Anthony liberated the viewer and his collaborator from the tyranny of cinematographers that lie, he gave them something entirely honest to look at, and thats why people connected to it like they did. Gave them something reminiscent of a time when photography meant truth.

 

An Academy award nomination isn't recognition?

Dark Knight lost nothing, in fact it made 9.9 billion overseas. More people may have watched this film across the world then any other film in history.

 

Another question for you: Why hasn't there been a single documentary winner then for best Cinematography?

 

They qualify, right?

 

This comes down to a question of form over function, or does what is in the frame matter more than how the frame is presented?

 

Sure they do, but documentary's are mostly if not all objective. Artistic cinema has the ability to be subjective, subconsciously place a viewer in a setting or express a point of view portrayed onscreen, which in my opinion makes it the most powerful art form currently in existence and why I think a lot of people connect to great cinematography in a narrative more then in a documentary. Some people get it, some don't. You obviously don't.

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shooting outside in natural light is my biggest fear of cinematography

because its so friggin hard, but the results can look amazing if done right

I give anathony dodd mantle huge credit for what he did.

and if he shot in india on a 2k HD camera with no reflectors or silks then that just proves how good of a cinematographer he is...

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i think that anyone that has shot exteriors without any tools besides the camera know how hard it is because there's always a cloud ready to block the sun when you are ready to roll camera and a million things more, ADM work in slumdog it's brilliant vibrant, organic like someone already said in this thread, and the camera work its also beautiful, well deserved oscar

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Some people get it, some don't. You obviously don't.

 

You know what Chayse, you're right! That explains everything! I'm an arrogant a$$ and I just don't get it, and the field I am passionate about should keep its work as subtle as possible so that DOPs have to get chased around the set and threatened by actors for people to know who they are!

 

Thanks for opening my eyes :blink:

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I'll chime in:

 

Shooting exteriors with little equipment and making it look good enough to attract the attention of the Academy's DPs (who put this film in contention in the first place) would be one of the hardest things to do imaginable. Karl, the film was one of 5 nominees only because DPs (many of them Oscar winners themselves) determined it was worthy.

 

Evan W.

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i think that anyone that has shot exteriors without any tools besides the camera know how hard it is because there's always a cloud ready to block the sun when you are ready to roll camera and a million things more, ADM work in slumdog it's brilliant vibrant, organic like someone already said in this thread, and the camera work its also beautiful, well deserved oscar

 

Now you're saying I've never shot exteriors without supplemental lighting.

 

You're right. I just sit in a basement all day typing posts on a computer. I never actually shoot films. :unsure:

 

I still maintain that this film getting selected is a far bigger slap in the face of cinematography than any of Ben Stiller's on-stage antics.

 

Sorry, but I still don't get what "good cinematography" means to some of the people on this forum.

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"City of God", which freely mixed Super-16 and 35mm in a similar style to "Slumdog", also got an Best Cinematography Oscar nomination.

 

"Great cinematography" isn't restricted to only technically polished movies -- "JFK" won the Oscar for cinematography and it mixes in some grainy 8mm footage.

 

I would describe Chris Doyle's work for Wong Kar Wei as great cinematography, and it's full of technical flaws. But it is evocative, exciting, emotional, and appropriate to the characters, the settings. It sets the right tone.

 

The technical decisions a cinematographer makes is not divorced from the artistic intent -- I mean, what if a DP got hired to shoot in the slums of Mumbai or Rio and the director said "please don't make this look slick, beautiful, clean, like some Hollywood movie -- I want it to be rough, violent, energetic, almost like it was shot by the kids living in these slums." Any decent DP isn't going to say "sorry, I only shoot technically exceptional material and will not do anything else no matter how appropriate to the material."

 

You're not going to get far as a cinematographer if you put technical concerns on some sort of pedestal and worshipped them, rather than think like a visual artist first and a technician second.

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Sorry, but I still don't get what "good cinematography" means to some of the people on this forum.

 

I would imagine that like most artistic endeavours it's something that is highly subjective.

 

Out of the five nominated I only got a chance to see The Dark Knight and Slumdog Millionaire - although if I had to think about it I'd have a real tough time picking which one of those two had the 'best' cinematography as they both have differing qualities that I liked (and some qualities I disliked) and would most likely come down to which film I liked best (also a tough call).

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Today I was re-reading a classic textbook from the U.K. called "Practical Motion Picture Photography" (1970). The last paragraph in it is a quote by Ozzie Morris:

 

"I know one is taught the basic principles of photography during one's life to start with, but I have found that the most successful photographic assignments have been the ones where the rules have all been broken, and I feel very strongly on this. If I look back on the films I have made, the most successful ones are those I call 'the rebels', the ones where although one is taught to do something, one does exactly the opposite. ... I can't photograph a film normally. Whether I've spoilt myself or what, I don't know. It's got to have something for me to get my teeth into, something different. Either in lighting or style."

 

This was the guy who was told by Technicolor while shooting "Moulin Rouge" (1953), with its innovative use of smoke, fog filters, and colored light, that he was "crucifying the reputation of Technicolor" and that it would be interpreted as "faulty photography and color printing".

 

After Technicolor again complained to Morris and John Huston at a lab screening, Morris said that the movie looked like he wanted it to look and how it should look. Huston then got up and said "So do I, kid. Gentlemen -- thank you, and **(obscenity removed)** you" and walked out.

 

Technicolor sent letters complaining about the photography, they wanted to be released from any liability regarding how it turned out.

 

After the movie was released, they sent letters saying that they were honored to be associated with such a beautiful-looking picture!

 

So let's embrace and celebrate a spirit of experimentation and free expression even when it occasionally conflicts with notions of technically-correct photography. Better that than to stultify the artform by being too technically conservative.

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