Cinematography

Cinematography is the discipline of making lighting and camera choiceswhen recording photographic images for the cinema. This camera trick isone of the oldest awards dating back to the very first academy awardsceremony. The most common use of cinematography to emphasis light anddark is horror flicks. In these movies most of the suspense and actionhappens at night time. The directors and cinematographers use littlecamera tricks like quick movement and lighting certain areas for theviewer to get an emphasis of suspense. One movie that comes to mindwhen talking about horror films and cinematography is the movie Halloween. This was such a low budget film that the killer, Michael Myers, had a mask that was a Captain Kirk costume mask spray paintedwhite. The use of lighting and camera angles to obtain the shots madethis movie a cult phenomenon. Since the movie's release in 1978 therehave been multiple sequels just because of its appeal; all of which hadtried to use the same scare tactics and cinematography to capture thatdark omniscient character that scared us to death in the 70's.

One movie that was up for an Oscar nomination in 2002 for cinematographywas Black Hawk Down. This movie was a true story depicting the missionof US army in 1993 where nearly 100 U.S. Army Rangers, commanded by Capt. Mike Steele, were dropped by helicopter deep into the capitalcity of Mogadishu to capture two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord.The mission lead to a large and drawn-out firefight between theRangers and hundreds of Somali gunmen, which led to the destruction oftwo U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in Mogadishu. The movie usescinematography to get the full feeling of hostility in the area. At onepoint in the movie the Rangers are in a night battle with the Somaliangunmen and have night vision goggles to help them. In this scene thecamera uses a night vision lenses to get that first person view of thebattle. This camera lenses gives the viewer the feeling of being rightin the battle, thus, giving the viewer a more sentimental feel for theRangers who had to endure the battle.

The truth is cinematography is basically how the camera lighting is being used. It is however very important to the subtleties of the shot being used. For instance one would not want a scene taking place in the day time to be dark and hardto see because this would give the feeling or emotion of a scene thatis somber, scary or even dull. In contrast one would not want a nighttime scene to be too light. A good example of darkness being used wellis the movie The Descent. This entire movie takes place in a cave, andthe entire movie in itself is quite hard to see. Not being able to seegives the audience a feeling of connection with the women stuck in thecave increasing the intensity of the escape. If this movie were toolight a person would feel as if the women were able to see everythingaround them making their escape seem simple. In conclusioncinematography is one of the first subtleties used in films in order tohelp the audience rhetorically connect with the movie.