Nathan Garofalos
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Can we say that your look and style you go for would be how you describe your ECU's to ELS's and everything in between to other cinematographers?
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Lets talk about the hair cut and other stuff.
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ChrisLyon
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I think Nathan as a nice haircut.
I Bloom
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I'm a big haircut guy, and I think my reasoning is pretty sound. I think people who are afraid of haircuts are missing something pretty fundemental about the composition of the human face.
Artist understand it fundamentally that if you look at the entire skull head on, the eyes are almost half way down the face.
So a closeup that attempts to get the entire skull in the frame, not to mention whatever hair is sticking up, is going to be awkward IMHO. I've definitely been asked to frame up a "Closeup" with no haircut. The composition is essentially chin to crown, and it doesn't work.
However once the shoulders are in frame, a haircut does start to feel quite strange.
IBloom
Artist understand it fundamentally that if you look at the entire skull head on, the eyes are almost half way down the face.
So a closeup that attempts to get the entire skull in the frame, not to mention whatever hair is sticking up, is going to be awkward IMHO. I've definitely been asked to frame up a "Closeup" with no haircut. The composition is essentially chin to crown, and it doesn't work.
However once the shoulders are in frame, a haircut does start to feel quite strange.
IBloom
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purefilm
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I was watching a steadycam operator work the other day, and I noticed he would haircut on everything, except the Wide. The MCU had haircuts. It looked a lit odd to me, but the DP seemed pleased.
Nathan Garofalos
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Thanks Chris! It was that short after I cut it for Emo Olympics when I had a Mohawk for a day! Now its grown out to about 3 and a half 4 inches...
I think what Ian is saying makes a lot of sense. Since your eyes are in the middle of your face, using a hair cut makes the shot feel right.
Adam C Lubkin
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I suspect that the aversion to haircuts comes from the influence of painting. In portrait drawing, which is the foundation of portrait painting, it's unnatural to cut off the head. Doing so breaks up the flowing gesture lines that are the beginning of a good drawing, and messes with the practice of conceiving the head as a three-dimensional form with structural integrity. When I say it's unnatural to cut off the head, what I mean is that it makes the act of drawing the head feel less fluid and more contrived.
Photography and cinematography aren't subject to the same forces. To my eye, a haircut is appropriate whenever it serves the composition. Obviously an extreme close-up requires a haircut. A shot framed from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin looks like a severed head, and seems to call for some adjustment - either framing wider, framing tighter, or tilting down. I agree with ibloom's post above, but, IMHO, even if our eyes were above our eyebrows - and therefore occurred a third of the way down the face - framing the head from just the top of the skull to the bottom of the chin would still look awkward.
On wide shots I tend to think it's only appropriate when used for specific compositional effect, otherwise it tends to call attention to itself. It also makes a difference whether or not it's a conventionally framed shot and whether or not the character in question is the main focus of the shot.
Photography and cinematography aren't subject to the same forces. To my eye, a haircut is appropriate whenever it serves the composition. Obviously an extreme close-up requires a haircut. A shot framed from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin looks like a severed head, and seems to call for some adjustment - either framing wider, framing tighter, or tilting down. I agree with ibloom's post above, but, IMHO, even if our eyes were above our eyebrows - and therefore occurred a third of the way down the face - framing the head from just the top of the skull to the bottom of the chin would still look awkward.
On wide shots I tend to think it's only appropriate when used for specific compositional effect, otherwise it tends to call attention to itself. It also makes a difference whether or not it's a conventionally framed shot and whether or not the character in question is the main focus of the shot.