Fashion and Trends in Cinematography

[Hywel Phillips]

Hi All,

I'm fascinated by the way "looks" go in and out of fashion in photography and cinematography. Does anyone know of a good VISUAL movie/essay/website/book/article which examines this?

One can often tell at a glance what era a film dates from. Ditto, an advertising photo. Obviously there are some big markers- like aspect ratio, colour vs. black and white. Then there are some more subtle ones like the colour palette, with the recent rise of teal-and-orange and the signs I now see of a rebellion against it. You can't confuse a scene from The Godfather with a scene from Gangster Squad - the colour palette alone will tip you off.

Some techniques have been around for years and go in and out of fashion like using ring flash for fashion photography which seems to come around every five years or so.

Some techniques come along with new technology. I'm suspecting that slow mo is going to become overused, especially in advertising, because it has only recently become possible to do it on a low budget. And sometimes a fashion takes hold for a very old look (lomography/instagram) which can seem surprisingly fresh.

Some have a rise and fall which seem to be almost independent of the underlying tech - the use of shaky cam in action sequences, for example. Film cameras were light enough to do that donkeys years ago if you'd really had the fetish for it. And maybe people did - the French new wave?

It is hard to see these trends when you are stuck in them, but I think one day we'll all look back at them and be able to point at a 2012 film or advert very easily.

There's a long list of things one could include in a history charting the development of our visual style dictionary.

Shallow focus. Deep focus. "Soft" lighting. Anamorphic lenses, then anamorphic imitations to get flares and oval bokeh. Cross processing. The use of high shutter speeds (Saving Private Ryan beach scene). Crushed blacks. Milky blacks. Golden hour. Bleach bypass. Really crisp sharp contrasty lenses. Old flarey lenses- even stripping the coatings off brand new Cookes. Really saturated colours. Colours so saturated they're almost black and white, whilst still having a definite colour identity (Underworld...).

And many, many more I'm sure you'll be able to think of better than I. I'd really love to see a book covering the development of these looks and the way they've come in to and out of fashion.

I've read a lot of boring scholarly books that waffle on for hundreds of pages with hardly a picture to enliven their dry debate over which movements influence which in the avant guarde. But I've yet to find a zinging one full of colour pictures which charts the progression for the sorts of films people actually watch, and the advertising photos that often seem to have a parallel trajectory (to borrow some of the sheen of sophistication of the movies, I think).

Anyone know of such a work? Or should I start writing one?

Cheers, Hywel.

 

[Peter Dmitriyev]

great post, sounds to me like you should be the one writing such a book as you seem to have a great handle already on the subject and seem to be telling/teaching more than asking about the answers you already seem to know.

So since there's not much of a question here allow me to continue the conversation a tad further by saying that the one thing this era will be known for to me more than anything else, more than the horrid teal/orange palette, is the over use of 'painting by the numbers' style cinematography where inexperienced or simply less skilled cinematographers are using techniques most notable of which to me is soft lighting in an excessive way. This era to me is dominated by over usage of soft light. I probably will be a lone voice on this matter so curious to hear if anyone agrees but there's many films especially rampant at the indie and mid level where everything is shot in this television style of overly flattering soft lighting no matter the angle and it takes on this fake sort of non cinematic air to me where you know you're watching a film set on a stage as opposed to actual events taking place before you.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

great post, sounds to me like you should be the one writing such a book as you seem to have a great handle already on the subject and seem to be telling/teaching more than asking about the answers you already seem to know.

So since there's not much of a question here allow me to continue the conversation a tad further by saying that the one thing this era will be known for to me more than anything else, more than the horrid teal/orange palette, is the over use of 'painting by the numbers' style cinematography where inexperienced or simply less skilled cinematographers are using techniques most notable of which to me is soft lighting in an excessive way. This era to me is dominated by over usage of soft light. I probably will be a lone voice on this matter so curious to hear if anyone agrees but there's many films especially rampant at the indie and mid level where everything is shot in this television style of overly flattering soft lighting no matter the angle and it takes on this fake sort of non cinematic air to me where you know you're watching a film set on a stage as opposed to actual events taking place before you.

I truly believe that the great films often are the result of a perfect storm of many departments coming together and painting a world that is true to the story and not defined by rules or trends necessarily. The cinematographers use light that is appropriate for the scenes not by what type of lighting is popular at the time. They know when to use hard lighting, when to use soft lighting, when to use no lighting. When technology becomes the thing that is front and center as opposed to something that allows filmmakers to tell their story then it becomes much harder to make a great film.