Abstract
This chapter considers a performative perspective on lighting and relational understanding of technology in conjunction with traditional film industry structures and processes. The chapter revolves around an examination of practical exposure processes across distinct technological arenas, which serves to illustrate how the discipline of cinematography has evolved across analogue, digital and virtual production processes. In so doing, it relates some of the ideas about lighting from previous chapters to wider studies concerning the evolution of cinematography production processes to outline their relevance to contemporary practitioners. The chapter is framed around a conceptual examination of the cinematographer’s role which concludes that the principle of co-creation, as outlined by Maya Haviland and others, can help to maintain relevance in an era of rapidly changing technologies. As the role’s oversight and involvement expands across a more diverse range of processes, aesthetic leadership or partnership, with other artists should be emphasised as a key aspect of cinematography.
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Notes
- 1.
This is well illustrated by the work of the IMAGO Authorship Committee (Busch 2019) which surveyed cinematography societies around the world to establish which countries routinely pay royalties to their members.
- 2.
- 3.
Robert Hirsch cites forces of modernity such as the rise of mechanisation, a growing demand for information amongst an increasingly literate population and a burgeoning middle class concerned with appearances of social status as some of the driving factors in the formation of photographic practices. He states: “people wanted to know exactly what their world looked like, and the photographic image was read to arrive at this rope moment with the type of proof they have been prepared to accept” (2017, 7).
- 4.
For a more detailed technical account of Dagurre’s process, see Barger and White (1991, 28).
- 5.
- 6.
A light surface reflects more light, whereas a dark surface less. Adams (2005) gives a more detailed overview of this in his discussion of ‘The Negative’.
- 7.
This concept is further discussed by Rubenstein (2020, 5) who suggests an alternative to indexical understandings of photography are necessary because “in the digital age, a photograph is no more a representation of the world than a url is a representation of online content”.
- 8.
For a more detailed technical explanation of exposure as information acquisition see Blaine Brown’s (2014, 97–128) chapter on Exposure in The Filmmaker’s Guide to Digital Imaging.
- 9.
Sean Cubitt (2014, 102) outlines in further detail how digital and analogue both involve latency. In analogue processes the undeveloped negative is an obvious latent image, whereas digital processes reorder time through codec compression and the way that information is read from a sensor. Beyond this technical level however I would argue that the more or less perceptive immediacy of digital displays has led to a significant shift in the collaborative approach of many practitioners working in film production.
- 10.
Jeremy Birn (2014, 25) gives a more detailed overview of the responsibility of lighting artists in virtual productions.
- 11.
For instance, visual effects supervisor Habib Zargarpour (2018) outlines the implementation and development of such tools during the production of several Hollywood blockbusters in a SIGGRAPH conference presentation.
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Nevill, A. (2021). Exploring Exposure Processes. In: Towards a Philosophy of Cinematography . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65935-6_4
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