The Evolution of Shot Composition and Camera Movement by Milo Cunningham
Cinema is arguably the highest grossing and most successful medium of art ever to be created. With a relatively short history, so much scope has been covered and so many milestones put down for future generations to learn about.
Some say technically, cinema has been around for as long as photography as film is just a series of pictures, but true cinema is relatively young. The first innovators of cinema were the Lumiere Brothers, brothers Auguste and Louis born in 1862 and 1864. Both born in France they grow up to be deeply involved in the Photographic industry which was relatively new and still seen as a sort of mysterious science at the time. They would put moving images together and play them in quick succession to give the illusion of movement (which is still the foundation of film today) though at the time this process was very expensive, time consuming and logistically difficult they would hold screenings for films that when no longer than 50 seconds each.
Back in the early stages of cinema, cinematography was littered with rules that were very strict and to be broken was found upon. Films were always shot with minimal angles and the camera being only on a tripod without movement at all. Subjects were always shot at full body view, as cutting the image of the waist was thought to disturb the audience as a takeaway from the narrative structure buy forcing a false perspective that they never experienced before. Close-ups as well,were almost never used as early directors and cinematographers thought of them to be useless in terms of telling a story. Early cinema it’s quite one-dimensional and almost played out as if a theater performance was being filmed with music added on top.
The beauty of film is that it’s one of the only mediums that gets more advanced and entertaining as technology progresses. Fast forward 20 years and you have “Metropolis” (1927) a full scale Motion Picture and is regarded as the first sci-fi production of its time. This film is a signal post in new ways of filming, with early CGI and world building techniques insured that early audiences was stuck to their seat. This film was one of the first to be shot on a widescreen format, making audiences take in the huge scale of massive set pieces that were used in the creating of the film and hallucinatory special facts that were revolutionary back in the day.
Fast forward another 20 years and you have Citizen Kane, widely regarded as the best piece of cinema ever to be put on a screen, this shows audiences moving images and art can coexist within the same medium. Directed by Orson Welles it tells the story of a man’s journey trying to decipher another man’s dying words. Citizen Kane was well ahead of its time ,it’s use of light and shade was unseen at the time. Director Orson Welles saw paintings and cinema as very similar. Huge set pieces harvest dark and light patches signalling the known and unknown voids in the story, winding camera angles was the product of early shot movement as the camera would move smoothly around actors and would follow them through hallways and doorways, to bring along the audience on a journey that is as epic as the protagonists. Orson Welles showed audiences in the 40s the power that cinema can have ,through smart storytelling and thought-provoking visuals, it was and still is a testament to cinematography and just like most fine art it gets better with age.
Ask any film critic and they will tell you that the biggest breakthrough in cinematography was the advent of coloured film. Coloured film in my eyes is more important than the advent of sound the late 20s early 30s. Francis Ford Coppola summed it up perfectly by saying ” just as if you gave an artist the colour palette after years and years of just using black on a white canvas”. Suddenly film wasn’t just about light and shade a whole spectrum was added to the mix the most directors took it and ran with it. Cinema became more popular than ever and institutions were set up around film, productions got bigger and so did the sets. To a cinematographer there was a bigger canvas to work on. Production such as Ben-Hur (1959) were made, which take advantage of how big a cast can be and how much money producers can get their hands on. Scenes were being shot with biblical scales of people and set pieces. These sort of films did the widescreen format Justice as the only way to truly appreciate it was to go out and buy a ticket and see it in the cinema.
These big Productions could only be described with one word “excess” as this was slap bang in the middle of a trend which cinematographers would cram as much as they can into the scene, this meant the richest colours, the most wide format, the biggest casts, the most ambitious and impressive establishing shots and as well as fast paced editing.
In the 60s a lot of audiences got tired theatrical Productions with in~your~face sequences. They soon turned to films that had greater artistic value and that were on the opposite of the spectrum, as they weren’t built on the notion of “excess” but leaned more heavily towards “restraint”. In my opinion the greatest pioneer of this sharp change was Stanley Kubrick. Widely known as one of the greatest directors of all time Stanley Kubrick has left his mark on cinema that will be remembered for an eternity. His use of camera angles are featured in key chapters of budding cinematographers notebooks. His films focused on order with scenes that were extremely meticulously well rehearsed and well crafted with smooth camera movements and ” easy on the eye” sequences that not only look good but did good in terms of narrative structure and storytelling.
An example of this is Kubricks first commercial success “Paths of glory”. It tells the story of a WWI French battalion that is given a order to storm a checkpoint held by the enemy, knowing it’ll be certain death they decide to withdraw against there superiors wishes. To set an example, the general of the battalion choose 3 soldiers to be executed via firing squad. Banned in France for over seven years for betraying the army in a negative light, this film has become legendary in terms of a cinematic and artistic standpoint. It’s littered with crisp and beautiful smooth tracking shots winding through trenches between breaks in battle and soldiers awaiting their orders. Is battle scenes are both chaotic and ordered at the same time, as explosions and the Horrors of War are betrayed in a disturbing and unpredictable light through controlled and impressive camera movements. In my opinion Stanley Kubrick was the first director to marry cinematography and camera movement seamlessly, to create something that will stand the test of time. Stanley Kubrick is also known for having mathematical precision in terms of shot composition with smooth tracking shots that follow the same prism like ratio and balance. This is always perfectly done as it reinforces the story and in the case of The Shining which is a horror it makes the seem a lot more eerie.
Filmmaking is an ever growing and ever changing industry with new rules being created and broken every year. If the audience get used to a style of filmmaking and that becomes really successful you’ll get an arthouse film that breaks the mould and lots of films follow the same routine after that, until that becomes old and that rule gets broken once more. A prime example of this would be the director cinematographer Terrence Malick, he seems to break his previous Style in every new film he makes. His first commercials film was Badlands which is a testament to gorgeous cinematography with bright contrasting lighting schemes and beautiful colours that are so pleasurable for the eye. He also created The Thin Red Line witch from a cinematographers perspective follows a style that dates back to the 70s when it deals with portraying War. But two recent films that he created really stood out in my view as game changers, these films took traditional cinematography styles and tropes and turn them on their head as well as inverting camera movement techniques, that turned out to be the polar opposite the status quo audiences have got used to in years previous, these films were “Knight of cups” (2015) and “The Tree of Life” (2011) both of these films deal with topics that are hard to pinpoint into a narrative structure, “knight of cups” deals with the idea of questioning your place within Society. As well as the social hierarchy and deals with emotions such as uncertainty and anxiety. It betrays this through winding shots that move around the character as well as far away whilst also pulling in all the way up to close up to show a shift in emotion or to amplifier emotion. On the contrary ” Tree of Life” uses close personal shots of things that the audience see in their everyday life but hardly take the time to notice. Such as the fragile nature and the complexity for newborn child’s eye, and the beauty that nature possesses through all living things.
I Wonder what the Lumiere brothers would think if they saw modern day films that, deal with modern day subject matters ,using unconventional film techniques. I think they wouldn’t recognise it as the medium that they started. But instead they would see it as true art of the highest degree. That idea begs the question “what will cinematography and camera techniques look like in 100 years from now, and will it look like the same medium?”
Refrences
The evolution of Cinematography. 2011. The evolution of Cinematography. [ONLINE] Available at: https://prezi.com/tlobo7xmxeg2/the-evolution-of-cinematography/. [Accessed 10 January 2018].
lumiere brothers. 2015. Encyclopedia britannica. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lumiere-brothers. [Accessed 10 January 2018].
IMDB. 2010. Terrence malick. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000517/?ref_=nv_sr_1. [Accessed 17 January 2018].
    Essay Powerpoint
Milo Cunningham 