Even as Hollywood cinematographers adapted to the potential of new looks with new cameras, they grappled with the capacities of photorealistic imaging. The rise of CGI through the 1990s meant that visual effects designers were increasingly
Figure 6.5: in Zodiac (2007), cinematographer harris savides worried that the high-resolution images felt “synthetic.”
responsible for landscapes, objects, color palettes, lighting, and other decisions that cinematographers in the past would reasonably expect to consult on, if not take the lead in creating. As visual effects techniques became more sophisticated, visual effects personnel turned to the challenge of creating photorealistic images to better integrate with live-action photography. The largest strides in this area came in the mid-1990s, when films like Jurassic Park, Babe (Chris Noonan, 1995, d.p. Andrew Lesnie), and Twister (Jan De Bont, 1996, d.p. Jack Green) demon-strated almost seamless integration of visual effects with live-action images.
Artifacts of movie photography such as motion blur, lens flare, camera shake, and depth-of-field effects were increasingly replicated in CGI after 2000.48 While some of these effects (such as lens flare) had some precedent in film language, others would have been seen by past generations of cinematographers as a mark of poor craftsmanship. In a CGI-dominated cinema, they increasingly connoted photorealism, film-look, and a mark of authenticity, yet another adjustment to film language cinematographers would have to adopt.49
The virtual camera was another example of synthetic imagery combined with live-action photography. The notion of a disembodied camera eye performing remarkable if physically impossible moves originated in art photography and various CGI contexts, most prominently in video games. An increasingly ubiq-uitous form of visual culture through the 1990s, console and PC games often utilized cinematic language in cut scenes and game play, although, by virtue of their “virtual” locations and built worlds, game designers could deploy novel and spectacular camera moves and perspectives unavailable to cinematographers.
The Matrix (Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1999, d.p. Bill Pope) was one of the first films to adopt a virtual camera effect, soon widely replicated in other mov-ies and in television commercials, becoming what Bob Rehak has described as a
“microgenre” unto itself.50 CGI-assisted camera movement became increasingly commonplace after 1999. In Fincher’s Panic Room (2002, d.p. Conrad W. Hall and Darius Khondji), the camera executes several virtuosic moves in long takes that defy physics as the camera passes through walls, windows, and, most mem-orably, the handle of a teapot. The aforementioned Children of Men used a similar technique stitching dramatic camera moves into elaborate action set pieces, as in the “web-slinging” sequences in Spiderman (Sam Raimi, 2002, d.p. Don Burgess) and its many sequels, some battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings series, and the shot in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt, 2011, d.p. Lesnie) in which the lead ape, Caesar, flings himself to the top of a forest canopy as the camera follows. The place of the cinematographer in the visual design of such sequences varies from project to project, yet in most cases the look of the movies in question was credited in the trade press as a product of the director of photography, even as credit sequences portrayed a much more complicated landscape of authorship.
Devising techniques for managing the ambiguities of this situation has preoccu-pied cinematographers for much of the last decade.
3-d cinematography
As cinematographers grappled with digital grading and new cameras, virtual or otherwise, digital-based stereoscopic 3-D filmmaking was emerging out of the more specialized branches of the industry—large-format nature docu-mentary and theme park rides—into feature production. T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1996), a theme park attraction produced by James Cameron for Univer-sal Studios, was an important early test for large-format stereoscopic 3-D. The short had two credited cinematographers: Russell Carpenter, ASC, an experi-enced director of photography who had collaborated with Cameron on True Lies (1994) and was already engaged for Titanic (1997), and Peter Anderson, a cinematographer who specialized in 3-D production. T2 3D was photographed on 70mm film, with considerable difficulty. However, high-resolution video cameras, with better on-set control, image registration, and postproduction correction tools, reduced the cost and hassle of 3-D considerably after 2000.51 In 2003, Rodriguez released Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, the third installment of his popular franchise, surpassing the domestic box office for Spy Kids 2 and almost equaling that of the original film.52 Wider diffusion of DCI-compliant digital projectors enabled neighborhood cinemas to program digital 3-D titles, and over the next few years more 3-D films were released. The Polar Express (Zemeckis, 2004, d.p. Burgess) was the first studio feature to use 3-D and the first to rely on motion-capture for all its performances.53 The next year, Dis-ney’s Chicken Little (Mark Dindal, 2005) became the first major animated film released in 3-D. All these 3-D films were judged successful enough to spawn follow-ups, including Rodriguez’s Sharkboy and Lavagirl (2005) and Zemeckis’s Beowulf (2007, d.p. Robert Presley). Many drew large audiences despite a luke-warm critical reception and, at a time of general box office decline, provided a rare bright spot for exhibitors. The promise of 3-D helped spur the transition to digital projection in the multiplexes after 2007.54
The cinematographic prospects for 3-D—as photography rather than special effect—were not widely discussed among cinematographers until the emergence of studio-produced live-action 3-D spectacles, most notably Journey to the Center of the Earth (Eric Brevig, 2008, d.p. Chuck Shuman). Before shooting Journey, Shuman had been a long-time visual effects cinematographer and head of the miniatures unit on the Lord of the Rings series. In April 2008, ASC associate member Rob Hummel, an influential technologist and former executive, wrote a feature on 3-D in American Cinematographer entirely devoted to the science and logistics of the technique. Much discussion around 3-D centered on the degree to which 3-D glasses worn by audiences dimmed the brightness of the cinema screen, affecting contrast and color rendition. Working within firmly established genres like action-adventure, 3-D cinematography largely adhered to the norms of classical style, though with an added emphasis on the virtual camera and
other spectacular effects, such as “gotcha” shots in which objects leapt “out” of the frame toward the viewer.
The production of Avatar (2009) demonstrated greater, and more prestigious, possibilities for 3-D cinematography, as producer-director James Cameron and cinematographer Mauro Fiore focused on using 3-D to more fully engage the audience in the movie’s setting, the alien moon Pandora. As characters in Ava-tar slipped back and forth between a live-action miliAva-tary base and Pandora’s CGI-rendered wilderness, so too did the camera slip between live action with embodied actors and animated action with motion-captured performances of the native population in a virtual location. 3-D imaging helped link the con-trasting visual registers of the story and added verisimilitude to the fantastical environments through faux-photorealistic photography and the use of depth effects. The visual spectacle of Avatar was widely praised, and Fiore won a 2010 Academy Award for his cinematography. Two years later the Academy Award for Cinematography went to another 3-D film, Hugo (Scorsese, 2011). A predom-inantly live-action period adventure, Hugo was set in a whimsical, dreamlike Paris at the dawn of the age of movies. Scorsese, working with his frequent cinematographer Robert Richardson, used 3-D to create depth effects that gen-erally avoided clichéd 3-D “gotcha” shots. Repeatedly, Richardson composes complex frames with fore-, middle-, and background action that emphasize the depth of the frame, reinforced by effects (like billowing smoke and extras, some real, some virtual) to evoke the busy, lived-in world of a nineteenth- century train station (see figure 6.6). The story, which centered on the rela-tionship between an orphaned boy and cinema pioneer Georges Méliès,
Figure 6.6: in Hugo (2011), compositions in depth emphasize 3-d without the “gotcha” effects commonplace in 3-d adventure movies.
thematically linked the wonders of early moving pictures with the marvels of cinema’s technological progress, including 3-D.
Despite the success of some post-Avatar 3-D cinematography, there remains considerable ambivalence about 3-D’s contribution to the craft. The recent rush to convert conventionally photographed movies into 3-D in postproduc-tion (as in the widely panned Clash of the Titans [Louis Leterrier, 2010, d.p.
Peter Menzies, Jr.]) and to convert old studio hits into 3-D titles for re-release (as with recent Pixar reissues) presented yet another troubling case in which cinematographers saw their work as manipulated or reimagined without their input. While the so-called “Z-space” can add to the perception of depth within the frame, cinematographers have questioned the assumption that this contributes to better audience identification or involvement with the story.
As Ben Walters writes, the technical grammar of 3-D presented problems for classical cinematography. Whereas lens and focal distance choices were tra-ditionally made in light of narrative motivation, continuity, and shot variety, now the impact on the 3-D effect had to be considered as well. Shot duration and camera movement were effected, as rapid cutting, panning, or zooming can easily become disorienting in 3-D space. Lastly, some reliable cinematog-raphy “cheats,” such as foreshortening stage combat and eye-line matching, could be ruined with the addition of 3-D space. New variables such as intero-cular distance had to be considered. The classical goal of drawing audiences into the narrative—that is, the cinematographers’ search for images that sup-port, but do not overwhelm, the story—often conflicted with the impulse to use 3-D for spectacular effects, such as chase scenes, explosions, or “roller coaster” moments.
Cinematographers often find themselves working in tension between clas-sical principles and the development of less coherent, more spectacular styles present in much big-budget, effects-driven blockbuster and genre filmmaking.
David Bordwell has argued that classical Hollywood style persists in this cin-ema through an “intensified continuity” style of shorter takes, a variety of focal distances, and greater camera mobility.55 To the extent that cinematographers design such shots and continue to conceive of their visual choices as driven by narrative, they have been in a position to influence changes in style through the New Hollywood and blockbuster eras. Indeed, it is in these big-budget effects-driven films where cinematographers’ influence is typically at a nadir, where they are most often charged with realizing, rather than conceiving, the visual design of cinema, and this may help explain some of the eclectic, sometimes dis-harmonious, looks in modern cinema. This isn’t to say that cinema depended upon cinematographers for narrative coherence, but it suggests that craft work, as organized by the narrative plan of a script and the interpretative priorities of a director, has mediated the development of new techniques and has contributed, to some extent, to the persistence of Hollywood classical style.