Path to the Aasee

Filmtips:
A film screening is the displaying of a motion picture or film, generally referring to a special showing as part of a film's production and release cycle. To show the film to best advantage, special screenings may take place in plush, low seat-count theaters with very high quality (sometimes especially certified) projection and sound equipment, and can be accompanied by food and drink and spoken remarks by producers, writers, or actors. Special screenings typically occur outside normal theatrical showing hours. The different types of screenings are presented here in their order within a film's development.

Bread and Butter

Diegetic sound is that which is to have actually occurred within the story during the action being viewed. It is sound that comes from within the narrative world of a film (including off-screen sound). Continuous diegetic sound helps to smooth temporally questionable cuts by overlapping the shots. Here the logic is that if a sonic occurrence within the action of the scene has no breaks in time, then it would be impossible for the scene and its corresponding visuals to be anything but temporally continuous.

 

The famous canals of Amsterdam

 

When the citizens of Amsterdam decided in the 17th century to extend their town, they dug their city canals in semicircles around the old centre. On each canal or gracht were tree-lined streets on both sides of the water. But these proud Amsterdam citizens were quite the jokers. They called the first and paramount gracht after themselves: the Heerengracht: the gracht of the Heeren, the Masters of Amsterdam.

The second one they called the Keizersgracht: the gracht of the Emperors; and the third one, further from the centre, the Prinsengracht: the gracht of the Princes. In that way they indicated that the Heeren – being themselves – were more important than Emperors, who are (of course) more important than Princes. A kind of practical joke.

Balcony of Munsterland

In the 12th century the county of Tecklenburg emerged in the region that is now called the "Tecklenburger Land" in the western foothills of the Teutoburg Forest. It was annexed by the neighbouring county of Bentheim in 1263, and Tecklenburg still had a count until the 19th century.

Tecklenburg retained some of its medieval townscape to date. Main sites include the ruined castle (now serving as open air theatre during the Summer) and the Stadtkirche (the main, old church) including tombs of the dukes of Tecklenburg and others prominent in the history of the county and city.


Today, the city of Tecklenburg (from a perspective of size really not a city but a town) is a tourist destination.

The Language of Colour

Use colour wisely In some films, the directors have made choices about how the colour of their film will influence the atmosphere. How can you achieve the same effect when you're working in video? You need to consider colour before you shoot any video at all. Professional filmmakers have their set designers work with the cinematographer to choose a colour palette for the film. In some cases, this palette determines everything from the colour of the wallpaper in a room to the colour of an actor's tie. Working within a specific colour palette, you can give your film a more coherent look. Once you've shot your footage, you can affect the atmosphere of the film by choosing how colours will appear in the finished product. Using the colour filters available in editing software you can subtly alter the hue of your film and emulate certain processing techniques.

The Jordaan

The Jordaan is a district of the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Originally a working-class neighbourhood, the Jordaan has become one of the most expensive, upscale locations in the Netherlands. It is home to many art galleries, particularly for modern art, and is also dotted with speciality shops and restaurants.

Rembrandt spent the last years of his life in the Jordaan, on the Rozengracht canal. He was buried in the Westerkerk church, at the corner of Rozengracht and Prinsengracht, just beyond the Jordaan. The Anne Frank House, where Anne Frank went into hiding during World War II, is located on the edge of the Jordaan, on the Prinsengracht canal.

 

Aufenthalt in Munsterland

 

For a still shot you can always use a tripod or other flat surface to rest the camera on. Too many action shots in a row can get kind of overwhelming, so for quieter or more relaxed moments in your video you’ll want to throw in plenty of good old “picture frame” moments. The camera – along with your viewer – can just rest there, in place, and soak in what’s going on.

Wijck of Maastricht

Maastricht  is a city in the Netherlands. It is located in the southern part of the Dutch province of Limburg, of which it is the capital.

Maastricht is widely known as a city of history, culture, local folklore and education. The town is popular with tourists for shopping and recreation. The city has a large growing international student population.

Maastricht is situated on both sides of the Meuse river (Dutch: Maas) in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Belgian border and near the German border

Jewish quarter Amsterdam

The Jodenbreestraat  is a street in the centre of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

In the 17th century, many Jewish emigrants from Portugal and Spain settled in the neighborhood. They founded several synagogues.



The street served as a marketplace until the late 19th century. In 1893, the city government ordered the merchants to move their stalls to nearby Waterlooplein square.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, many residents of the Jewish neighourhood were taken away to the concentration camps and killed. After the war, the neighbourhood was left deserted and many of the houses began to fall apart and were eventually torn down.

 

Bookstore made in Heaven

What does a city do with an 800-year-old church with no congregation? Well, it could make like the Dutch and convert it into a temple of books. The old Dominican church in Maastricht was being used for bicycle storage not long ago, but thanks to a radical refurbishment by Dutch architects Merkx + Girod it has been turned into what could possibly be the most beautiful bookshop of all time. The Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen, which opened just before Christmas, retains the character and charm of the old church, while being fitted with a minimalist and modern interior design that overcomes any suggestion of fustiness. From the images you can find on the web you can see that it is a bookshop made in heaven.

Bouillon the one from Godfrey

The most famous of the Lords of Bouillon was Godfrey of Bouillon, a leader of the First Crusade and the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He sold Bouillon Castle to the Bishopric of Liège. The bishops started to call themselves dukes of Bouillon, and the town emerged as the capital of a sovereign duchy by 1678, when it was captured from the bishopric by the French army and given to the La Tour d'Auvergne family. The duchy was prized for its strategic location as "the key to the Ardennes" (as Vauban called it) and hence to France itself. It remained a quasi-independent protectorate, like Orange and Monaco, until 1795, when the Republican Army finally annexed it to France.

 

Amsterdam evening

  Filmtips:

Day for night, also known as nuit américaine ("American night"), is the name for cinematographic techniques used to simulate a night scene; such as using tungsten-balanced rather than daylight-balanced film stock or with special blue filters and also under-exposing the shot (usually in post-production) to create the illusion of darkness or moonlight.

Historically, infrared movie film was used to achieve an equivalent look with black-and-white film.

A great way to achieve this effect is to tune the white balance of the camera to a yellow source if there is no tungsten setting. Another way to make a more believable night scene is to underexpose the footage to the desired degree of night/darkness. This depends on the amount of light shown or believed to be in the given scene.

Whaling war

Internet activism (also known as online organizing, electronic advocacy, cyberactivism, E-campaigning, and E-activism) is the use of electronic communication technologies such as e-mail, the World Wide Web, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster communications by citizen movements and the delivery of local information to a large audience. Internet technologies are used for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing.

Burn-out

Open Images is an open media platform that offers online access to audiovisual archive material to stimulate creative reuse. Footage from audiovisual collections can be downloaded and remixed into new works. Users of Open Images also have the opportunity to add their own material to the platform and thus expand the collection.  Access to the material on Open Images is provided under the Creative Commons licensing model.

The 'remix' of film is nothing new.

From the very beginning of film history, films  often were semi-finished products: the films were sometimes cut by the exhibitor and other (own) material added to a new compilation. During the screening, the films were often explained by a 'explicateur' and set to music by a musician or orchestra. The ranking of the film  into a film program often was based on the preferences of the exhibitor.

The Theater (Hollandsche schouwburg)

The Hollandsche Schouwburg (Dutch Theater), where the Jews of Amsterdam had to report themselfs prior to their deportation to the Westerbork transit camp.

Opposite of the Hollandsche Schouwburg on the Plantage Middenlaan, there was a nursery. The nazis put the young children there in stead of in the theater. The Dutch set up a system to rescue children via the nursery. Children were secretly brought to Reformed Teacher Training College, two houses from the theater. They got there through the garden.

From there the children went into a backpack, shopping bag or laundry basket to be transported to Limburg and Friesland by train and tram. The children were not registered and removed their names from the records of the theater. Thanks to this plan about 600 children could be saved.

 

An American in Amsterdam

The musical film was a natural development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of lavish background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater; performers often treat their song and dance numbers as if there is a live

Shipping quarter amsterdam

Many people take the moving image for granted. They frequently assume that the images they see are a true and accurate portrayal of the events of “what is happening”. Of course this can be in part explained by the fact that the visual image is far more seductive than the written word. This is because we impose our own meaning on what we see. The idea that “I won′t believe it until I see it” is very significant here.

Treasure room

Video compression is needed to change our large video files into smaller video files so that they can be shared more easily and viewed online. Luckily for us, there's a whole world of video compression software to get our video ready for the web. There are compression software tools like Sorenson's Squeeze, Apple's Compressor 4 and MPEG Streamclip that handle video compression without the need for any other software. So whether you want your video looking its best on the Net, or playing loud and proud on an iPad, video compression software makes it happen.

Old and young artists in Amsterdam

A good, sturdy tripod will let you get smooth pan or tilt movements, but for any other movements you could benefit from a home-made steadicam or another type of weight. I like to use the pendulum metaphor – if you think about what makes a pendulum continue to swing, it’s because from a physics perspective, adding weight to the bottom of an object stabilizes it and lowers its center of gravity.

The simplest way to do this with a camera is to fold up or retract the legs of your tripod and keep the camera mounted on it. This gives you a good amount of weight beneath it and will prevent it from wobbling around to as great a degree as it would otherwise. Using your grips we learned earlier, your support hand goes around the legs of the tripod instead of resting underneath the camera. I’ve written some other tips for things you can use to achieve smooth camera movement.

 

Dutch winter

Collage in Film


Definition: Collage film is traditionally defined as, “A film that juxtaposes fictional scenes with footage taken from disparate sources, such as newsreels.” Combining different types of footage can have various implications depending on the director’s approach. Collage film can also refer to the physical collaging of materials onto filmstrips.

Applications: Historical and archival footage is often used in documentary films as a source of primary information, giving the viewer a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. Director and cinematographer Ken Burns is famous for his use inclusion of archival footage in his films.

To collage different types of footage exposes the hand of the editor in the production process. This awareness of human intervention detracts from a film’s objectivity, and requires the viewer to consciously interpret the connotations of the deliberately arranged footage.

the Home Movie Factory

For this you need a few rules. Otherwise it brings anarchy or the law of the one with the loudest voice . And too many rules is another death knell for creativity.

The Home Movie Factory shows that everyone is creative. Since adults no longer tinker and signs as they did as a child, does not mean they have lost their creative abilities.

The exhibit traveled elsewhere, including the Pompidou Center in Paris, before landing in a former match factory in Aubervilliers, France. “It’s kind of perfect because there are exterior streets within the factory, so we can do interior, exterior, like a real mini-studio, a back-lot,” Mr. Gondry said.

Esnoga Amsterdam synagogue

On December 12, 1670, the Sephardic Jewish community of Amsterdam acquired the site to build a synagogue. On August 2, 1675, the Esnoga was finished.

The inscription above the entrance is from Psalm 5:8: "In the abundance of Thy lovingkindness will I come into Thy house".
The building rests on wooden poles and the foundation vaults can be viewed by boat from the water underneath the synagogue. Around the main edifice a row of low buildings house the winter synagogue, offices and archives, homes of various officials, the rabbinate, a mortuary and famous Etz Hayim library.

During the 1955-1959 renovation, the former Etz Hayim seminary auditorium was redesigned as a winter synagogue with central heating and electric lighting.

The floor is covered with fine sand, in the old Dutch tradition, to absorb dust, moisture and dirt from shoes and to muffle the noise.

COOL

Short films are often used as the starting place for new filmmakers, but others use them as an art form unto themselves, allowing the filmmaker far more creative control than he or she would have over a feature. However, for those wanting to make a feature, it is commonly considered that one should make shorts first. Why is this?

Filmmaking is a skill that can only be learned by practice. Diving into your first feature before learning your craft on shorts would be like driving your Dad's expensive sports car on the motorway before you'd had any lessons on quiet back-roads. There has never been an easier time to make a short film. Everyone owns or knows someone with a video camera.

 

Cheese now and then

This video shows the famous cheese market of Alkmaar just after the end of World War II, as well as to day. The narration of the newsreel which is the first part of the film is in Dutch.  The second part has an English voice-over.

In the after war years I witnessed the introduction of color in the newsreels . Because of cost reasons the majority was still shot in black & white followed by a special item in full colour which leads to a a funny contrast as you can see.

About 100,000 people from all over the world visit the cheese market in Alkmaar every year. The oldest "ordinance on the cheesebearers" dates from june 17th 1593.

The Netherlands in miniature

Parallel editing (cross cutting) is the technique of alternating two or more scenes that often happen simultaneously but in different locations. If the scenes are simultaneous, they occasionally culminate in a single place, where the relevant parties confront each other.

Why use it? To add interest and excitement to an otherwise boring scene. Parallel editing is often applied to create suspense
  
Parallel Editing Cut
Let's say you have a scene where a villain is chasing the hero of the film. To spend the entire chase scene trying to keep both the hero and the villain in the frame at the same time will become very difficult and un-engaging after a while. A better way to approach this problem is through the use of parallel cutting. In this example, the scene would consist of several shots of the hero running in one direction, and some shots of the villain running in the same direction. Perhaps the hero looks back, out of frame, at his pursuer. At this point, the editor would insert of a shot of the villain. Both characters haven't share the same screen space, yet the audience still understands that one is chasing the other.

Making of SUSKIND film

Süskind

1942. In an attempt to keep a group of children from being sent to the death camps, the Jew Walter Süskind befriends SS man Aus der Fünten. When the latter finds out that Walter has been deceiving him and his affection was faked, the Nazi takes revenge on the Jew.

Nazi-Germany occupied The Netherlands from May 1940 till May 1945. In 1942, the Dutch Jews were told they would have to leave for Germany in order to work in labor camps. Some hundred people at a time, the Jews were packed into the “Hollandsche Schouwburg” (the “Dutch Theatre”) in Amsterdam. From here they were taken by train to the transit camp “Westerbork” in the North-East of Holland. Here the trains left – not for Germany as the deportees had thought – but for Poland.

 

Filming with highspeed

A high speed camera is a device used for recording fast moving objects . After recording, the images stored on the media can be played back in slow-motion.

High speed cameras can film up to a quarter of a million frames per second by running the film over a rotating prism or mirror instead of using a shutter, thus reducing the need for stopping and starting the film behind a shutter which would tear the film stock at such speeds. Using this technique one can stretch one second to more than ten minutes of playback time (super slow motion). The fastest cameras are generally in use in scientific research, military test and evaluation, and industry. .

A problem for high speed cameras is the needed exposure for the film, so one needs very bright light to be able to film at forty thousand frames per second.

All development in high speed cameras is now focused on digital video cameras which have many operational and cost benefits over film cameras.

Sink or Swim

Subjective camera: The camera is used in such a way as to suggest the point of view of a particular character.

• High- or low-angle shots indicate where she or he is looking from

• a panoramic or panning shot suggests she or he is surveying the scene

• a tracking shot or a hand-held camera shot signifies the character on motion.

Subjective shots like these also implicate the spectator into the narrative in that she or he identifies with the point of view.

French Sketch-book

Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties.


The term describes a range of filmmaking styles that are generally quite different from, and often opposed to, the practices of mainstream commercial and documentary filmmaking. Avant-garde is also used, for the films shots in the twenties in the field of history’s avant-gardes currents in France or Germany, to describe this work, and "underground" was used in the sixties, though it has also had other connotations. Today the term "experimental cinema" prevails, because it’s possible to make experimental films without the presence of any avant-garde movement in the cultural field.

Col du Galibier

Today information graphics surround us in the media, in published works both pedestrian and scientific, in road signs and manuals. They illustrate information that would be unwieldy in text form, and act as a visual shorthand for everyday concepts such as stop and go.

Modern maps, especially route maps for transit systems, use infographic techniques to integrate a variety of information, such as the conceptual layout of the transit network, transfer points, and local landmarks.

Traffic signs and other public signs rely heavily on information graphics, such as stylized human figures , icons and emblems to represent concepts such as yield, caution, and the direction of traffic.

Lac et cité: Aix-les-Bains

An axial cut is a type of jump cut, where the camera suddenly moves closer to or further away from its subject, along an invisible line drawn straight between the camera and the subject.  While a plain jump cut typically involves a temporal discontinuity , an axial cut is a way of maintaining the illusion of continuity.
An axial cut can be made with the use of a zoom lens, or physically moving the camera with a crane or camera dolly. The intervening footage is then removed while editing the film. Since footage is discarded, this technique works better for static shots. If action is required, several takes will be required to get the necessary footage.

Espana por favor

Originality is the aspect of created or invented works by as being new or novel, and thus can be distinguished from reproductions, clones, forgeries, or derivative works. An original work is one not received from others nor one copied from or based upon the work of others.. It is a work created with a unique style and substance. The term "originality" is often applied as a compliment to the creativity of artists, writers, and thinkers. The idea of originality as we know it was invented by Romanticism, with a notion that is often called romantic originality.

 

Turn around

Filmtips:



In cinema, butterfly is a methodology of lighting sets. When controlling light, grips use a variety of flags (black, opaque material), nets (one, two, or three layers of black, white, or semi translucent bobinette), and diffusion (translucent white materials of different densities). Generally, these are sewn onto frames of standard sizes, which are kept in racks or on carts where they are easily accessible. However, when a flag, net, or diffusion is needed to cover a larger area it is not practical to keep it built and sewn on the truck; thus, Butterflies.

Ocher village

User-generated content (UGC), refers to various kinds of media content, publicly available, that are produced by end-users.


The term user generated content entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles.  All digital media technologies are included, such as question-answer databases, digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis. In addition to these technologies, user generated content may also employ a combination of open source, free software, and flexible licensing or related agreements to further reduce the barriers to collaboration, skill-building and discovery.

Heart of Brussels

A webcam is a video camera that feeds its images in real time to a computer or computer network, often via USB, ethernet, or Wi-Fi.



Their most popular use is the establishment of video links, permitting computers to act as videophones or videoconference stations. This common use as a video camera for the World Wide Web gave the webcam its name. Other popular uses include security surveillance and computer vision and there are also uses on sites like video broadcasting services and for recording social videos .


Webcams are known for their low manufacturing cost and flexibility,  making them the lowest cost form of videotelephony. They have also become a source of security and privacy issues, as some built-in webcams can be remotely activated via spyware.

Tour de Vaucluse

 

Tracking shot/travelling shot/dollying shot: Terms used for a shot when the camera is being moved by means of wheels: On a dolly (a low tracking shot), in a car or even a train. The movement is normally quite fluid (except perhaps in some of the wider car chases) and the tracking can be either fast or slow. Depending on the speed, this shot has different connotations, eg: like a dream or trance if excessively slow bewildering and frightening if excessively frenetic
A tracking shot can go backwards, left to right, right to left.

 

Christmas-market Brussels

The use of available light may pose a challenger. The brightness and direction of the light is often not adjustable, except perhaps for indoor lighting. This will limit the selection of shutter speeds, and may require the use of shades or reflectors to manipulate the light. It can also influence the time, location, and even orientation of the shooting to obtain the desired lighting conditions.

Levels of ambient light are most frequently considered relative to additional lighting used as fill light, in which case the ambient light is normally treated as the key light. In some cases, ambient light may be used as a fill, in which case additional lighting provides the stronger light source. The relative intensity of ambient light and fill light is known as the lighting ratio, an important factor in calculating contrast in the finished image.

Manneke Pis

Gordes mountain village

This village can boast about being amongst one of the most beautiful villages in France. It has narrow cobbled streets which thread their way through tall houses; built against the rock, clinging onto its flanks and whispering the tales of a thousand legends.
Gordes is also proud of its castle firmly planted in its very core and which reminds the passer-by of a past rich with conquests but also marked with the sufferings of its inhabitants. Today, the castle acts as both a Town Hall and a Museum sheltering  the works of art of the painter Pol Mara.
Such a cultural tradition is kept alive to this day, during the summer time when many exhibits do take place in buildings marked by History, such as the St James almonry, the White Penitents chapel etc.

Gordes Municipality looks after its heritage with a rigorous love so that success does not spoil it.
Yes, indeed, Gordes is a highly recommended tourist destination, and thus because of its History, its exceptional geographical location, its high quality cultural activities as well as for its renowned hotels and restaurants.
Gordes must remain authenticable, maintain its Provençal traditions, and yet be open to a tourism, which knows to appreciate and respect.

Mechelen Belgium

The simplest transition between shots it is a straight cut, which is an abrupt transition between two shots. Another type of transition is called a fade, in which the overall value of the scene increases or decreases into a frame of just one color. For example, a fade to black may indicate the end of the sequence. When one scene fades out as another scene fades in this is a dissolve. These dissolves are used frequently to indicate a passage of time. For example, you might have a shot moving down a hall and then a dissolve as it moves into a different part of the building.Another type of transition is when one scene wipes across the frame and replaces the previous seen. Wipes can move in any direction and open one side to the other or they can start in the center and move out or the edge of the frame and move in. Wipes are very noticeable and best not used often

near Brussels see video

Lisboa Portugal

A soundbite is an audiolinguistic and social communications phenomenon whose nature was recognized in the late 20th century, helped by people such as Marshall McLuhan. It is characterized by a short phrase or sentence that deftly captures the essence of what the speaker is trying to say.

Soundbites are a natural consequence of people placing ever greater emphasis on summarizing ever-increasing amounts of information in their lives.News media in particular cherish soundbites. Reporters agree that the best news footage contains at least one soundbite.  Soundbites are useful to help guide footage editors focus on parts of dialogue that help advance the overall message.

Black box/Music and Lights

In science and engineering, a black box is a device, system or object which can be viewed solely in terms of its input, output and transfer characteristics without any knowledge of its internal workings, that is, its implementation is "opaque" (black). Almost anything might be referred to as a black box: a transistor, an algorithm, or the human mind.

Fourviere hill Lyon

Transitions blend two shots together, rather than simply joining them end to end. Often transitions are used to imply a passage of time.

A fade occurs when the picture gradually turns to a single color, usually black, or when a picture gradually appears on screen. Fade ins generally occur at the beginning of a film or act, while fade outs are typically found at the end of a film or

Like the fade, a dissolve involves gradually changing the visibility of the picture. However, rather than transitioning from a shot to a color, a dissolve is when a shot changes into another shot gradually. Dissolves, like cuts, can be used to create a link between two different objects, a man telling a story, and a visual of his story, for instance.

Projections

Since the birth of sound film, virtually all film projectors in commercial movie theaters project at a constant speed of 24 frame/s. This speed was chosen for both financial and technical reasons. There are some specialist format which project at higher rates, often 48 frame/s.

It is possible to view the black space between frames and the passing of the shutter by the following technique:

Close your eyelids, then periodically rapidly blink open and closed. If done fast enough you will be able to randomly "trap" the image between frames, or during shutter motion. This will not work with television due to the persistence of the phosphors nor with LCD or DLP light projectors due to the continuity of image, although certain color artifacts may appear with some digital projection technologies.

Haute alpes

A road movie is a film genre in which the main character or characters leave home to travel from place to place. They usually leave home to escape their current lives.

The genre has its roots in spoken and written tales of epic journeys, such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid. The on-the-road plot was used at the birth of American cinema but blossomed in the years after World War II, reflecting a boom in automobile production and the growth of youth culture.

Dommeldal near Eindhoven

A natural history film or wildlife film is a documentary film about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on film taken in their natural habitat. Sometimes they are about wild animals, plants, or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema medium. The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series.

 

 

Sagunto

A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera (the art and science of which is known as cinematography). The title is generally equivalent to director of photography (DP ), used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image. The cinematographer is sometimes also the camera operator. The term cinematographer has been a point of contention for some time now; some professionals insist that it only applies when the director of photography and camera operator are the same person, although this is far from being uniformly the case. To most, cinematographer and director of photography are interchangeable terms.

City of Lights

In cinematography, the use of light can influence the meaning of a shot. For example, film makers often portray villains that are heavily shadowed or veiled, using silhouette.



Techniques involving light include backlight(silhouette), and under-lighting(light across a character form

Roman Lyon

Cinematography is an art form unique to motion pictures. Although the exposing of images on light-sensitive elements dates back to the early 19th century,[1] motion pictures demanded a new form of photography and new aesthetic techniques.

In the infancy of motion pictures, the cinematographer was usually also the director and the person physically handling the camera. As the art form and technology evolved, a separation between director and camera operator emerged. With the advent of artificial lighting and faster (more light sensitive) film stocks, in addition to technological advancements in optics and new techniques such as color film and widescreen, the technical aspects of cinematography necessitated a specialist in that area.

Cinematography was key during the silent movie era - no sound apart from background music, no dialogue - the films depended on lighting, acting and set.

Italian lights

Lighting Digital Video



White balance. As the DV standard has a low color-resolution, it is important to control and know how to filter and white balance the image on set. It has been proved difficult to adjust color in post with a good result, although it has been done. Regarding lighting, be aware of the possibilities the white balance setting on the camera have, and use gels on the lamps, and sometimes on windows to create a neutral image.


In return for these shortcomings, DV-cameras can be more light-sensitive than most film stocks, and therefore require less light intensity, to give the same image. (PD150 is about 320ASA versus Kodak's 50D's 50ASA. One would need about 8 times more light, to get the same image at the same F-stop). Although high ASA film is available.

Markets of Lyon

Match cut: The exact opposite of a jump cut within a scene. These cuts make sure that there is a spatial-visual logic between the differently positioned shots within a scene. thus, where the camera moves to, and the angle of the camera, makes visual sense to the spectator. Eyeline matching is part of the same visual logic: the first shot shows a character looking at something off-screen, the second shot shows what is being looked at. Match cuts then are also part of the seamlessness, the reality effect, so much favoured by Hollywood.