Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

202 FOCUS FILM COURSE. Part Two. No. 6 THE CAMERAMAN By ANDREW BUCHANAN Cameramen are fairly numerous, but those combining creative ability with technical knowledge are comparatively rare. Think of all the friends who show you their snaps after holidays. “That’s where we stayed. You can’t see it very well, but ...” “Here’s May with the baby — the light wasn’t too good that day.” Occasionally you are shown snaps revealing picture sense, fine detail, and dramatic qualities, but usually you have to sit transfixed, staring at distant, dim, drab views of vital interest only to the photographer and his family. So it is with film cameramen. Manywili bring back the right material shot in the wrong way. A few will capture first-class imaginative material. In film production, save newsreel work, a cameraman receives instructions from the director who knows, or should know, the exact position from which a scene must be taken. That is why a director without full knowledge of the camera’s capabilities and limitations works at a serious disadvantage. The cameraman will carry out the director’s wishes regarding angle, nature of lighting, and general set-up unless, of course, such instructions are technically impossible to obtain. Maybe cameraman and director will work together to select the best positions, but it remains the cameraman’s responsibility to secure first class photographic results. In modern studio production the cameraman is more accurately described as the lighting expert, for he is primarily concerned with lighting a scene and the characters appearing in it, leaving the manipulation of the camera to an operator. Lighting is among the most difficult of all jobs in film-making. First, a scene has to be lit so that it shall appear as in normal daylight, or sunlight, or lamp light. Then the characters must be equally normally lit. The audience must not be conscious of any concentration of light upon this or « that person, even though such " concentration probably exists. Moreover, a character must never walk out of the light. Wherever he moves, the illumination must be even, as in an ordinary day-lit room. Consequently, whilst batteries of lamps provide an overall light, the rays of others follow people wherever they go in a scene. Even that is not all. A character may walk out of one scene into another, but the latter may not be filmed for weeks after the former. In the finished film the character’s move from one scene to the next will be immediate, and so the lighting expert must be sure that even though the scene has changed, the lighting of that character is the same. Stars can be filmed only after exhaustive camera tests have been made, and lighting formulae for each evolved. The cameraman is an artist modelling in light and shade, just as, in his different medium, the sculptor models in clay. Sometimes artificial lighting is introduced into natural exterior scenes to strengthen the daylight, or so that light can be controlled and directed on certain characters. This is particularly difficult work, for no evidence of artificial light must be apparent. A top-ranking lighting expert has almost certainly worked his way up from, perhaps, being a clapper-boy, focus-puller, or general assistant, and became an operator before rising one step higher. Now the work of the I operator is of supreme importance, for he is the man responsible for the actual movement of the camera — keeping characters in the centre of the screen regardless of whether they are dawdling or rushing about ; he has to follow them smoothly, track up to them, or withdraw imperceptibly, making sure both they and the background remain sharply in focus. This