Author: Daniel

Terminology

• Hard Light and Soft Light
  These terms refer to the quality of the light being emitted.  Hard light has a sharp edge and creates harsh shadows.  Soft light has a diffuse edge and tends to wrap around things, creating subtler shadows.  Hard light tends to be dramatic while soft light tends to be flattering.  Generally speaking, large light sources (or lights close to the subject) create soft light and small light sources (or lights far away from the subject) create hard light.

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• Spot and Flood
  Spot and flood are the two extremes of a light’s “throw.”  Spot describes light that is concentrated in a small area, generally with a well-defined edge.  Flood light is spread over a wide area, generally with a soft edge.  Some lights, like fresnels, are focusable, allowing you to go from spot to flood.
• Contrast Ratio
  Contrast ratio describes the amount of light in two different areas of a shot – generally, the two sides of the subject’s face.  For example, a contrast ratio of 4:1 on the subject’s face would have four times as much light on the key side as the fill side.
• High Key and Low Key
  These terms are related to the overall look of a shot, in terms of its contrast between light and dark areas.  A high contrast shot with dark shadows is low key and a low contrast shot is high key.

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• Key
  This is the main light illuminating an actor in a scene.  It should be placed in front of the subject and off to one side, creating shadows on half of the face.  
• Fill
  The fill light softens the shadows created by the key light and adds illumination to the side of the face not illuminated by the key light.  As such, it should be placed in front of the subject on the opposite side from the key.  The fill light should be set to an equal or lower intensity to the key – if it is greater, it becomes the key.
• Rim/Back/Hair
  The back light is the third light in a classic “three point” setup.  It is placed behind the subject, generally on the same side as the key.  The back light is used to create an edge of light on the subject and provide visual separation between the subject and the background.

• Bounce
  Bounce lighting is reflected off a surface before hitting the subject.  Lighting can be bounced off of a reflector, a white card, a wall, the ceiling, or just about anything else.
• Cookie
  An object placed in front of a light that creates a pattern or shape.

• Practical
  Practical lights are the lights that are visible in the scene – for example, a lamp in the background of a shot.  You can place practical lights in a shot to correspond with the off-camera lights you are using to make a scene look as though it is light naturally.

• Ambient
  The light that exists in a space before it is lit is its ambient light.  Light coming in through a window is one example.

Three Important Points

• Three point lighting describes the fundamental lighting setup – a key and fill light in front of the subject and a back light behind, forming a triangle around the actor
• The key light can be on either side of the actor; it is whichever light is stronger
• The fill light softens the shadows created by the key light and helps to determine the overall contrast ratio
• The back light creates definition and separation between the subject and the background
• Generally speaking, lights should be placed off to the side and a bit higher than the subject
• To create a silhouette, the back light should be the most intense

When you are setting up three point lighting, you have a few factors to consider.  How harsh should the shadows be?  How intense should the back light be?  Which side should the back light be on?  These are largely a matter of personal preference and can change from one setup to another.  I personally think that the back light looks best on the opposite side from the key, but many lighting diagrams show the opposite.  The important thing is to be conscious of how these choices affect your scene.

Contrast Ratios

Contact ratio is incredibly important because it can really help establish the mood of a piece.  You will often see a high contrast ratio on highly dramatic or tense films.  Low contrast lighting is more flattering than high contrast lighting – it makes skin look soft and even.

• Average contrast ratio is somewhere around 4:1
• In a shot with high key lighting, the faces of the actors might be lit with a contrast ratio of 3:1 or 2:1
• Low key lighting might use a contrast ratio of 6:1, 10:1, or higher – the greater the contrast ratio, the more dramatic the lighting

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Lighting Simulator

Virtual Lighting Studio

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Written and directed by Steven Spielberg
Estimated $20M budget
Science fiction/adventure

Alien (1979)
Directed by Ridley Scott, written by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett
$8.4M budget
Science fiction/horror

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Production Design

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Character Design

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Camera Work

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Lighting

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Production Challenge – Alien vs. Close Encounters

You will be put into a group that is either Alien or Close Encounters themed. Spend the next twenty minutes filming a shot (or a few shots) in the style of that film. Your goal is to imply something mysterious or threatening happening offscreen and you should capture between 30 and 60 seconds of footage. Each group will be given a single LED light with adjustable color temperature, but you can also use other lights that you may find. Film the shot or shots on your phone and send them to me at dan014@bucknell.edu.

Framing

Extreme long shot – panoramic view of environment, character is small in the frame

Long shot – character’s full body is visible, as is the environment

Medium – character is seen roughly from the waist up

Close-up – the character’s face fills most of the frame

Extreme close-up – a small part of the character’s body fills the frame

Focus

Shallow depth of field – only the subject is in focus

Deep depth of field – the subject and the background are in focus

Separation – definition between the subject and the background, enhanced by lighting and distance

In a rack focus shot, the focus changes between the subject and the background or between two multiple points of interest in the frame.

Angles

Low angle – the camera looks up at the subject from below

High angle – the camera looks down at the subject from above

Perspective/point of view – the camera sees what a character in the scene would see

Canted/dutch angle – the subject is angled in the frame

Cinematography principles

Rule of thirds – placing important objects or characters along the “thirds” marks of a frame

Leading lines – visual elements in the frame draw the eye to important information

Symmetry – symmetry can have a number of effects on the composition of a frame, but it is always deliberate; it can also be deliberately broken

Insert/cutaway shot – footage of what the character is looking at off-screen

Eye line – the direction a characters eyes are looking off screen – in a dialog sequence, these should match

180 degree rule – this is the basic principle that characters in dialog should stay on opposite sides of the screen during a sequence; if you imagine a line between the characters, the camera should stay on one side of that line

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One of the most common cinematic techniques is the shot/reverse shot, in which one character is shown, then the character they are addressing. For a shot/reverse shot sequence to make sense, the 180 degree rule should be followed.

[gdoc link=”https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRWOXJHDGEh2YoQmOAZt1fy4BedkQryMTaSB1sIUoeTBRO43Xf5TLwNTD13HJSOkhiFaYXXYD9ezR1C/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000″ height=”800″]

https://youtu.be/g6PDcBhODqo

General Information

Cast – director, producer, cinematographer, editor, actors, etc.
Background info – year of release, studio, country of origin
Category – Genre, sub-genre
Context – relevant cultural or individual circumstances of production

Auteur theory is the idea that the artistic qualities of a film can be primarily attributed to an individual, usually the director. Since filmmaking is an inherently collaborative process, auteur theory is not always applicable.

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Literary Qualities

Characters – Who appears in the story? Who are the protagonists and antagonists?
Character arcs – How do the characters change throughout the film?
Perspective – Whose point of view do we experience the story through?
Setting – Where and when do the events of the film take place?
Plot, conflict, and subplots – What happens?
Narrative structure – How is the story shown?
Theme – What does it all mean?
Tone – How does it make you feel?

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Formal Elements

Cinematography – framing, angle, movement, depth-of-field, lighting, etc.
Color grading – stylizing the image in post-production
Editing – continuity, parallel, montage, cross-cutting, transitions, etc.
Audio – diagetic and non-diagetic sound
Acting – realism and style of acting
Effects – special effects, practical and digital visual effects, compositing

Mise-en-scène is a term referring to the arrangement of everything in the cinematic frame. Mise-en-scène includes the set, props, costumes, actors, and lighting.

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Analysis

Auteur – analysis of a film through the broader work of its director
Cognitive – use of psychology and neuroscience to understand how an audience interacts with cinema
Formalism – study of a film’s construction
Ideological – uncovering the hidden messages or politics of a film
Semiotics – study of the ways a film uses signs and symbols to function as a sort of language
Structuralism – analysis of a film’s narrative and character tropes or conventions

Early Proto-Science Fiction
The earliest ancestors of science fiction contain many of the tropes we see in classic examples of the genre – space travel, alien creatures, robots, etc. However, early proto-science fiction is not really concerned with science itself – the “sci-fi” aspects typically have magical or mystical origins.

Ramayana – Indian epic poem (5th – 4th century BCE)
• Flying machines
• Advanced weaponry

A True History – Lucian of Samosata (2nd century)
• Travel to the moon
• Unusual life forms
• War between the armies of the moon and sun
• Also considered an early example of satire

One Thousand and One Nights – Arabic folk tale collection (largely compiled 8th to 12th century)
• Description of homes on the moon
• Space travel
• Unusual alien creatures
• Utopian societies
• Robots and automata

Tale of the Bamboo Cutter – Japanese folk tale (10th century)
• Princess from the moon raised by earthlings
• Lunar travel
• Aliens with superior technology
• Recently adapted by Studio Ghibli as The Tale of Princess Kaguya

European Medieval Literature (5th-15th century)
• Few examples of space travel or alien creatures
• Suspended animation, robots, and automata feature in some romances
• Advanced technology in Chaucer’s The Squire’s Tale

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Post-Enlightenment
The scientific revolution also ushered in the works that could be considered the first actual science fiction stories.

Somnium – novel by Johannes Kepler (1634)
• Kepler was an astronomer and mathematician
• The story features Kepler’s real-life mentor, Tycho Brahe
• Lunar daemons transport humans to the moon
• Humans must deal with extreme cold and lack of oxygen
• Humans are sedated for space travel
• Deceleration before lunar entry
• Scientific details such as the size of the moon and its distance from the Earth and descriptions of an eclipse
• It was all a dream!

Frankenstein – novel by Mary Shelley (1818)
• Gothic horror tradition
• Mad scientist
• Experimentations with advanced technology
• Scientific progress as a moral question
• No aliens, but often cited as the first “real” science fiction story
• Shelley wrote other early science fiction pieces as well, including the post-apocalyptic novel The Last Man

The novels of Jules Verne (1828-1905)
• Science-oriented adventure stories
• Incorporation of cutting edge or future technology
• Imagined technology is explained in detail
• Major examples include Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and From the Earth to the Moon

The Novels of H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
• Uses science and technology to comment on society
• Technology is not explained in great detail
• The “moral” is more important than the science
• Major examples include The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine

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The First Science Fiction Films
“Primitive” films – those created during the first decade or so after the invention of the motion picture camera – were short, usually less than one minute. They most often captured simple scenes of daily life or slapstick comedy and were considered novel diversions. This began to change in 1902 with the first science fiction epic.

La Voyage dans la Lune – short film directed by Georges Méliès (1902)
• Melies was a stage magician and his training is apparent in his use of optical effects and the detached framing of the images
• Méliès was among the first to see the narrative potential in the medium
• Méliès is considered the father of movie visual effects
• Unusually long, at around twelve minutes
• Production took three months and cost around 10,000 francs
• The film features scientific debate and planning, space travel in a rocket, the lunar environment, and alien creatures
• The film was hugely popular and widely pirated

(T)he most heart-warming thing about Méliès is that he was both an experimental film maker and a people’s film maker.

Norman McLaren

Aelita: Queen of Mars – directed by Yakov Protazanov (1924)
• One of the first feature-length science fiction films
• A young man travels to Mars via rocket ship after a mysterious message is received
• The queen of Mars falls in love with the protagonist after she sees him through a telescope
• It was all a dream!

Metropolis – directed by Fritz Lang (1927)
• Set in a dystopian cityscape
• Features a humanlike robot that impersonates one of the human characters
• No aliens, but a huge impact – one of the great silent films
• Pioneering special effects work, including extensive miniatures

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on2H8Qt5fgA

Pulp
In the 1920s and 30s, science fiction began to reach a new audience through “pulp” magazines – inexpensive periodicals with entertaining stories and salacious cover art. During this time, serial science fiction films began to appear in theaters as well, offering high action and cliffhanger endings to patrons seeking escapist entertainment.

Flash Gordon – serial films directed by Frederick Stephani (1936)
• Serials were short films, screened weekly in theaters, that told a continuous story
• A planet is on a collision course with Earth
• An eccentric doctor builds a rocket, hoping to avert catastrophe
• Strange creatures and humanlike aliens are encountered on the approaching planet

The War of the Worlds – radio drama directed by Orson Welles (1938)
• Adapted from the novel by H. G. Wells and performed by Welle’s Mercury Theatre
• Keeps the general premise of the original novel, but changes the setting and narrative framing
• Aired as a Halloween special on October 30
• Introduced as a dramatization at the beginning of the program, but presented as a news bulletin, causing some widespread confusion and panic

Buck Rogers – serial films directed by Ford Beebe and Saul Goodkind (1939)
• Two soldiers are placed in suspended animation after a dirigible crash and awaken 500 years later
• The world of 2440 is ruled by an evil dictator
• Buck travels to Saturn to enlist help in the fight against evil on Earth
• Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were both played by Buster Crabbe

https://youtu.be/dJKcXFI8s3Y

The Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials both featured “crawling” opening titles that summarized the previous episodes – these would become the inspiration for Star Wars‘ iconic opening text crawl.

The Golden Age
By the 1940s, science fiction was beginning to grow up. Writers such as Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, L. Ron Hubbard, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov began to publish groundbreaking works, which helped legitimize the genre. This helped propel the production of a number of notable science fiction films in the 1950s.

The Day the Earth Stood Still – directed by Robert Wise (1951)
• A humanoid alien and his intimidating robot companion travel to Earth in a flying saucer to warn humanity of the dangers of atomic power
• Earth is invited to join an interplanetary federation – the alternative is destruction
• Klaatu barada nikto!

The War of the Worlds – directed by Byron Haskin (1953)
• Also adapted from Wells’ novel
• The setting, characters, and appearance of the aliens was changed for the film
• The film has religious aspects not present in the book
• The spacecraft have a unique design that set it apart from the flying saucers seen in films like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet

Forbidden Planet – directed by Fred Wilcox (1956)
• A crew is sent to investigate the fate of a group of scientists living on a remote planet called Altair
• A highly advanced alien civilization called the Krell once thrived on the planet
• The long-extinct aliens became too powerful for their own good

Robby the Robot became a science fiction icon after Forbidden Planet and has had cameos a number of films and television shows – including The Twilight Zone, The Addams Family, Columbo, and Gremlins.

The Blob – directed by Irvin Yeaworth (1958)
• A meteorite carries an alien jelly to Earth
• The blob consumes everything it touches, but is eventually defeated with cold
• Steve McQueen’s feature debut

Plan 9 From Outer Space – directed by the amazing Ed Wood (1959)
• Independent b-movie wherein aliens resurrect dead humans to stop them from creating a doomsday machine
• This was Bela Lugosi’s last film – he died before production began and unrelated footage shot by Wood was incorporated
• Full of continuity errors, obvious effects shots, and wooden dialog
• Worst movie ever?