With the rise of digital effects, are cinematographers in control of the image anymore?
Perhaps we should have known when Avatar won the Best Cinematography Academy Award that things were shifting.
No longer is this role just a person with a camera, but a lot of times it’s a team dropping in digital effects and messing with the lighting in post. When more and more effects are brought in, like inserting backgrounds, performers wearing mo-cap, and other things, cinematography begins to lose shape.
Two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski is worried about where the job is going—and how little cinematographers are in control. On Monday at the NAB Show in Vegas, Kaminski said, “Cinematography is the art of light and shadows, visual metaphors and nuance. That is disappearing. It will evolve and come back. But right now [there are not enough young DPs] using cinematography to express themselves.”
So where did these comments come from?
Author: Jason Hellerman
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
