Paper short abstract:

This paper considers cinematographers' skilled vision and cultural approaches to lighting the face, eyes and skin in fiction cinema - using ethnographic research, pedogogic praxis on gender and diversity and recent diasporic and world cinema examples.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers cinematographers' skilled vision and cultural approaches to lighting skin, face and eyes in fiction cinema. I use interviews from ethnographic research and recent diasporic and world cinema examples positioned against the historical mainstream (black-and-white and colour). This builds on my prior research on cinematographers' light as expertise, expression, material and energy. Whilst lighting may need to be "beautiful" for commercial purposes, it is predominantly intended to reveal and conceal dramatic intent and to enhance a chronotope (time-space frame) underlying film narratives. There is an effort of light and an "afterimage" audiences carry when finding this light and dark (from the subtle pastel to the highly contrasted) image striking and memorable. The human facial presence "as light" gives agency to the character being played and highlights the actors' performance and movement / choreography. Cinematographers draw on a vocabulary of light in the studio and on location (with natural and artificial light) on different types of films. I consider their visualisation, planning, testing and influences as well as serendipitous discoveries working with actors and personal socio-cultural artistic intent. Krista Thompson writes on African diasporic expression: 'The use of light produced though visual technologies generates distinct aesthetic, synesthetic, physiological, and phenomenological effects, creating and denying types of viewership in particular performative and spatial contexts'(2015 :141). The paper draws on years of ethnographic research with feature film cinematographers as well as my pedagogic praxis around gender and diversity when working with cinematography students on the expressivity of lighting and faces.