Paper short abstract:

Cinematography is a practice of enchantment and making material which requires skilled vision and expertise in visualization in storytelling. Traditional light effects used to direct attention and are changing rapidly within contemporary feature film cinematography knowledge, ecology and industry.

Paper long abstract:

Cinematography is a practice of enchantment and making material which requires skilled vision (Grasseni, 2009) and expertise in visualization in storytelling. Light effects can be used to 'direct attention, reveal shape and form, establish environment, characterize objects, develop compositional and story relationships and maintain visual continuity. Light orients space, creates tactile feeling through embellishing objects and faces, and orients time, the day, the season and the period' (Greenhalgh, 2003). The human facial presence "as light" gives agency to the character being played and highlights actors' performance, gestures and choreography. Krista Thompson writes 'The use of light produced through visual technologies generates distinct aesthetic, synesthetic, physiological, and phenomenological effects; creating and denying types of viewership in particular performative and spatial context' (2015). This presentation draws on ethnographic research with feature film cinematographers and encapsulates my experience as a cinematographer and teacher of cinematography students of diverse cultural heritage in London. I question traditional cinematographic positioning (mainly derived from Western painting) on the lighting of different skin tones and gendering, and new ecological ways of using reflectance methods. I use the work of cinematographers Christopher Doyle, Ed Lachman and Bradford Young as examples and argue that some of the writing on attention related to cinema could be of wider use in anthropology (Jonathon Beller, 2014; Peter Doran, 2017; Adrian Ivakhiv, 2013; Laura Marks, 2000).