in 1932, Edward hopper, black and white, interesting that he could play around with colours then
What makes an image cinematic ? • suggests story/narrative (dramatic moment like John Martin) something is happening or might happen in future. iconography, scenes already happened. first person perspective? in order to reflect own. embody characters like in painting as well. empathising. painting should also let us feel emotion like sympathy fear etc.
colour , composition and perspective , light , the subject (how they handle)
Colour Virtorio storaro (colour theorist but also cinematographer) (usuallly film makers don’t look into colour and art history as much )
lifting colour from painters. red: evolutionary quite involved. purple: expensive dye hard to get. culturally different. Cadbury chocolate. Red: raw and primal emotions. anger danger passion love. Black: death, polar opposite is true in many culture .
wassily Kandinsky. yellow: asserted different things to other theorists. sickly colour / human nature with madness / violent raving lunancy. sin city. kill bill. hazardous - like warning signs.
red: striking, mature, associate mark rothko with red. fearful , heighten tension. danger. we need to talk about Kevin.
black: guernica picasso. anti war piece. depiction of bombing of guernica in world war. chaotic scene. able to single out. black was something burnt out. silence of black is silence of death
in cinema: b&w , intimate. make own decisions. la haine
composition and perspective. Close up : Jenny saville . intimately connected to character. damage on face. Invasive. passion of Joan of arc. almost all close up. unusual. framed in 4:3 ratio. like in silent cinema. usually pulp fiction wide. mid shot. most information on screen. Tarantino : dialogue. wide shot: turner: the fighting temeraire. the landscape itself become a character in our story. protagonist. warm ? reminds us of trips, etc. environment as an antagonist, the matrix. Rauschenberg. - taxi driver film . film spins, extremely influenced by Rauschenberg. almost like looking at canvas: flattened.
Light: stolen from painters. make paintings that were so cinematic. Rembrandt. using light in the way they did. start bring characters to life. sculpt faces. single out important things. Gordon Willis : master of using darkness, shadows. unusual technique at the time, underexposed. to highlight certain characters. narrative differences. chiaroscuro (light and dark contrast) tenebrism (even more exaggerated effect, spotlight . very dark. michaelangelo. ) used a lot in cinema. under the skin. bordering on fine art/ moving image. film noir: strong history with light. tenebrism buy inverted. spotlight in background . silhouette. extremely scary bc can’t see face. Edward hopper. was able to tackle different lighting techniques. light when in the dark . artificially lit . and sunlight. diffferent times in the day. composition and draw out drama. the space feels really melancholic.
Terrance malick. days of heaven. lifted from hopper and literally from his paintings. production was delayed. one of cinematographers dropped out bc they want to film in magic hour : twilight ? .
the subject : expressionism Francis bacon (skews perspective, contorted. = dreamlike. triptych: seem familiar in body but other areas that are unsettling. cause fear. like in under the skin) , David Lynch Unfamiliar and strange scene. manipulated characters. abstract expressionism: Jackson pollock. push boundaries and be creative. embrace of the serpent . hallucinatory dream sequence. 2001 space odyssey. enter the void dr gasped noe (drug) minimalism. monotone / matte / subtle tone. Giorgio Morandi. michaelangelo Antoni Red Desert (first film in colour. many monotone) Kind of unreal . Painting fruit grey.
Steve McQueen. fine art films . 12 years a slave . ‘Hunger’ characters often isolated. sometimes no dialogue. very minimalist. mundane actions. can help us make up own mind about characters. Lynette yiadom boakye in minimalism like in mcqeeuns characters. fill a character with past and might go next. in cinema get told what to think quite a lot. make up own mind for her characters. cinematographers take inspiration from paintings. dealing with fiction, build characters out of thor narratives. starting to work back the other way.
