- This topic has 18 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 2 months, 1 week ago by
.
-
Topic
-
Hi Roger,
I was wondering what you believe to be the best source of inspiration for camera positioning and focal length besides other films. I know you mentioned in an interview that you have resorted to particular painters for room composition inspiration, but can anything take the place of an actual film? I find myself stuck trying to think about where to place the camera sometimes and I feel like it’s because I haven’t seen enough movies or observed enough examples of similar instances. Best regards.
-
Replies
-
I can’t find the post at the moment but a few months ago I asked Roger a question on practicing cinematography.
He gave me a great but of advice to see and study paintings and go to art museums and observe paintings. Something along those lines.
Over the past few months I’ve visited the national gallery in Dublin many times and I also spent a few days in the national gallery in London, every time I go to each museum I try to understand the compositions of what paintings I like as much as I can, see how to light is interpreted, how the painter stages their subjects, use of colour, where focus lies and where my eyes are drawn. I try to fully take the painting in and understand it as deeply as I can than I try to implement what I learn from paintings and apply it to my own work.
My own personal work has improved greatly since I started studying paintings. My films look better now than when I was primarily studying films, television photography for composition.
Not to devalue the composition of images in film, television or photography but much more work (usually) goes into a painting than a shot in film. It takes longer to produce a painting so more care and thought (again, usually) goes into them.
I don’t pay and attention to modern art, just classical paintings.
I have and would also recommend studying the work of still photographers. Alex Webb, Harry Gruyaert, Georgieo Pinkhassov stand out for their color work. Photography is a different medium and it is hard to use such complex compositions as Alex often does in a film frame. Films are made in cuts and complex compositions could lead to sensory overload. But their work is inspirational nonetheless.
Edvard Munch, George Bellows, George Inness, Oscar Kokoschka, William Blake, Henry Fiseli, L. S. Lowry, Wassily Kandinsky, Otto Dix and more.
I find a bit curious the fact that your shots are famous for their natural look, but you often mention among your influences expressionist and abstract painters , that are not naturalistic by definition. A guess is it an influence on istinct and emotions, more than on visual style?
Curios? You answer yourself. I find inspiration from being emotionally engaged with an image rather than admiring it for its technical representation of what might be considered ‘real’.
By the way kayill, I don’t mean to put down modern art in any way. Its just not what I like to enjoy.
Curios? You answer yourself. I find inspiration from being emotionally engaged with an image rather than admiring it for its technical representation of what might be considered ‘real’.
Yes, I understand the concept, it’s a deep and personal level of appreciation of art. I find something close to that in the abstract shots of Tarkovskij (the ponds of water in Stalker, for example). Perhaps I don’t understand exactly their meaning (at least not at the first time, for sure) but i’m sure that they are trying to tell something. The problem is understanding what (and that’s the problem with contemporary art, for me: it leaves too much to the viewer’s interpretation and feeling, at a point that everything – also a banana on a wall – can turn in a work of art because of…reasons?).
Luca, you’re not supposed to understand why Tarkovsky creates his images or the reasonings behind them, they’re meant to be felt and not analysed.
The image serves as a form of unction that emerges not from Tarkovsky’s intellectual mind, not from a film school textbook, but rather from the depths of his heart and soul. Rather than a calculated product of thought, it flows from an inner well of feeling and intuition, capturing something deeply personal and transcendent beyond mere intellect. For Tarkovsky, the image is less a concept to be analysed and more a sacred expression of his soul’s vision, resonating with a sense of mystery and emotional truth.
Whatever way Tarkovsky’s images resonate with you is the correct understanding of them, not Tarkovskys. Yours.
The same goes for any art really, often I go to see Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ and when I do I don’t try to understand Caravaggio’s choices, rather I try to understand why what he’s made resonates with me. What it is about it that I like, what my own meanings of the work are. Whether or not I can articulate those thoughts doesn’t matter. Its my experience with it that does.
What else is there to art except for your own interpretations of it and how it makes you feel? That’s the whole point of making and experiencing it.
“If you look for meaning, you’ll miss everything that happens” – Andrei Tarkovsky
I understand your point, but i have a tendency to analyze thing to understand their “true” meaning, no matter how mundane the thing (it may be a Tarkovsky’s frame or something written on a wall or just a scribble by my son), that’s just how my brain works. Perhaps i’m a bit too rational, but to me it’s more important to understand the meaning of something for its author than my feeling of it. I teach maths and science, i can’t avoid that! ah ah!
I completely understand where you’re coming from Luca. I used to be the same way but I managed to make myself think differently about these things.
I suppose its harder to stop thinking like that depending on how technically minded you are but I’m not sure.
I completely understand where you’re coming from Luca. I used to be the same way but I managed to make myself think differently about these things. I suppose its harder to stop thinking like that depending on how technically minded you are but I’m not sure.
It seems one of those commercials for people that need help about some struggle in life. Once i was like you, then i changed my life! You can too! Ah ah, just kidding, but it made me smile! 🙂
Some expressions are conceptual, the banana taped to the wall or Oldenburg’s sculpture of everyday objects. Some things are spiritual, like the ponds in Stalker. And I’m not talking about god here, although you could take it that way if you want.
I’m a bit skeptical about conceptual art since it’s basically up the artist to decide what is art and what is no, at a point that everything (a blank frame included) with a title on it becomes “art”. In a famous italian comedy sketch Alberto Sordi’s wife seated on a chair to rest a little in a modern art museum and turists begun taking pictures of her since they couldn’t tell her from the actual conceptual work. It sums up my consideration for it, but i guess it’s my own limit, i understand that it’s a form of art that many people actually understand and appreciate. To me it’s “art” when it somehow comunicates with the audience (something that Tarkovsky’s movies, whatever they actually mean, really do – i can feel they are art), not just because it has a title and a critic decides that it’s art.
By the way, i’m reading “Sculpting in time” by Tarkovsky and it seems he had to deal with three groups of people in his career: the ones that didn’t understand the movies and didn’t like them because of that, the ones that liked the movies but still tried to understand the meaning (and unfortunately i belong to this category) and the ones (the most appreciated by him, no surprise) were the ones that simply let the movies inspire and suggest emotions, without looking for a meaning in every image.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.