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Graphic Art Quest
A cinematographer uses many composition techniques to show the story. This camera is set up with a rule of thirds guideline on the preview.

What is Environmental Storytelling?

The Found Footage Technique

5 Elements of Cinematography

M. Scott Lassiter by M. Scott Lassiter
March 3, 2023
in Cinematography
Reading Time: 6 mins read
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Cinematography is the art and technique of capturing and showing moving images on film. The elements of cinematography encompass a broad range of topics such as lighting, color, composition, camera angles, and movement.

These all work together to visually tell a story and convey a message. While most people associate cinematography only with live-action film-making, it shares the same important principles with animated movies, short skits, and traditional television programs. Within this article, I will use the word ‘film’ interchangeably with them.

The cinematography sets the tone for the whole film. In this article, we’re going to introduce some of these key visual elements.

Lighting in Cinematography

Lighting has a profound influence on the tone and mood of a film and has several characteristics to play around with to get your desired effects.

Color Temperature

Color temperature is a complex topic. Technically, it is the light color emitted by an idealized, opaque, non-reflective body at a particular temperature, and it’s measured in Kelvins (a unit of absolute temperature measurement).

What the vast majority of people need to understand is lower Kelvin light temperature appears redder and higher temperature appears bluer.

A lighting scale showing color temperature between 800 Kelvin and 12,200 Kelvin. Lower temperatures have red colors, higher temperatures have blue colors.

To make it more complicated, we refer to yellows and reds as warm colors and blues as cool colors. Just remember that terminology doesn’t describe temperature, it describes the connotations we have with color. It’s almost caveman-like. Fire=red=hot. Water=blue=cool.

Brightness and Intensity

Bright and well-lit scenes can create a sense of safety and security, while darker scenes with higher contrast can create a sense of danger or tension.

Lighting intensity isn’t the same thing as lighting brightness. With intensity, think more along the lines of how a subject is getting lit. Shots with diffused lighting can create a sense of comfort and ease, while harsh and intense lighting can create a sense of urgency and dread.

Direction, Angle, Shadows, and Highlights

How you choose to light a scene communicates what emotions you want the audience to feel. For example, side lighting can create a sense of depth and texture. Backlighting can create a sense of mystery or suspense.

Shadows and highlights can also add contrast. Deep shadows can create tension, hide secrets, or obscure information. Highlights can create a sense of beauty and elegance, or draw focus.

Color in Cinematography

We strongly associate color and emotions. The savvy Cinematographer will use that to his or her advantage to tell part of the story without using words and dialogue to do so.

Symbolism and Emotion

Color can stand in as a metaphor within a film, and the same color can tell us different things in different contexts.

A splash of red apples in a field of green trees shows life amongst nature. A flashing red light in the control room of a nuclear power plant tells you something has gone horribly wrong.

Change that scene to a bedroom bathed in red light and you have a different symbol indeed.

Time and Place

We have strong associations between time periods, locations, and the various color palettes used to depict them.

For example, we associate black and white with the days before color television became popular in the mid-1960s. Then there’s the “Mexican Filter” where many films and television series (e.g. Breaking Bad) use a sepia color filter to depict desert scenes, particularly those in Mexico.

A meme showing the sepia tone color choices in the cinematography of breaking bad. The top image has no filter, the bottom has the sepia tone filter we associate with Mexico.
Clearly, only the bottom photo was shot in Mexico.

Composition in Cinematography

Composition is another important element of cinematography that refers to how the creator has arranged a shot’s visual elements. Here are a few ways composition is used.

Visual Storytelling

The composition plays a critical role in communicating the film’s story to the audience.

A well-composed shot can convey information about the characters and their emotion, the scene’s setting and mood, and create a compelling visual narrative that enhances the storytelling.

Focus

The composition can create a sense of depth and dimension within a shot. This improves the shot’s visual appeal, but can also serve to draw the eyes to what you want the audience to focus on.

Techniques such as foreground framing, leading lines, or camera focus can create a sense of depth. This can make the scene more immersive and engaging for the viewer.

Balance and Symmetry

Cinematographers can use composition to make a sense of balance and symmetry to convey a sense of harmony. Conversely, they can use asymmetry to make a scene feel off-putting or vulnerable. Take this scene from the movie Zero Dark Thirty (2012) as this prisoner gets interrogated by his captors.

An interrogation about to begin from the movie Zero Dark Thirty. A prisoner kneels on the ground with his arms suspended by ropes from the cieling. In the middle of the shot, an interviewer enters from an overwhelmingly bright door.

The camera is centered in the room and focused on the door which provides harsh and direct lighting that obscures the arriving interrogator. From the captors’ perspective, everything is in balance and control. The prisoner, though, has fallen to the ground off-kilter. His asymmetry to the rest of the room adds a visual element of disarray that helps to show the danger he’s in.

Camera Angles in Cinematography

Where and how the Cinematographer aims the camera are other key elements of cinematography. The chosen camera angle can affect the audience’s perception of the characters and the story.

Many Different Shot Types

A Cinematographer has many different types of shots and camera angles to choose from. Some of the most common shots alter the subject framing by altering the focal length.

  • Extreme long shot
  • Long shot
  • Medium shot
  • Close-up shot
  • Extreme close-up shot

Cinematographers achieve other shots by changing the camera angle.

  • High angle shot
  • Low angle shot
  • Dutch angle shot
  • Aerial shot

These shot types are used throughout films, television, animation, and still photography.

Emotion

Close-up shots can create a sense of intimacy and focus on a character’s emotions. Wide shots can create a sense of space and context.

The Dutch angle shot tilts the camera so the horizon is no longer level. This throws off the balance in the scene and has a different emotional impact than a level shot.

Power Dynamics

Low-angle shots can create a sense of power and dominance, while high-angle shots can create a sense of vulnerability and weakness.

These effects are everywhere if you start paying attention to them. Even memes take advantage of it.

A meme of Principal Skinner from The Simpsons looking down in disgust saying "Pathetic"
This low-angle shot has us looking up at Principal Skinner. It puts him in a position of power and the subject with the point of view in a position of weakness.

Movement in Cinematography

Movement is another crucial element of cinematography that affects the film’s visual storytelling. This includes the movement of the camera, subjects, and in the background itself. Here are a few ways it does this.

Pacing

Movement affects the pacing of a scene. It creates either a sense of speed or slowness that sets the tone.

For example, consider a fast-moving camera in a car chase or shoot out between the good guys and the bad guys. The camera movement gives the scene a sense of urgency and excitement.

On the other hand, a still or slow-moving camera can create a tone of calm and stability.

Emotion

Camera movement also affects the emotional impact of a scene, and it can elicit different moods and reactions. Steady and deliberate camera movements are the typical default in film. Compare that to the shaky, first-person camera movements in something like a “found footage” movie and you get a different connotation.

The shaky camera movements give a more amateur feel to it. In the horror genre, shaky cameras are especially useful to convey that the characters are in danger and over their heads.

The Elements of Cinematography In a Different Interrogation Scene

Consider this shot from the television show Bones (2005-2017) as we compare the elements of cinematography within it to the interrogation from the film Zero Dark Thirty (2012) that I discussed above.

An interrogation room from the TV show Bones. Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth interrogate a man in a punk outfit. The lighting is warm and diffuse.

This scene uses diffuse lighting above the characters with a touch of accent lighting to provide highlights on the people. The back wall is kept in the dark to draw the focus to the important element here: the people. Yes, there is contrast, but nothing like the harsh direct lighting from Zero Dark Thirty which wants you to see not only the people but the squalid environment they occupy.

Notice the balance in this scene. Dr. Brennan is centered in the shot, and Agent Booth both balances and mirrors the subject. The way they have crossed their legs, Booth leaning back in his chair, communicates a different type of interview than the one in Zero Dark Thirty in which the composition and lighting choices impart tension and suspense.

In which scene are you more concerned about the man getting interrogated?

Conclusion

I want to note that in my breakdown of the shots from Bones and Zero Dark Thirty, I am not claiming one of them was done better or worse than the other. They both had different audiences, different messages, and different stories to tell. Both used these elements to good effect for their specific purposes.

Understanding the elements of cinematography can enhance the visual experience for your audience and enhance your storytelling by creating a sense of depth and dimensionality. Using lighting and color can create a sense of mood and atmosphere while shot composition, camera angle, focal length, and movement can create a sense of space and perspective.

Make good use of these cinematographic elements to bring the world in your visual stories to life as you create your adventures.

Tags: BonesBreaking Badcamerascolor theorycompositionemotionsenvironmental storytellinglightingmovementscenesvisual storytellingZero Dark Thirty
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What is Environmental Storytelling?

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The Found Footage Technique

M. Scott Lassiter

M. Scott Lassiter

I created Graphic Art Quest to help bring more excitement, stories, and education into the world. I did not follow a typical artist's path. I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University where I did 3D engineering design using Solidworks. I have multiple minors, master's credits, and all kinds of certifications. I assure you, none of them are formal art training. I'm about as unconventional as they come when it comes to the art world. Learn along with me as I create more adventures.

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