Customer Reviews

Visions of Light: Art of Cinematography [VHS]

5 star:		(25)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Working in the film business here in Los Angeles, it's easy to understand my appreciation for all aspects of film production. However, there are many people who don't unerstand the knowledge needed to get an image on film. Visions of Light is an incredible look into the world of cinematography, and the artists who have lit some of the most beautiful faces and film sets of the past 100 years. When I received this DVD, I wasn't expecting any "added footage", any "supplemental material." I was simply expecting a DVD that was enjoyable, entertaining, and somewhat educational to watch. In a nutshell, it delivered beyond my expectations. This DVD contains wonderful clips from some of the most popular and most beautifully photographed films of the past century. It includes interviews with an array of cinematographers giving behind the scenes stories of their careers and films that they have shot. Technically, don't expect this DVD to test your home system with incredible explosions and flawless picture quality. The clips are dated and the quality of sound and picture ranges from very good to incredibly dated. No one can expect a clip from 1930 to look THAT good, yet this DVD manages to present even the oldest clips in their greatest beauty. If you are a big fan of films, or you love the art of cinematography, or you simply have a curiousity on how films are made, then this DVD is a MUST HAVE. It is put together very well. It is incredibly entertaining, with wonderful film clips and interviews that will introduce you to the artists responsible for some of the greatest and most memorable films in history. Buy Visons of Light and it will surely be one of you favorite DVD's to watch. Enjoy!

"Director of photography. The person in charge of lighting a set and photographing a film. Also known as 'first cameraman,' 'lighting cameraman,' or 'cinematographer,' he is responsible for transforming the screenwriter's and director's concepts into real visual images." From Ephraim Katz's Film Encyclopedia.

This collection of film clips and interviews with various DPs (director of photography) and camera operators such as Allen Daviau, William A. Frakeman, Haskell Wexler, and Nestor Almendros reveals their influences, the period during which they worked, what techniques were evolving, and anecdotes. Clips from about two hundred or so films are examined.

Yes, as Ernest Dickerson says, cinematography's the way one responds to light. Initially, there was just a director and cameraman, the director in charge of the actors, the cameraman in charge of everything else. And the stationary cameras didn't give them much to do, but of course that changed over time with the camera dollies and booms, and later, handheld cameras, made more effective by Steadicams, whose inventors won a special Oscar in 1977 in the technical field. But camera movement gave the DP greater ability to achieve his visual triumphs.

Other than the Katz quote, DPs were to tell the story visually and to make actors and actresses more handsome and prettier but to enhance special features. Actresses like Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo required special attention, but boy, did they sparkle! Dietrich's cheeks were made narrower with the lighting used in Shanghai Express. And small wonder Harold Rosson made Jean Harlow prettier in Red Dust--he even married her (lucky guy!) after her husband Paul Bern committed suicide.

This takes a chronological history of lighting, from the silent era up to the late 1980's, and puts it in context with the history of film. For example, the role of cinematography changed with the advent of sound. According to cinematographer John Bailey, the 1920's were the golden age of cinematography because at the time, the camera was unencumbered by sound and all devices accompanying verbal dialogue storytelling. And when anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen came to be used, DPs had to find some way to use that extra space on either side, as they did with Lawrence Of Arabia, like the scene of Lawrence, having rescued Qaseem, who is greeted by one of the boys, riding towards him. And with the gradual independence from the studio system, previous errors such as flaring lenses were deliberately used as new techniques.

My favourite era is the film noir era, which borrowed from the German Expressionism of the 1920's. Sparse lighting, slashes of light, dark shadows, dense rarified vocabulary of visual information, low angles define the characteristics of such films as The Killers, Out Of The Past, and Touch Of Evil. It's stark black and wide, hardly any greys.

But other uses of dark or darkly lit techniques were shown with the candlelit sequence in Grapes of Wrath, a clip from Fat City, and the accurate capture of period dramas, where there was no electricity and so thus families relied on light from windows.

As for best uses of technique, the pure visual accident in In Cold Blood, where Robert Blake's character is speaking to the chaplain about his father, and the light reflecting off the pouring rain on the window shone on Blake's face, making it look as if he were crying.

This collaboration between the American Film Institute and Japan's NHK Television is ideally for film students/buffs and for moviegoers of a more intelligent and inquisitive calibre, which I hope will comprise of enough people.

Will ramp your appreciation of cinematography to new plane. I felt priveledged to see through the eyes of the cinematographers whose interpretive visions become our filmic memories. You will understand at a new level the mix of man, machine and method that give us the larger than life illusions that carry the cinematic message to an eternal place we always carry with us. This is a must for any aspiring cinematographer and/or filmmaker.

Cinematographer/Filmmaker

This is a great documentary.
Across the course of the film, you may have your eyes opened as if for the first time: it comprises clips and interviews about the history of cinematography, or indeed the whole look and language of film.
While many of the clips show well-known moments in film, their compilation in this way offers one fresh and striking visual after another. The revelation is the strength of early and rarely-seen films, and the assertion that had sound films been invented a decade later, the visual language of film would have developed and intensified still further. As it is, the images are just ravishing, and it's really rather moving to watch.
This is a warm and thought-provoking look at cinematography, and is highly recommended. The only reservation is the mono sound on the DVD, but it's a small sacrifice when the visuals hold pride of place.
Be prepared -- you'll want to revisit many classics after this!

I bouhgt the laser disc version in 1994, and I have seen it since then, almost 30 times. I have just ordered the DVD version as soon as I knew that existed. I don't know which features does have the DVD version, but in laser disc was extraordinary, I learned a lot from the best cinematographers, e.g. Almendros say that a cinematographer should never use a fog filter. I really recomend strongly this DVD not only for film students, but also for every person who own a DVD, you'll never see this on TV.

Elías Rima

Thursday, 08jun2000

This is a very interesting program, and one reason to get the DVD is because not only is it cheaper than the VHS version, but because of the durability and quality of a DVD. But I have to also mention that this program didn't get any kind of treatment as a DVD, except for dividing the program into chapters. For such feature and since it's about the visual art of cinema, subtitles for the hearing impaired and for other languages should have been considered.

The Morricone theme, from Days of Heaven, still haunts my memory from watching the montage for the first time. "Visions of Light" may have been the pivotal reason I decided to go into cinema. This magnificent documentary covers all spectrums of filmmaking from inspiration to the technical advice and stories from the masters themselves. The "Rosemary's Baby" and "In Cold Blood" stories are my personal favorites. Young cinematographers and directors from a new generation, my generation, may be inspired and humbled by what beauty and power really is. It is a must see! It is in one word...perfection!

People who appreciate the visuals in movies should love this documentary as it deals with how they are photographed and how the cameramen and we, the viewer, see them. That may sound a bit dry, but this documentary is anything but that. They never stay more than a few minutes on any topic, personality or movie.

I appreciated this DVD more and more as I became more familiar with films. The more of a fan you are of both movies and cinematography, the higher you will rate this documentary. From silent movies to modern-day, the producers on this did a fine job showing examples of films from every decade up to 1990. (It would be fun to see an updated edition of this to include films since 1993)

This video gave me a new appreciation for black-and-white films. Some of the photography was magnificent and many cinematographers think that is the medium in which they could really show off their talents.

Regarding color, this documentary is where I first heard about the fabulously- filmed movie, "Days Of Heaven" (1978), which has become one of my all-time favorites. In all, there are about 125 films mentioned, so you may discover some gems you weren't aware of, as I did.

Whether you know most of these films or just a few, you should find a number of things in here interesting.

After reading the glowing reviews, I purchased this item and was looking forward to viewing something on the level of Kevin Brownlow's "Hollywood" series Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Complete Set 1-13 [VHS] except focussing on cinematography.

Instead, what I got was a rambling, somewhat coherent look at cinematographers. A slight distinction but a necessary one. (Imagine buying a series you think is on "history" then finding out it's about historians instead.)

Instead of focussing on the art of the cameraman, it looks at the cameramen themselves. Cinematographers sit around talking about "Connie Hall Haskell Wexler Gordon Willis blah blah blah" without any explanation of who they are. A caption or scroll along the bottom of the screen indicating that Conrad Hall filmed "Butch Cassidy" and "American Beauty" would have been helpful to casual students of the subject.

The other problem I have with this film is its lack of any kind of structure. It starts off more-or-less chronologically until it gets to post-WW2, then looks at individual cameramen such as Vittorio Storaro and Vilmos Zsigmond, THEN discusses individual films like "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown," and "Apocalypse Now" (which you might assume would have been in the Vittorio Storaro chapter). These are presented semi-chronologically up through the late 1980's, although one of the last films is "Eraserhead" from 1977. There are no chapter headings or obvious breaks; the film just cuts from "Jaws" to "Days of Heaven" to "Raging Bull" without explanation. (There is a little paper insert inside the disk listing chapters and subjects; otherwise I would have been even more lost.)

It's not necessary to be chronological like The Cutting Edge - The Magic of Movie Editing. It could have been thematic like A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies.

This is not a film for mere movie lovers. You really need a little bit of background. There's very little "This is what effect I was trying to achieve and this is how I did it." Instead it's more cinematographers talking about themselves. Storaro was far much comprehensible (not to mention interesting) discussing color theory in "Glorious Technicolor" a short documentary on the two-disk The Adventures of Robin Hood (Two-Disc Special Edition) than he or anyone else is here. This film feels like it was made more for cinematographers than the audience.

Although cinematographers have strong feelings about the primacy of the image, this film would have been improved with a WRITER to give some kind of narrative structure and an EDITOR to deliver a more deliberate point of view.

If you're interested in cinematography, there's no reason whatsoever you shouldn't already own this DVD -- in fact, it's shameful that you don't. For the rest of you, even if you're not interested in all the technical aspects of putting a moving picture onscreen, this DVD will inspire you to see more movies, and to appreciate film for the incredible art that it is. Buy this DVD and see every film mentioned in it...you won't be sorry.