Cinematography: Image Making for Cinematographers, Directors, and Videographers

If you want technicals, books which cover similar territory are "Matters of Light & Depth" (Lowell), "Cinematography" & "Film Lighting" (Malkiewicz), "Placing Shadows" (Gloman/Letourneau), or even "Bare-Bones Guide" (Schroeppel -- which includes a very practical description of the 'Rule of Thirds', ie. the "Golden Mean").

If you're on a 'classical' kick, you could do a whole lot worse than "5 C's" (Mascelli), "Painting with Light" (Alton), or even "The Visual Story" (Block), which explores new media thru the lens[sic] of Eisenstein. Actually, you probably should buy "5 C's" & "Painting" anyway; they're very old, & just-recently returned to print... & in this age of accelerated obsolescence, these books might vanish again, forever.

But if you are interested in the aesthetics of cinematography, you'd do *much* better with texts such as "Cinematography: Screencraft" (Ettedgui), or with the classic "Film Art: An Introduction" (Bordwell/Thompson). In fact, after all the great reviews for "Cinematography: Image Making", I was expecting some sort of full-color/high-quality updated version of "Film Art". Nope... not even close.

IMHO, the book which best combines both worlds (technical + aesthetic) is Viera's "Lighting for Film & Electronic Cinematography". He starts with basic principles, & then quickly moves to famous shots, breaking each one down in terms of what the cinematographer was thinking, what they were 'aiming' for, & how [specifically] to put your lights to duplicate that setup. Wow.

So perhaps the title ("Cinematography: Image Making") is a misnomer, & should be "Technical Image Making". No wait-- there are some shots of beautiful cinematography in the text, right? Um, yes, but... with one terrible caveat: the majority of the images in this book which do come from great films -- are DIGITAL SCREEN-CAPTURES FROM VIDEO(?!!!) Interlaced, blurry, artifacted, awful. Unconscionable.

What a waste of potential, & of good photo-stock paper. Save your $$ for Viera's book, or Lowell's. Or you could do a whole lot worse than "5 C's" or Alton's book... which are old, but classics, describing theory & techniques as appropriate today as they were 100 years ago.

"3 Stars" for "Not-Bad"; "1 Star" for "Crushing Disappointment".


COMPREHENSIVE   October 15, 2003
 66 out of 67 found this review helpful

I bought this book because of the glowing review it received in American Cinematographer and then soon after it was the requred book for my cinematography course at USC Film School. I have dozens of books about cinematography, and this is the only one I've ever seen that covers every aspect of cinematography.

Most books are either sort of airy, light-weight musings about aesthetics and philosophy and the other kind is strictly technical: lenses, exposure, etc. This is the one book that covers just about everything you need to know in order to be a professional cinematographer (or an amateur who knows as much as a pro).

It covers everthing from the basics to very advanced stuff and the one thing that most of my camera assistant and camera apprentice friends really like is that it covers "professional practice": the way things are done on real sets, including things like what are the responsibilties of each person: the AC, the gaffer, the grip, etc.

It has a chapter on lighting and one on creating the "look" of a film, but the one thing it doesn't go into heavily is set lighting. That is, I guess, because this author has another book about lighting (which was also a textbook in a film school course I took.) He (or she?) also says in introduction that lighting is a vast subject and there is no way to fit it into one or two chapters - it has to have it's own book.

Anyway, this book is so good, I bought some to give as Christmas presents to friends. Even the ones who are already working professional DP's enjoyed it and said they loved it. I think it is also used in some of the directing courses here at USC. The first half of the book is about the kinds of things a director needs to know as well as the DP: coverage, editorial, crossing the line, that kind of stuff.


A comprehensive, professional view of cinematography   December 11, 2005
 62 out of 64 found this review helpful


I was working on a camera crew with a recent AFI grad and she told me this book is "the bible" at AFI, then a fellow I know at USC grad school had it as a required book in his cinematography class so I checked it out.

I see why these schools use it. It's comprehensive, thorough and most important, it takes a really professional view of how cinematography is done. I must have a dozen books on cinematography. Some of them are sort of student/amateur and some of them are just reminiscences of old studio DPs. Interesting reading, but doesn't tell me what I need to know to shoot a scene.

This book covers technical issues like exposure, optics, color, special EFX, etc but it also covers aesthetics. The chapter on "Lighting As Storytelling" is the best article on the aesthetics of image making and visual storytelling I've ever read anywhere (and I have a degree in cinematography). I have found this chapter on the web. You can download it at several websites that feature this book.

For best results, you need to buy this book in conjunction with the author's book on lighting, which really goes into standard techniques and equipment in much greater depth, as you would expect -- he can cover it better in a whole book than he can in a single chapter (which is how some cinematography books try to do it.) Although this book does have a couple of chapters on lighting that serve as a pretty good introduction.

Worth the price alone is the chapter on Set Operations, which goes into great detail on the job assignments on a set, how things are done and procedures like proper slating technique, etc. The chapter Visual Language is like a mini-course on composition, visual techniques and creating powerful images.

Throughout the book, the illustrations are from great films and the excellent printing makes it a beautiful book also, something that seems to always get mentioned in the magazine reviews I've read.

Since buying it (and reading it three times) I've run into lots of people (both students and working pros) who swear that this is THE book on cinematography. I agree totally. It covers camera stuff, but also set practices and also all the things the director needs to know about cinematography: coverage, screen direction, continuity, etc.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in cinematography, including not only camera people but also directors.


Excellent overall cinematography book   March 1, 2005
 58 out of 58 found this review helpful

When I first read this book, I already knew quite a bit about cinematography. This book filled in a large number of gaps in my knowledge. It did a rare thing for a cinematography book - it provided information on the actual lights that are used to create cinematic magic (HMIs, Fresnel lenses, PARs, etc.).

The author makes extensive use of computer design (Poser) to show actors, their positioning to the camera, and various lighting scenarios. Using these graphics, the book shows blocking from various angles - all very helpful to the beginning filmmaker.

The book also includes up-to-date information relating to problems faced by current filmmakers (video-to-film transfer, aspects of HD photography, processes such as ENR, etc.). While only described in overview, the explanations were clear and provide a good foundation for these moving targets.

The only topic I thought should have been covered in more detail was blue screen/green screen photography. As anyone who has done compositing with some sort of chroma key knows, the technical aspects alone are difficult. However, that's nothing compared to the problems of achieving artistic cinematography around/with these chroma key shots. It would have been great if some sense of the challenges and solutions of the cinematography of chroma keying would have been included.

Great book, though.

Dan Rahmel
Author: "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking"



Thorough and professional   December 18, 2002
 55 out of 57 found this review helpful

I've got a whole shelf full of books about cinematography, lighting and filmmaking. Most of them claim to be "thorough" and "professional" but very few of them actually are. This one really is. It covers pretty much everything that you need to know to be a professional cinematography - and that's a lot.

It is also written for directors as well as cinematographers; the first half of the book is basically "what directors need to know about cinematography and what cinematographers need to know about directing": things like continuity, the language of the lens, and what he calls camera dynamics and so on; basically, storytelling with the camera. I've been a professional DoP for years and I learned many new things from this section of the book.

The second half is more focused on the technical aspects of cinematography: lighting, exposure, special effects, color and that sort of thing, but a great deal of that is likely to be of interest to directors as well (if they are the kind of director who wants to know what the limitations and possibilities really are): things like shooting High Def, digital video, shooting green screen and special processes like bleach-bypass, cross-processing, time-slicing, etc. There's always new stuff to learn as a DoP.

A lot of us these days shoot video and High Def as well as film. The author points out that, while most people think of "cinematography" as referring to film only, it actually is from the Greek terms meaning "writing with motion" and so it applies equally well to video, DV and High Def 24P (all of which are covered here). Except for one chapter everthing in this book applies as much to video, DV and HD as it does to film.

Like most cinematographers and directors, I have a huge library of books about lighting and cinematography, some good, some bad; there is no doubt in my mind that this one is going to be considered the definitive book on cinematography and storytelling with the camera.

I would reccommend this book for gaffers and AC's who want to move up to camera, working cinematographers early in their career, people who shoot video and High Def, film students and definitely for directors and directing students: this is all the stuff they don't teach you in film school.