Imagine the headline: "Up" Wins Oscar for Best Cinematography. That's essentially what happened Sunday night, but the movie was "Avatar." "Up" won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. "Avatar" won for Best Visual Effects and Best Cinematography. Realistically, "Up" and "Avatar" should have also have competed in a new category -- something like Best Computer-Assisted Animation. It's past time to acknowledge the difference between cinematography -- the photographic process that involves capturing light through a lens -- and animation or green screen work that involves compositing digital images in a computer. Both can be extraordinarily impressive. Let's just agree to call them by their right names.
A quarter century ago, the great British cinematographer David Watkin, accepting his Oscar for "Out of Africa," offered the Academy a little education in his art and craft when he acknowledged that the pretty helicopter shots of African scenery for which he knew he had won the award were shot by the second unit. Today, Academy voters still don't quite seem to understand what cinematographers -- once known as "lighting cameramen" -- actually do. But what they do has radically changed over the years, too.
Aboard Dusty Cohl's Floating Film Festival in the early '00s, I remember the great Director of Photography Haskell Wexler lamenting that he was no longer assured of control over his own work, which could be digitally altered in post-production so that it no longer resembled what he had actually shot in the camera during production.
This isn't really a recent development. Even 15 years ago, in the awkwardly titled four-hour BFI documentary "A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Film" (see clip above), Scorsese, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma spoke of a new kind of filmmaking that no longer resembled photography so much as computer-aided painting. It's still an art form, but it's no longer quite photography, any more than theater is cinema....
So, when a movie like Avatar is 80 percent CGI or more, how do we (re-)define what the term "cinematography" means?
(to be continued...)
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Cinematical just covered this very same gripe: http://www.cinematical.com/2010/03/11/what-should-an-oscar-winner-look-like/
(And you're both right, there should be a new category.)
Check out the American Cinematographer article on Avatar:
http://www.theasc.com/magazine_dynamic/January2010/Avatar/page1.php
Oscar recipient Mauro Fiore admits that he was only hired after all the motion capture scenes had been shot already. He shot merely the live-action stuff (that still involved a huge amount of CGI), which is less than 30% of the finished film!
The least he could have done was thank Vince Pace, who designed the 3D system they used and shot the aforementioned motion-capture scenes.
Let me play a little devil's advocate and suggest it's a semantic argument.
In other words, an award for "cinematography" could be interpreted as an award for "best looking movie." And Avatar easily wins from that standpoint.
Looking forward to the follow up.
"Best looking movie", that would go under Best Art Direction, which the Academy already has and Avatar already won. But Best Cinematography is MUCH more complex than just looking good. It's about what's being said.
Say someone is shooting "Little Red Riding Hood:The Movie." The look of Red, the wolf, and the forest have already been decided beforehand, their attributes wroked out and are, for the most part, unchangeable.
But where Cinematography is comes in is that the director has the power to change the image's meaning through the camera. If Red and the wolf are shown together in one scene, and the director decides to zoom in on the wolf, then he is commenting on the atrocity of such a creature to wantr to eat children. But if he zooms in on Red instead, then he is commenting about childish innocence in the face of a vcious world.
The meanings of those two shots thus become very different, the wolf one says:"People are cruel, we need to change ourselves.", the Red shot says "Life is cruel. Grow up and live with it."
THAT is the power of Cinematography, not what is being shown, but what is being said. Cinematography is the power to interpret.
That's also direction. Having been through the experience of making films, I find it amusing sometimes when people attribute certain things in the film to a particular person. In fact, a particular moment, or how it plays in a particular shot, could have been the idea of the screenwriter, the director, the cinematographer, the editor who decided how to use a certain take... or just about anyone. It's always safer to say "the film" does something than a particular person. But I am annoyed by how many people (including Academy voters) still don't appear to understand what the various creative contributions consist of...
THAT"S what I meant, thanks Jim. I knew "interpret" wasn't quite the word I was looking for, "direction" works much better.
And you are very right about who gets the credit for a good or bad moment. If a director's film was written by a screenwriter, is the screenwriter the true director? If an actor has an awesome monologue, is the screenwriter the one responsible for the good acting? A lot of problems in the Oscars are often pointed to the fact that the movies don't get analyzed as much in their making rather than in the finished product. That's why "Annie Hall" didn't win for "Best Editing" even though the finished product was VERY different from what had originally been filmed.
I still don't understand why we need to distinguish light captured through a physical lens versus light manipulated digitally. Other than nostalgia or deference to tradition, I don't see an actual argument here.
You say we should call them by their "right names", but to me both are simply visual storytelling. It just seems incredibly arbitrary to say that the shot composition and lighting in The Hangover is cinematography, yet the same creative problem solving in Up should be labeled computer-assisted animation. I mean, really?
One of the ironies here is that you talk about how the Academy doesn't seem to understand cinematography, yet the way you describe CG animation indicates a similar lack of understanding. Again, I don't think Avatar should have won that particular award, but not because it was digitally assisted. Any decent director and cinematographer are going to have an immense amount of say over what's happening in their shots, even with heavy VFX involved.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! This is the exact thing I was discussing elsewhere. I'll repeat:
"Although Avatar’s cinematography defines the word banal, I’m OK with such a film getting the cinematography award. Surely, there is no rule that a camera has to be wielded over mountains and oceans to call it spectacular cinematography. IMO, cinematography is all about getting the right angles, textures, meanings and moods. So it really is immaterial if it was done in CG or live action. Why, WALL-E was one of the best cinematographed films of 2008.
I do hope .they consider animation films for the category in the near future."
Jim, the thing is, it's really difficult, I guess, to separate the contribution of the cinematographer from the director's (and now the CG guy's). We love to call every great use of the camera as being part of the the director's aesthetics. Could anyone separate out the contributions of Coutard and Godard or Nykvist from Bergman? I guess we just have to accept the film as it is and see if it excels in that particular category.
The role of the DP still remains as critical in these CG driven films. It is after all, the DP who decides what kind of light is to be used or what lens to be chosen before it is programmed. The only difference between live action cinematography and CG cinematography, IMO, lies in the logistics of achieving a shot, which is not really that much an indicator of the cinematographer's skills. But yes, some extra marks always has to go the live action films for they use the existing physics of light to do wonders instead of inventing new ones.
I thought Avatar's win for cinematography was pretty atrocious. A friend of mine tried to justify it as, essentially, reflecting the fact that even within a digital realm there are still questions of framing and lighting, etc. and that kind of virtual cinematography isn't actually that different than the real thing. I didn't find this overly convincing, myself, as it really is the difference between utilizing and capturing your environment and creating the environment out of whole cloth. I think you're right, and the academy really should have two separate categories here: One for "best cinematography" and one for "best digital art" or something similar.
You've opened a pandora's box here. This isn't just about cinematography. Do we also create a special award for "Computer-animated MoCap Performance" too? Zoe Saldana and the animators who finalized her performance for Avatar deserved some recognition, as did Andy Serkis and his co-collaborators for King Kong and the LOTR movies before her. But the Academy fails to recognize these astonishing creations as "acting." And should we create a special new category for "Digitally Enhanced Makeup Effects?" Many people (who should really know better) whined incessantly about Benjamin Button winning Best Makeup last year, even though all the digitally-created aging effects in the film began from life casts and traditional makeup effects based on the actors, the same processes used in practical film making for decades.
As for cinematography, I guess I agree that a rendered image is significantly different from one captured via traditional means, but at the same time traditional means had to be employed to realistically replicate lighting, contrast, focus, perspective, etc. I can't get into the minds of Oscar voters, but I saw Avatar's win in cinematography as an acknowledgement of the massive leap forward in technology that Avatar represents. Rarely does the Academy *ever* acknowledge technical achievements in films with major awards, but regardless of how you view the finished film, Cameron and crew changed the entire paradigm of how live action is captured on set and directed with Avatar. It deserves to be appreciated.
Those that complain that Avatar is simply computer-generated and therefore not "real" are missing the entire point, in my opinion. The performances still had to be shot and captured and accurately translated into a virtual world. How that was accomplished is truly revolutionary. I'm definitely not a fan of Avatar, but I can respect that the film deserved to be recognized for its technical achievements.
About creating new categories for motion-capture performances and about Avatar specifically, I'd just like to link to a recent article on David Bordwell's blog on that very issue:
[url]http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=7126[/url]
Well, it's an interesting question. 3D computer animation does employ a virtual camera, and there's definitely some overlap between the craft in the two cases. Both can be compared in terms of composition, framing, the placement and quality of lighting, etc. Is this really a leap to something that should be placed in a different category, or just part of technological change?
I have to agree that even though I liked the film and the shots of Pandora's forest are stunning, they are visual effects rather than cinematography or art direction. I had the same argument in 1997 when Titanic won all the awards. Now, Titanic deserved Art Direction because they literally rebuilt the ship, but it's Cinematography was mostly computerized. Most of the great shots, like the sunset, were done by computer. I would have given LA Confidential Best Cinematography that year and Hurt Locker this year. I would agree that if Avatar is eligible for Cinematography and Art Direction, Up and Fantastic Mr. Fox should have been eligible, and perhaps nominated, as well.
I think the award has, for a long time, meant which movie actually looks better, without consideration to editing, but encompassing everything from post-production work to original framing and camera movement. They should probably rename it to better fit this description, as it is true it no longer involves only cinematography.
I have no problem conceding that Avatar "has cinematography." You still need concern for lenses, filters, motivated lighting, camera placement, and all the other elements that go into live action cinematography.
It's closer to live action cinematography than traditional animation, because rather than placing the picture within the frame, it places the camera within the scene. The only difference is that the the tools are in a virtual space rather than a real one.
My problem with Avatar winning Best Cinematography is that its cinematography wasn't very good. I could've respected an award for Up ( or Shane Acker's 9, which do better jobs creating vivid settings and telling the story through images. Avatar would've looked just like any other fantasy film had it not been for the godawful use of 3D and shallow focus (see Jim's other posts on the subject).
To top it off, the films it was up against were incredible and diverse, some real breakthroughs in the craft. My favorite was The White Ribbon, for its use of contrast and its willingness to give the compositions room to breathe, its opening shot establishing an idyllic setting before shattering it with a distant event and so many similar scenes of violence and suffering taking place just barely off-screen. It lets the viewer come to the movie on his own terms rather than throwing paint in his eyeballs, Avatar-style.
Roger Deakins has never won an Oscar. Gordon Willis was only nominated twice, never winning. I mean just think about that. Willis wasn't even nominated for Manhattan, one of the most beautifully shot movies ever. That's all you really need to know about the jokers who hand out this award.
Agreed. The fact that Roger Deakins was nominated eight times and never won is a very good reason to not trust this category. His work is nothing short of awe-inspiring, and leaves no doubt in your mind that it is his skills and experience that elevate the quality of the shots. Compare Deakins' work to Avatar for a moment and now ask yourself if any moment stands out as much as, say a moment in No Country For Old Men, or Jarhead, or O Brother, Where Art Thou or any of his work with the Coen Brothers for that matter. Someone with years of experience and a deep understanding of their craft like Deakins, or Conrad Hall or Sven Nykvist will have the respect and authority to make the decisions as director of photography. I think the cinematography category for CG work is a difficult one because many of the shots are locked down at the storyboarding stage, then go through pre-viz to see if the movement works, then the light and render passes, and all these take time, sometimes months for each individual shot. Many of the decisions in that case are made by multiple personnel, but ultimately are finalized by the director.
The cameraman on set or on location must understand not only the sequence of shots, but the time of day, the temperature of the lights, how the film reacts in a multitude of situations, and even what time the sun will rise and set. Then there are the happy accidents that only the trained eye will catch, like the way the heat waves will play with the light in a telephoto shot. The cinematographer with experience will in many cases give the director the benefits of his or her knowledge. I think it's going to take time for the Academy to catch up in general to the many new ways that film is created. Cinematography as an art form is being redefined, but I don't think Avatar is a good example of award-winning cinematography, digital or not.
Seems like there are two different issues here.
The first is that Avatar's cinematography award was really a second award for art design. I think even fans of the film would admit as much: the truly 'breathtaking' (if you want to call it that) camerawork had a lot more to do with the imagination of the people who designed the film's artificial landscapes. This is par for the course for Cameron's films (I can name, off the top of my head, a dozen memorable shots in Scott's Alien, and not one in Cameron's Aliens - though I do enjoy both.)
The second is whether we can distinguish between different types of light capture and manipulation in any meaningful way. What if a mo-cap film uses the kind of angles, blocking, play of light and shadow, and fluid long takes we associate with great cinematography? What if Avatar had had someone like Chris Doyle behind the camera pre-manipulation, so you had his superior technique behind the camera matched with an art designer's in post-production? Would we still be having this argument?
The larger question: what percentage of manipulation separates a work of 'genuine' cinematography and a work of animation/painting/manipulation? We can go back to the silent era and talk about color filters, for all that. This isn't so easy a distinction to make, and its exciting to live in an era when we have the capability to dissolve these distinctions if we so choose.
Avatar is an easy enough target because, as I said above, its win wasn't about cinematography at all. But there are legitimate questions here about the borders between what you'd propose as two separate arts.
Nothing about this argument sways me. I agree with the poster above that said Wall-E should be considered among the best cinematography of 2008. In my opinion, Pixar has consistently contributed some of the most compelling cinematography of any given year this entire decade.
How do you feel about O Brother, Where Art Thou? I think it's a beautifully shot film, regardless of whether or not most of the look was developed in post-production. So many films today use CGI and almost every film uses color-correction to some degree. I realize there is a big difference between touching things up in post and what Avatar does, but I see that as an extension of what's come before rather than something completely different.
I don't think Avatar should've won the award, but that is less because of the technology used and more because I think the film looks flat and the compositions aren't very interesting.
I agree with Coppola, embrace the technology, don't relegate it to it's own category. The call to relegate it to it's own category reminds me of when there were separate awards for Black and White and Color cinematography. Sure, there are different things to consider when shooting in black and white vs. color, but it's all cinematography. What I'm saying is, the final result is what matters, not how they got there.
The final result IS what matters, but the question is indeed whether "it's all cinematography" (can it be said to have been photographed if it never existed outside a computer, never had a camera pointed at it in the first place?) and whether the Academy should recognize the artists for what they actually do. Lucas says it's no longer photographic but more like painting with computers. Those are different disciplines. Shouldn't we acknowledge both rather than pretend that a photographed film with few SFX shots (the digital equivalent of matte paintings -- or even an abundance of digitally tinted photographic images -- like in "O, Brother" or "Pleasantville") involves the same process, the same skills, as one that is 80 percent computer generated? Films like "The Little Mermaid" were based on actual photographed performances (I know the woman who acted the part of Ariel in a water tank with a grid behind it -- and the character looks just like her!) and then animated. But "The Little Mermaid" wasn't eligible for a Best Cinematography award. It's animation. Like "Avatar," the textures and light and colors and even most of the backgrounds and sets are not photographed; they are drawn, painted. A most impressive artistic and technological feat. But not photography.
But Avatar and Up aren't drawn and painted in the same way that The Little Mermaid is. The objects and environments are all modeled independently, then combined; in this sense they're more analogous to stop-motion animation. And the lighting is not painted on, but rather simulated with physics models. Now, the results are no doubt extensively tweaked afterwards, but I expect the same can be said about a lot of traditionally photographed films these days. There are obvious differences, but I think the line is blurrier than you're making it out to be.
It's funny that of all the things I've been reading about this since the Oscars something like "It's not photography." can give me the most pause. Because that's inarguable, it isn't photography. The other thing I was debating while writing my intial post, I do think the Pixar films have fantastic cinematography, though I would never really say that about a traditionally animated film. I would say "I like the look of the animation."
I think the difference is that Wall-E and Avatar are virtual 3D environments. The cinematography in them is a simulation of cinematography in the real world. So while the skillset is undoubtedly different, the discipline remains the same. I just don't see a big disconnect in the way Wall-E is lit and the way... oh... Inglourious Basterds is lit. The technology has changed but the principles of good cinematography have not.
Here's a side question, as long as we're talking about cinematography and who should be credited for what: how much control does the DP have over the photography compared to the director. With Stanley Kubrick for example, he was an experienced photographer and shot his early films entirely by himself and made most of the choices for the photography of his later films, operating the camera himself whenever possible. This reportedly caused tension when he worked with a DP with a reputation of his own, Russell Metty, on Spartacus. Metty complained that Kubrick was not leaving him anything to decide for himself. In his experience the DP was hired to shoot the movie, period. There may have also been friction due to the fact that he was originally working with Anthony Mann, who was director before Kubrick replaced him, and who's work is the first scene in the film. Kubrick allegedly told Metty to step aside, and he proceeded to shoot the movie himself. Metty of course was the one who won the Oscar.
I think peopel are missing the point of this.Indeed, in 3d animation you do have to put up light, set your camera, blablabla. However, the Oscar goes to the Director of Photography, who in this case shot 30% of the movie (and not the parts that count,
I bet he wasn't invlved at all in the visualy impressive scenes). It's like giving the Oscar for editing to the guy who edited the Arc.
I think Robert Richardson definitely deserved the Oscar, regardless of whether Avatar should have been included in the category. But, if it were up to me, then Richardson probably would win almost every year (with Deakins winning every now and then).
It's hard to know where to draw the line. Regardless of the quality of the movie itself, I think The Curious Case of Benjamin Button displayed much stronger cinematography than Slumdog Millionaire last year. Personally, though, I have no idea how much digital painting Fincher incorporated in post-production. The computer effects in that film are so good, that only the most well-trained eye can pick up on it. But, if you extend that analogy a bit further, then WALL-E is probably stronger in the realm of what we're now calling "cinematography" than either of them.
In the early days of color, the Academy used to split up the cinematography Oscar into two categories: one for black-and-white and one for color. I agree that it might better to make another split.
I'd like to give the Academy the benefit of the doubt and assume its voters know what a Director of Photography (aka cinematographer) does. If that's so, then here's why I think they gave it to Avatar:
Film is a collaborative effort, where everybody's areas of specialization do indeed overlap. I think they gave Mauro Fiore the award for the particular challenge he was given. The fact that his footage comprised maybe 1/3 of the film is actually WHY it was such an achievement: creating lighting on a greenscreen stage that will integrate with pre-conceived CGI jungle footage is not an easy task. As someone who works as a DP, I can tell you that greenscreen work presents many unique challenges, and Avatar featured fairly complex lighting scenarios that would have compounded this. Add in the fact that Fiore was using a new camera system and shooting in 3-D, and to some artistic effect at that. Avatar's live, non-CGi cinematography is a technical achievement worth noting, and I think that's why it won.
That being said, I personally believe Hurt Locker's cinematography is an even more impressive achievement. Shooting on a low budget and tight schedule in 115 degree heat with four cameras and harsh daylight (a DP's nightmare, since faces tend to be left in shadow, and with multiple handheld cameras there's few places to hide lights) is, IMHO, an even more impressive accomplishment. Plus the way the visuals told the story was superb. And, if we're simply going (as often seems to happen in the Academy) for 'prettiest film', then The White Ribbon should have won.
I finally caught up with "Fantastic Mr. Fox" yesterday, and wondered how a stop-motion animated film fits into this discussion. Since it's officially an "animated" film in that it doesn't use live actors photographically, many people might not think about the cinematography of "Fantastic Mr. Fox". But, there it is: light, objects, matter; not created by a computer. And, in Wes Anderson's typical comic book style, it looks wonderful. The visual details are the center of every Anderson film for me, and this was no exception. In fact, my understanding is that Anderson was pretty hands-off for the shooting of the film, opting instead to relay instructions via email from Paris - to his cinematographer, Tristan Oliver.
I know that there's already an award for visual effects, but perhaps there should be an award specifically for the best use of CGI. Classical cinematography and animation are cross-pollenating to the point where multiple awards and fine distinctions might become nauseating, but I'm not sure what else the Academy should do to promote accurate recognition of the disciplines. What do you do with a movie that's roughly 50% CGI and 50% classical cinematography?
You are correct, sir! "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is traditional, straight-ahead photography, with physical sets, costumes, lighting -- even "actors," although they're mannequins synched to the pre-recorded vocal performances of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, et al. The only difference is that the action is shot one frame at a time. (OK, strictly speaking, film is shot one frame at a time, too, but the shutter is automated to shoot 24 frames per second.) Anderson shot and recorded most of the film on video with the actors (to give the soundtrack more of a physical dimension -- not just headphoned actors standing in recording booths) and also acted out much of the movie himself on video. The animators worked from that.
As CGI becomes more commonplace (and invisible -- again, see "Zodiac"), I think the Academy is going to have to deal with these questions of who is responsible for what is visible on the screen what percentage of the time. The Writers Guild has strict rules about awarding screen credit, based on percentages of story, character, dialog, etc., contributed by each writer over successive drafts, with the bulk of the credit going to the writer(s) of the original draft (unless it's an adaptation and earlier attempts were tossed out completely). Something similar may have to be done with cinematography. Gone are the days when (to cite a famous example), Haskell Wexler could sit in a theater with a stopwatch and time how much of "Days of Heaven" was shot by him and how much by Nestor Almendros. It's not so easy to tell anymore...
I think a lot of you are missing the point.
Giving Avatar the Oscar for cinematography is like calling Picasso the greatest photographer of all time.
Picasso was a painter; he used his tools - canvas, paint, imagination, etc. - to create a work of art from nothing. He could paint whatever he could imagine.
A photographer uses an entirely different process. He can't create anything, per se. He photographs existing objects; his personal "creation" is his particularl view/interpretation/manipulation of the object being photographed. He plays with light, but that light is out in the world, existing all its own. Picasso's paintings aren't.
A cinematographer is a photographer. A CGI artist/animator is a painter. They are two very different occupations, with two very different processes, and two very different outcomes.
I think there should be two categories. There probably aren't enough animated/computer generated films produced each year to make the award worth a damn, however.
Fine. If people insist on keeping one category, let us make that category "Best Looking Picture" or "Most Artfully Photographed Picture", or something along those lines. The point is that if there is to only be one category, it must be a combination of the two processes, making both processes eligible. But let us drop the cinematography label altogether before we totally destroy the meaning of the word. Of one thing we can all be sure, whatever that award is given for, it is not cinematography (in the case of a computer generated image).
A lot of you point out that it may be a symantic debate. I disagree on accountof the reasons above, but even were it so, we should make an effort to solve the symantic problem. Why ruin a language for expediency's sake?
I just read Jim's last comment about Zodiac, and it is spot on. I recently found out that many of the backgrounds in Zodiac are blue-screened. In my opinion, then, Zodiac should not be eligible for the cinematography award. Sure, the process was one of capturing light through celluloid, but if much of what we are looking at is computer generated, it isn't cinematography any longer. If that background were a matte painting, that would be cinematography; the DP would have had to have captured the light reflecting from the painting as with any other photographed object. Blue -screen is more akin to painting than photography.
In the case of Zodiac, it wouldn't be eligible for either a cinematography award or an animation award. Who cares? I don't see any problem with that. More to the point, it could still win for art direction ("prettiest picture"), or my newly proposed "Most Artfully Captured Picture" award, which encompasses all methods of capturing an image.
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