In Part 1 of this post, I provided a clip from Martin Scorsese's 1995 documentary, "A Personal Journey... Through American Film," in which George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola talked about the contribution computers were making to filmmaking as it evolved from a photographic medium into a painterly one.
In the clip above, from the "making of" promotional documentary, "Avatar: Creating the World of Pandora," director/camera operator James Cameron, producer Jon Landau and many CGI effects artists and technicians show how "Avatar" was created -- not so much in the camera as in the computer. None of these people is Mauro Fiore, who recently won an Oscar for Best Cinematography for his work on "Avatar." What was his role on the film? This has been the subject of much debate -- much of it in the forum at cinematography.com, where professionals have been discussing the question: "What is "Cinematography," now that an 80% CG Movie Has Won Its Highest Honor"?
The first post asks:
Does anyone else feel a slap in the face to our craft? [...]
Clearly, the people voting don't know what the F--- cinematography is. It is photographing, "painting" with light.
It really, really ought only apply to the practical parts. Parts that involve blue-screen lighting, computer programming, and CGI, or optical effects too, shouldn't be privy to this award.
2nd Unit work ought not be honored with a nod to the cinematographer who had nothing to do with it, except a phone call.
It's a huge subject for discussion, but this question narrows down to two specific questions: 1) Given all the things CGI is used for in filmmaking (you'll get many takes on it from the filmmakers interviewed in the "Avatar" doc), how much of it can be considered photography, or "cinematography"? And 2) What are the Academy's rules for voting in the category?
The second question is easier to address. The Academy has specific eligibility rules for what constitutes an "Animated Feature":
An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of at least 70 minutes, in which movement and characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture's running time.
It does not, however, have any comparable rules defining how much of a film must be photographed (or not "animated") in order to qualify for Best Cinematography. In the documentary above, you will hear that two thirds of the film exists "only in the computer"; that the actors' expressions are captured in more lifelike ways while "everything is completely computer-generated"; the "Virtual Camera" used for moving shots has motion sensors but no lens; that the "performance capture" work was done on a huge, brightly lit set called "the Volume," using multiple cameras that fed directly into computers to be combined with CGI on the spot...
There are so many layers to this. Landau says CGI was used to replace prosthetics, so the actors didn't have to spend hours putting on makeup. (Aside: "Avatar" won three Oscars, for Art Direction, Visual Effects and Cinematography; "Star Trek" won the Oscar for Makeup. "Avatar" was not submitted for Best Animated Feature.) Cameron is exceptionally keen on the little "performance capture" cameras the actors wore, and the 3-D cameras that combined physical shooting in the Volume with CGI...
So, to return to the first question: The role of CGI in "Avatar" is an expansive one -- assisting or even replacing work traditionally done by makeup artists, production designers, set decorators, cinematographers, actors... All of it can be categorized as "visual effects," but how much of it can properly be called "cinematography"?
Or, looking at it the other way around, as Brad Brevet asked at Ropeofsilicon.com in February: "Why is the CG in Avatar considered visual effects while the CG employed for a Pixar or DreamWorks film simply considered animation? If 'Avatar' is up for Oscar's Best Visual Effects award shouldn't 'Up' and 'Monsters vs. Aliens' be as well? The fact they aren't, but 'A Christmas Carol' is, interests me..."
These are issues I'll bet AMPAS rules will have to address before next year's Oscars....
(tip: Brian Rose)
UPDATE: (3/16/10): This article in American Cinematographer magazine gives more background on the involvement of Oscar-winning cinematographer Mauro Fiore:
After 18 months of motion capture, Cameron brought in Fiore to shoot live-action footage onstage at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand. "About 70 percent of the movie is motion capture, and the rest is live-action," says Fiore. "Although the motion-capture work was mostly finished, the actual look of the film was yet to be created. The footage we shot in New Zealand ultimately defined the overall style of the movie." [...]
... A massive armory on Pandora, this set piece would stand 100' tall and hold hundreds of Armored Mobility Platform suits, large, robot-like devices that the soldiers can control. In reality, the set was constructed in a former Mitsubishi factory in New Zealand, and only two AMP suits were made, one functional and one purely for set dressing. The ceilings in the factory were just 22' high, so the rest of the set had to be created digitally. "The challenge was that a lot of the shots in the Armor Bay were looking up at this great expanse of a 100'-tall location that simply didn't exist -- we were looking up into our lighting fixtures and the ceiling," says Culliton. "We had to find a way to light from above yet still have a greenscreen up there so the rest of the set could be added later."
Because so much of the film's world is virtual, Fiore was constantly matching interactive lighting with elements that would be comped into the image in post. An example of this is a plasma storm that takes place on Pandora. "What is a plasma storm? No one knows -- it's all inside Jim's head!" Fiore exclaims with a laugh. "We had to figure out a way to create a fantastic event that no one had ever seen before. In the scene, Scully is in a remote science lab with Dr. Augustine [Sigourney Weaver], and they see the storm happening outside the windows. We had to find a way to create the effect of the storm on their faces." He turned to the DL.2, a DMX-controlled LCD projector that acts like an automated light source. By utilizing a preset "anomalous" pattern in the DL.2 and projecting the image through Hampshire Frost onto the actor's faces, Fiore achieved a unique look for the storm's lighting effects.
ADDENDUM (03/16/10): Thought experiment (that doesn't require much imagination): Let's say there was a photography contest that began back in the 1920s. The rules spelled out that submissions had to be captured by a camera with a single click of the shutter. No "trick photography" allowed. The images could, of course, be cropped and the exposure adjusted in the darkroom when they were printed, but no multiple exposures, filters, or other post-camera effects allowed. Now, all these years later, the people who run the contest have to decide if digital images will be allowed. Should they be in a separate category? How much Photoshopping -- beyond cropping and "exposure" [brightness/contrast] adjustments -- should be allowed? If it's a color image, how much color manipulation is permitted? The word "photography" -- which once meant only images exposed through a lens and a mechanical shutter, captured on light-sensitive negative film -- needs to be redefined in light of the new technology.
34 Comments
When you announced you'd be dealing with this topic, I figured the question "What is cinematography?" was rhetorical. It seemed to me that we know well enough what cinematography is, and the Academy's choice could be chalked up to poor judgment.
I didn't count on the emergence of a much more relevant and interesting question: what is animation?
... and art direction/production design/set decoration, makeup, prosthetics, acting... ? Were not just talking about a few isolated effects elements within a photographic world anymore...
From my limited experience with graphics software, I know that you have to place lights, which would mean that lighting plays as important a role in CGI.
That said, I still think that Avatar should have got animation prizes, because another important part of cinematography is making the best of what you have.
But the "lights" used in CGI aren't actually lights. They're software-created to simulate the effect of "light" using pixels on a screen. It's an entirely different process than using a camera to photograph a scene with natural and/or artificial light. So, is that animation or cinematography? For Oscar purposes, the Academy hasn't defined the distinctions.
I see your point, Jim, but the fact is that the mechanism of light reflection has been worked out well enough and is sufficiently un-chaotic (calling something chaotic is saying that it is susceptible to the Butterfly effect) for digital lighting to take the same skills as real lighting. Yes, it's done with 'lights' instead of lights, but the only real argument I can think of against allowing animated 'cinematography' is that in animation, you have absolutely no physical constraints about the number of lights, and more importantly their placement. You can put a light in the middle of your shot and it would only be visible in its effects.
That's why I'm really against Avatar for the award, because it did absolutely nothing special with lighting, even when compared to a normal movie.
Clearly, the people voting don't know what the F--- cinematography is. It is photographing, "painting" with light
My questions: Aren't the people that vote to nominate movies in the category of Cinematography part of the Cinematographers branch of the Academy?
Isn't the Cinematographers Branch of the Academy made up of actual cinematogrphers?
If your looking for whom to blame, ask yourself why Avatar was in the final five nominees. Why are the cinematographers of the Academy putting Avatar up as one of the five nominees if they feel this way? Apparently, the cinematographers in the Academy don't know what the F cinematography is.
Yes. The question is: How many of the voters in the cinematography branch have actually worked in the industry since the advent of CGI and are familiar with what it can do?
Somehow Academy voters feel that if the animated figure is resembling a 'real' human in a 'real' world -not a cartoonish one like Pixar's- or either motion capturing an actor's performance, the movie has visual effects instead of being simply animated.
This I find, of course, completely arbitrary in terms of movie making. It does respond though to a certain reluctance of academy voters (or, for that matter, people involved in the cinema) to accept that, in many cases, you can no longer tell the difference between live action an animation. Fear of the unstoppable power of the virtual world? Latent dread of being overcome by it?
Don't know. Meer sir my sir.
Well said! When you look at a movie, you see the finished product. The Oscars are designed to honor the work in various disciplines that went into the creation of that product. So, how much of what you're seeing is art direction, cinematography, animation, visual effects -- and how do you know which is which?
Also, in the case of "Avatar," consider that Zoe Saldana never appears on screen. Her character is entirely computer-rendered, but what we see is CGI based on her performance, her body movements, her facial expressions. And her voice is actually used, unaltered. (In other words, she's not dubbed, the way Glenn Close dubbed Andie MacDowell in "Greystoke.") So... it's more than voice acting, but it's also animation (the Na'vi bodies have different proportions and characteristics from human bodies)...
It seems the Academy thinks that cinematography is whatever we're looking at on the screen. If a performance is limited only to the voice of an actor than it is an animated film. If the actor has to don some ultra-modern track suit, one that finally frees the actor up to...have a weird little camera right on their face at all times, instead of embodying a character in a physical environment with prosthetics or make-up that has actual light bouncing off of them so that the film in the camera can detect and thus have an image imprinted that can be projected later on as opposed to simply creating all of it in a computer...then that's cinematography too? It seems it's just the Academy's way of saying that Avatar is dazzling to look at and yeah, I agree. But when someone says the word cinematography my mind would jump to a film like Days of Heaven....so maybe we can arrange a screening of Days of Heaven and say "That is cinematography"...I think there would be a collective "Oooooooh...okay, I got it now"
This reminds me of an argument/debate I had with my brother on Oscar night. I explained to him what cinematography is (and for that matter, that the other art directors actually had to build their sets) and he defended
"Avatar."
When I grunted as "Avatar," won best cinematography, he said, "I think you're being naive. I'm sure 'Up' has cinematography in it."
I imagine this describes the outlook of most Academy voters.
Actually, you're quite wrong about what art direction is.
"Art direction" is an outdated name for the category, has been since 1939. Art directors are never awarded the Oscar. The nominal "art director" of a movie is not a creative professional, no more than an assistant director is. It's a managerial and clerical position. The head of the art department is actually given the title of "production designer." The art department itself, in a large production, is actually an army of subordinate designers, craftspeople, and builders. The production designer may or may not be very hands on at all, but he/she is still credited with the visual design of the movie. So that's what the category really means: It's about design, not making things.
The answer is Real Camera vs. Virtual Camera.
In spite of it's heavy use of CGI Avatar used a real camera, filming real actors on a set. A big blue set but a set nonetheless.
Up and Monsters, Inc. use a Virtual Camera. There is no actual camera taking images of anything.
Not necessarily, since animators have long used rotoscoping, motion capture and similar techniques on which to base their animation. Like "Avatar," the CGI is what appears on the screen, but they may be "traced" or digitally applied on top of video or film images that you don't see. Of course, in old-style cel animation ("Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Bambi" and others), the cels were painted and photographed with an animation camera one image at a time. Puppet and clay animation (from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" to "Fantastic Mr. Fox") also use an actual camera. All the Academy rules say about animation is that the movement and characters must be "created using a frame-by-frame technique." But what does that mean in CGI terms?
I should've been a little more clear. The block of test I was specifically responding to was "If 'Avatar' is up for Oscar's Best Visual Effects award shouldn't 'Up' and 'Monsters vs. Aliens' be as well? The fact they aren't, but 'A Christmas Carol' is, interests me..."
I understand that eventually Virtual Lenses become involved with Avatar and A Chrismal Carol and that Real Lenses are involved in the initial stages of many purely animated projects.
And I agree with the premise that is ultimately up to the nomination group for that category. If the Cinematographers feel that what Fiore did falls within the realm of Cinematography then the have every right to nominate their fellow Cinematographer. Just as the Visual Effects people chose what they feel are proper nominees in the Visual Effects category. They all know what is going on behind the scenes.
If "the people voting don't know what the F--- cinematography is," shouldn't we blame the cinematographers, the only people whose votes determined the nominees?
@ Dan Geiser: You should probably look at the extras for the Wall-E DVD/Blu-ray. Pixar hired Roger Deakins, a real-life cinematographer, to come in and explain the technical intricacies of cinematography and help Pixar replicate the look and feel of 70's-style cameras and lenses for Wall-E. Not only did they digitally replicate the optical effects of old-school lenses and cameras, they employed lighting, camera moves, and editing typical of films of the time period.
So I guess my question to you is, if they went to all that trouble to replicate the science of cinematography, is that not cinematography?
And while we're on the subject of how silly the Academy and the guilds are (since the cinematographer's guild also nominated Avatar), why isn't an "animated" picture like Coraline or Fantastic Mr Fox considered for the Production Design and Costuming awards? Both films arguably have more production design and costume work than any of the live-action nominees since both are entirely fabricated from scratch in every respect.
i always admired the cinematography in tim burton's "the nightmare before christmas," and actually thought it deserved a nomination that year; despite it being an animated film by definition, the cameras were shooting a physical world and characters. the colors and lighting are vibrant and inventive, and the use of space truly suggests a world much larger than the miniatures captured. any thoughts on this?
there wouldn't be any controversy if voters evaluated the quality of the cinematography (be it virtual or real)... cause the shots in Avatar are just boring textbook shots. They had the possibility to do anything they wanted, and all they do is use standard shot scales developed by real cameras (which are limited by the laws of physics).
Cameron wanted to make sure the audience could relate to the usual film grammar.
David Fincher or Aronovsky do better innovative camera viewpoints with real footage (and CGI editing).
The only highlight was the flying shots, but then again it's not new : a pseudo-tracking shot (which is usually made with a static camera and a static fake plane where only the green screen background moves).
In the doc above there's a sample of a "flying shot" done with the lens-less virtual cam that they say allowed Cameron to do real-seeming camera moves that don't feel computer-generated. But the way they use it, acrobatically pirouetting in the air above Pandora, calls so much attention to itself that it doesn't feel like actual flight through the atmosphere on a planet with gravity. It's cool to look at, but the moves don't add to the feeling of "reality."
I read through all of the comments on the boards and it's all pretty much nonsensical. People saying yes and no or wrong and right without giving anything specific to back up their ideas. It's all more their feelings of what cinematography should be, and not what it actually is. So, it seems like no one knows what it is, just that they assume everyone should know what it is based on what they're inferring.
The most intriguing cases were made by people who thought the CG was cinematographer. One guy brought up the point it's not best cinematographer, but cinematography, which would imply to me it's everything that goes into the look of the film and not just from one person. Like with screenplays, not everyone who has worked on the script ends up with the final credit.
As far as I know CG isn't frame by frame, because it's built a layer at a time to follow specific points of reference.
And being an actor for who knows how long, you're correct in saying acting is more than just a voice or how a person looks. It's more so than anything else about movement and how the actor holds themselves. With Pixar they start from scratch. With "Avatar" ad "A Christmas Carol" they are using actors, same as in "Waking Life" or "Through a Glass Darkly". Those are actors being painted over...same thing...different effect being used.
I have to wonder if our general conception of cinematography is rooted in the use or non-use of actual actors. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" inserted cartoons into live action footage. A few years ago, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" reversed that equation, and yet it wasn't considered an animated movie because we were able to see Gwen Paltrow and Jude Law, etc. Though veiled by computer generated images, "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "Avatar" both used real people as the basis for their animated counterparts, along with physical representations of actors. Subconsciously, I think our minds are trained to think of something as "animated" only when we do not see filmed people. Even rotoscoping, which sort of traces, modifies, and covers live footage, is considered strictly animation, though the line is being blurred significantly.
I'm not trying to say that the presence or absence of actors on screen should be key to our definitions of cinematography and animation, but merely that actors offer an associative value that computers can't always trump. So, the simple fact that Sigourney Weaver is in "Avatar" helps us to disassociate the film from animation or cartoons.
As an aside, Kristen Thompson, over at David Bordwell's site, recently wrote a great article about how CGI is blurring the lines in performance. Can the Academy nominate or recognize a performance that is never physically represented on screen? How much of that performance comes from the actor and how much from a computer person in postproduction? Was that really Keanu Reeves in "A Scanner Darkly"?
With performance capture, as opposed to motion capture, the actor's facial expressions are respected and reproduced as closely as possible. You can see quick clips of it in the video above, and it's clear when watching Avatar that the actor's facial expressions ring truer than any other CG "actor." This is why simple motion capture make The Polar Express or A Christmas Carol pale in comparison to the acting in Avatar. I personally found Zoe Saldana's performance to be the best thing about Avatar, and felt that no amount of blue-alien CG effects could dampen the power of her emotional honesty, but the fact that the most subtle nuance of her facial expressions were captured verbatim make me feel sad that some think her acting was just "animated." I have friends who worked on Avatar at WETA as character animators, and all of them confirm the absolute dedication to fidelity of performance from the actors was critical in making the film work.
This is one of the biggest breakthroughs with Avatar, and indeed the Academy may have to look a little more closely at what performance entails.
I think the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) also doesn't quite know how to handle Avatar, hence the cautionary nomination. For me, the question whether this is "real" cinematography or not is only secondary. Avatar most likely won the Academy Award because of its technical advancements in movie making, not because of its pure cinematographic craftsmanship. Especially startling, however, is the exclusive nomination of Mauro Fiore. Whoever read the AC article knows he had almost nothing to do with the technical achievements of Avatar. Therefore it is understandable, that the better informed members of the ASC awarded its top prize to The White Ribbon.
The problem mainly arises because Avatar transcends classical boundaries. To be honest, most of the film is animation, regardless of how the Academy defines animation (as a previous poster mentioned, CG is not based on a frame-by-frame approach, but neither is the digital animation of Up). Visual effects in Avatar would then only constitute the use of CGI in combination with real photography (the Academy defines the criteria for visual effects this way: "the artistry, skill and fidelity with which the visual illusions are achieved", see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Cinematography).
Now to your thought experiment. I don't think the analogy really works, because a digital image is created in the same way as an analog one, simply using a different medium. The hard question is "What constitutes post-camera effects?" Is bleach bypass a post camera effect? It certainly is, but isn't pull or push processing or using D76 as compared to Rodinal also a post-camera manipulation? Which manipulations are justified? Color correction is used in analog photography as well as in digital (as soon as you print your color image the classical way, you are most likely guilty of color correcting it). The only image, which is not color corrected after developing, is a slide. Of course you can limit your color correction to a minimum, but I don't see a fundamental difference in this respect between digital and analog photography.
I have to wonder, if this is really such a contentious debate as you make it out to be, Jim, why the hell would the ASC even NOMINATE Avatar for Best Cinematography? One could easily chalk up the Academy's nomination/win with "it's the Academy, they don't know shit," but when you're talking about the official guild of cinematographers, it's a different story. Granted, Avatar didn't win, but considering the group we're dealing with, it seems that even a nomination for Avatar should be considered outrageous.
I feel strongly that a good compromise is the best resolution. No one would, I think, would argue that CGI or any other digital technique lacks artistry. They are tools, mediums in the hands of human creators. That said, it does seem troublesome to lump them all in together under awards like "Visual Effects," and "Cinematography."
In terms of awards, this debate demonstrates how the Academy has failed to adapt to new trends, by relying upon awards and rules formulated in a time when color and sound were still novelties, when no one would have imagined the kind of technology available today.
With regards to cinematography, I think the best solution is to split the cinematography award in two. Because to have just one award for such a generalized, difficult to define field tends to both diminish the work of established practitioners, as well as ignore the new and radical contributions being made to the field.
Recall that there was a time when there WERE separate awards, for colour and monochromatic cinematography, because the Academy (correctly) regarded each medium to be distinct from the other, and worth of its own distinction. Eventually, the award merged, because colour overtook monochrome to the point where there was little need for a second award.
But now, we again need separate statuettes. Because, while I would argue Roger Deakin's work on "Wall-E" and Avatar's visuals were both meritorious of awards in cinematography, they are not the SAME KIND of cinematography as the emphatically REAL visuals, like in "Lawrence of Arabia," "Days of Heaven," or "There Will Be Blood."
Why not have two awards, one for, say, "Best Cinematography in A Film Containing less than XX Percent CGI" and another for "Best Cinematography in a Film Containing More Than XX Percent CGI."
Obviously this is not perfect, and I don't have all the answers. It doesn't necessarily resolve the issue of films caught in the middle, like "Coraline," which is animated, but very much a "cinematographic" work in the classic sense, or "A Christmas Carol," which is essentially a high tech form of rotoscoping.
But the one issue I am TRULY adamant on, is there needs to be better definition of the role of a DP, and just who exactly deserves a cinematography award. Because while I feel Avatar's visuals, it's camerawork was certainly deserving of recognition, I do not feel Mauro Fiore deserved to be its recipient. Based on the AC article, and anecdotal evidence, he was much less a DP than a glorified second unit cameraman. Because rather than guide the visuals from the beginning, it appears he was presented with work, and tasked with matching the live action inserts, much as a second unit camera would be charged with matching insert shots and detail shots that are not usually done during production. If an award was to be given, is should have been given to the whole team. Perhaps a special award, as when Technicolor received one for its work in 1939.
Instead, the Academy set a dangerous precedent by giving the award to one man for work that was largely done outside of his artistic purview, and in the hands of many who go unrecognized.
The Academy clearly has the power, and the precedent to redefine these rules, much as it did after the Shakespeare in Love debacle, when FIVE producers got Oscars; afterwards, the academy limited the award to three or less. There needs to be some similar reform, to ensure one person doesn't receive undue credit for work not done.
Wheeewwww! That was a long one. Great topic Jim!
Best,
Brian Rose
Cinematographer (film and digital)
Jim, With respect to the addendum, I wonder if you're familiar with the case of a photojournalism award that was revoked when it was revealed the photographer had digitally manipulated the colors in the image? (I remember reading about this several years ago, but Google is failing me...) As I recall, there was no substantive manipulation of the image contents and the final effect could easily have been achieved in-camera using color filters or under/over-exposure, but something about using digital tools violated the "photojournalist code of ethics."
The one that stands out for me (and I'm not comparing feature film cinematography with the ethical standards of photojournalism) is the one where the photographer simply (and really sloppily) used PhotoShop's "clone" tool to make it look like there was a lot more smoke coming from some exploded bombs than there really was. It was so amateurish and transparently phony I'm amazed that anyone printed it. But major newspapers and magazines somehow did!
The White Ribbon was shot in color and then in a computer the color was drained to make the film black and white. Therefore, every shot was heavily digitally manipulated. It could be argued that the most striking part of the film's visual identity was created in a computer. Just like Avatar. But I don't think anyone would have complained if the White Ribbon won for cinematography. The voters can only vote for what they see on the screen. The final product. Unless somebody tells you how much digital manipulation/creation there is in any given shot, there is no way to know. If you buy that Avatar's environments are photo-realistic(I don't; I think they often look obviously animated.) then there is no reason it shouldn't win for cinematography.
True enough. But there is no animation, and the lighting of The White Ribbon - which was supervised by the cinematographer and his team - was calibrated knowing that the color would not be in the final product. Yes, the color was removed digitally, but it is very common nowadays for color timing to be done in a digital intermediary rather than through answer prints made at a film lab.
The difference is that in Avatar, a different department (with its own Academy Award category) played a huge role in the "lighting" and imagery of the final product. In The White Ribbon, the lighting, camera placement, camera movement, exposure, and focus were all decisions that funneled through the Director of Photography. In Avatar, many of these decisions were made between the director and his visual effects supervisors without Fiore's imput.
All of this debate over CGI and cinematography just proves that you critics were the victims of the biggest cinematic hoax of the decade. The truth is there was no CGI used in Avatar. It's all real. The movie was actually made on the planet Pandora using real Na'vi as actors. If someone in the movie got shot or impaled, that was real. What you saw on the screen is exactly what the lens captured.
I wouldn't say that animation can't have cinematography, just that Avatar's was average compared to a ton of better films. When you have a huge amount of eye-candy scenery, it's easy to do a big birds-eye view shot of the heroes up against it all, but that's just training wheels compared to better films you pointed out like The Hurt Locker.
But here I give what I think is one of the best examples of cinematography in computer animation. It fits the bill because:
1. The clip involves choosing between many different literal cameras. Not REAL cameras, but literal cameras nevertheless. The AI who's perspective see from during the first half of the vid is constantly having to make a change between one camera to another to get a better view of what is going on.
2. There is a major role of choosing a character perspective. First the AI(called The Superintendent), then the viewpoint of the soldier(known as The Rookie), and even briefly, an Jiralhanae Captain. Camera position play an important in establishing this.
3. The setting was not just "pick-and-choose" where everything will be. The city that this clip takes place in(the African city "New" Mombasa, 500 years from now) is an actual city, and the districts seen in the vid are placed according to their actual location.
4. Every clip is designed to hold a lot of information. Particularly with the Superintendent section.
So check it out and see what you think. As a bit of background, the events of the trailer are that a alien flagship arrives above New Mombasa and launches a mass attack, but is swiftly defeated. Pods containing human soldiers are shot to the carrier in a attack attempt, but the ship jumps into hyperspace and causes a massive electromagnetic pulse explosion. Then the Superintendent notices one lone pod. Check it out. Enjoy:
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/1420/Halo-3-ODST-Trailer
What you are describing is not usually conisidered "cinematography" though, but directing. Take a quick look at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematography
There you can see a list of "aspects of cinematography", which includes film stock, filters, lenses, depth of field, lighting, camera movement.
Those are what I would the "tools" of cinematography, what is used to create the final product. That is the main difference between animation and live-action, that they utilize different tools. But focusing on just what tools are used but not in context on the finished shot is missing the point. Sure, one can commend a chef on the fine utensils and cutlery they are using when cooking a feast, but if the meal is never tasted, what is the point of the tools?
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