response to Aesthetics of Video

            I liked how this reading focused on the importance of cinematography in terms where the camera is and what it is doing. Like the reading said, most people, when they are asked to talk about a film, only really think about the plot, characters, effects, etc, what they don’t even realize is that the way the camera is working makes a huge impact on how we feel during the movie and how we think about it as a whole.

            An example of this is in a movie I watched recently, the well known Citizen Kane. In the film, the main character, Kane, is often filmed from a low angle, making him look very big. This creates the effect of making Kane look very imposing, powerful and in control. This is also contrasted with certain parts of the movie where Kane is in a wide-angle shot and looks very small, and corresponds to when Kane is not in control. These impressions of Kane are obviously reinforced with the plot of the movie, but the camera angles still play a very important role in how we feel about the character.

            Making the audience feel something through camera angles could also be arguably harder than making them feel something through things plot or acting because, as were discussing, camera angles go much less noticed than those other things. It reminds me of something that Steven Spielberg, considered a master of cinematography, said when he was on Inside the Actor’s Studio, paraphrasing, he said that if you really want to see how movies are filmed well, you should watch them with the sound off. I think this demonstrates how in video, it is not always about what’s being said, it’s how you are capturing it.

Jeremy Reich

http://www.ubu.com/film/kucera_burleska.html