Movies Always Need a Leader of Light and Shadow

In a crew, there are two roles that can be called Director, one is the director and the other is the director of photography. Photography is first and foremost a tool for self-expression. A good photographer should first be a creator.

1. The leader of film lights and shadows

Photography and videography do often get it wrong. As long as the form of film still exists, it needs light and shadow, and there must always be a visual leader. In most cases, the director may only have one or two sentences to express his thoughts, and the photographer actually appears as the creator.

The photography of The Legend of the Demon Cat 

The most important first is the preparation of texture. For example, the texture of The Legend of the Demon Cat and City of Life and Death is definitely very different, and it's not the same as Mountain Patrol. This texture is like wearing clothes, whether you wear a satin, a suit, or a T-shirt. Specifically, contrast, grain, clarity, including the mapping relationship of different colors.

For example, in City of Life and Death, to make blood, we will work with the art department to test the texture. The blood in the color film, a little bit red, just felt really scary, the man was bleeding. But if you put it in a black and white film, you will find that it is like muddy water, and you will feel that the person's face is dirty, so the blood in the black and white film must be much thicker and darker than what you see in the normal world. absolute persuasion. Another example is the section in The Legend of the Demon Cat, where the color brightness and hue are adjusted to make both red and green relatively high-level colors, so that they don't feel awkward when put together. These are the preparations for the texture of the movie shooting lights that the photographer needs to do in the early stage.

The photography of City of Life and Death 

Light is very important for photographers,  City of Life and Death  uses very traditional movie shooting lights, the face shape is always very classical, so you will feel that the characters are particularly powerful. For example, in the scene of raising their hands in the church, when everyone stood in the church, their hands sailed across the sea like sails, and there was a special kind of hope or a sense of spirit.

2. The establishment of poetic aesthetics in movie lights

The most direct basis for a photographer's artistic accomplishment comes from painting. For example, light, like in the time of Rembrandt and Vermeer, the light source of movie shooting lights is very strongly emphasized. By Munch, his light sources start to become mixed, and by the Hope light source it becomes more realistic.

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks

Edvard Munch, The Sick Child

The photography of The Legend of the Demon Cat 

The reason for using black and white in filming City of Life and Death  is because the environment is City of Life and Death in Inside is the least important, as long as it is an environment where wars have been fought. So in black and white, the information becomes abstract at first, but the description of the face will be very accurate, because it removes the color information and purifies it.

In fact, many people's faces were very dirty during filming. You might laugh when you watch it on set, but you don't have that feeling when you watch it on-screen.

Including Roma and Schindler's List, black and white is particularly effective when only the actor's expression needs to be highlighted, surpassing the effect of all colors.

Picasso, Breakfast of a Blind Man

The photography of The Eight Hundred

In terms of texture and color selection, The Eight Hundred is inspired by Picasso's paintings. The blue color in Picasso's blue period paintings, and the transparency produced by yellow, can "Eight Hundred" be made into a "poem". Because it is already a very cruel and powerful story, it can be contrasted, in a particularly soft and delicate way, to contrast the cruelty in this play. Grasp the tone, when you hear this music, you will imagine what the picture should look like, where is aerial photography, where is fixed, where is the crazy kind of handheld movement, where is particularly stable, so that there will be a grasp of the overall tonality.