Documentary – Cinematography

John Alcott

My chosen cinematographer is John Alcott. Alcott worked multiple times with Kubrick, and I have always admired the visual style of Kubrick’s films, which can only suggest I must have been a fan of John Alcott’s work as well, and not even been aware of it. I am going to be looking at the Lighting  Mood, Camera Movement and Colours in The Shining, and then progress onto thinking about how I can use them in my Documentary module.

The Shining

The Shining has always been one of my favourite films, and I have always been trying to take influence from it in my script writing, so it seems right that I should try to take influence from the imagery within the film. The lighting used in The Shining isn’t what I would describe as something insanely influential, it isn’t like common horror films which abuse shadows and darkness in order to make a creepy atmosphere for the viewer, but most of the time the scenes are well-lit, probably more well-lit than a normal room would be, everything can be seen, this could be to give clarity to the scenes to allow the audience to take in absolutely everything around them. The mood of the shots used is probably the most important part of the whole film, the one point perspective which is notorious in Kubrick’s films are abused to no end, but the composition of the shots are what give the film the tone or harrowing misfortune and doom. The symmetry of the shots used throughout the film give the audience an uncomfortable viewing experience, everything looking absolutely perfect is something that you do not often see in real life, giving it a very unnerving feel to the scene. There are several camera movements used in The Shining that stand out, one being the slow zoom on Jack’s face, used to emphasise his slow transition into insanity, another is a steady-shot used to track along with Danny riding around the hotel on his tricycle. Another very interesting aspect of the film is the use of colours and filters, as the films progresses, the colours change so to the darkness of the film. The film starts off with beautiful green scenery, turns into shades of orange and yellow as they enter the hotel which become darker and darker as the film progresses, eventually ending up with white and blue in the climactic ending of the film.

The use of a Slow Zoom in The Shining.

The use of Symmetry to make the audience uncomfortable.

The use of green colours to make the image feel pleasant.

The use of dark blue to make the image feel unpleasant.

My Documentary

Some of the key aspects that I can draw from the cinematography used in The Shining is how important colour is in order to get a feeling of a scene across to the audience, so I need to learn to use colour in my documentary to accordingly replicate the mood I am going for, something that may be a lot harder and in some places impractical when it comes to documentary, as in when making a drama, you can spend hours setting up lighting and colour before shooting a scene, but if we only have five minutes to sit down and interview someone, a lot of that is going to be a second thought. The other key things include the unforgettable instances of how symmetry can make an audience feel completely uncomfortable. I could use this if I were making a controversial documentary where I want the audience to not agree with the person that is being interviewed, and put them right in the middle of the shot and talking directly forward, giving a strange aspect to the scene and make people subconsciously not like what they are seeing.

Main things gathered from this task:
-Don’t underestimate how effective colours are in making an audience feel an emotion.
-Symmetry isn’t nice and can be abused to make an audience feel uncomfortable.