Cinematography: Theory and Practice: Image Making for Cinematographers and Directors by Blain Brown

In his book, Blain Brown talks about how the required knowledge of cinematographers and directors often overlap and both need to know basics of each other’s profession in order to collaborate better and maximise the results of their efforts, as they are both tasked with telling the story through visual communication.

Blain browns book explains the various techniques, practiced by cinematographer to communicate stories through the use of a camera. The book covers such aspects as, how to lead the eyes of your audience through a frame or scene, using tools such as composition, lighting, colour, and contrast. How symbolism can be used to reveal important plot points of the story and give deeper meaning to a frame, as well as, conveying character emotion and messages without the use of any words or dialog.

Cinematography seems to be all about how to communicate a story without the use of anything nonvisual, thus it fits perfectly into my research. However, the focus of cinematography seems to be film and does not completely cover the full extent of more artistic elements that would be more prevalent in animation such as colour or shape languages.

Looking at some top books on cinematography, this book was top of a few lists and was said to be a must have for those who were only beginning to dabble in cinematography. The book, was published not too long ago and is written for the purpose of education, thus more apt for this study than Benjamin Bergery’s book, ‘Reflections’, which seemed to be targeted at cinematographers that have some experience. A more recently published book is Vittorio Storar’s book, ‘Storaro: Writing with Light’, however this book is quite expensive and, according to reviews, difficult to read and therefore it would be pointless to read a book that I cannot understand.

Although reading Blaine Brown’s book has shown me that cinematograph is almost all about visual communication, although not completely about visual communication. There is also a lot of information about the technical aspects of cameras and other tools that cinematographers have at their disposal, including, how to capture the desired image, shooting methods, continuity, and the rules that govern and aid cinematography.

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Drawn to Life by Walt Stanchfield

When I first told about Walt Stanchfield book, “Drawn to life” I was looking for a book that explained, in depth, the fundamentals of shapes and our deep psychological connections that we have with them, which I was relatively aware of, thanks to the lessons given to me by my course tutors on character design and the lecture I received from Weta digital. Reading through the book, Walt does explain how shapes are used to communicate character personality, however Walt goes deeper by explaining how certain shapes, symbols and line arrangements can provoke specific emotions, thus explaining why those same shapes are used for certain story archetypes.
Although Walt touches on all aspects of animation, covering all the basics, as well as giving us a lot of life lessons about working in animation, and as an artist, Walt’s book focuses a lot on gesture, explaining how to best capture it, how to create it, and its role in animation. Walt’s lessons and writing really give one an understanding of how a character’s actions, mannerisms, and body language are used within the art of nonverbal communication.
Upon researching this book, and more importantly its author, I started to realise that Walt Stanchfield has had a bigger effect on my life than what I would have imagined, in the book Walt Stanchfield states a few names of people that he taught in his drawing class at Disney studios. One of these was Don Bluth, who founded Bluth studios, which employed artists who, later, taught my course director, Conann Fitzpatrick, who is now my tutor.
Walt also mentions that he believes that all creative pursuits are connected, and that the teachings learned from one creative aspect can also aid the others. I believe that my topic may be what connects them.
I have come to understand that not only are the shapes and lines that form the image important to communicating it meaning, but also, how the shapes move and change, perhaps even more so, than what those shapes and line are.