Cinematography

 

The cinematography is the art and occupation of making movies, we can define it as the creation of a movement illusion by means of the rapid succession of a series of images. It constitutes a long and creative process of production in which participate a series of elements such as cameras, lights, actors and when they merge each other in a scene make notice aspects like illumination, picture and performance among others; this process wouldn't be possible without the collaboration of specialized professionals in these topics.

This process is divided in teams constituted by few people or teams constituted by dozens of them, for this reason the production can result a failure if it doesn't have a high level of organization. It is focused in the existent relationships among each individual picture that conform a movie, this involves illumination, cameras, performance, special effects and in general, everything the director thinks is convenient to use to achieve his idea.
The cinematography includes two big stages, the first one it constituted by taking of images with a camera and the second one consists in its exhibition with a projector.

The most important moments in the production process are following:

• Project study. - Concepción and structuring.
• Project valuation. - Scenarios, characters, localizations and technical team breakdown.
• Financing. - Searching of financial resources coming from diverse sources.
• Preparation or Pre-production. - Technical script supervision, crew selection, actor's casting, work plan, etc.
• Filming. - Daily work control, financial forecast, filming teams coordination.
• Final post-production.
• Final Financial control. - Financial balance of the production. 
• Movie Promotion and Exploitation or commercialization.
  
  
   FILM
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The film was made of celluloid before, material used for filming since the cinema was born. Now it is made of a very similar material, but this one isn't inflammable. It is impregnated by a material called emulsion which is sensitive to light and colors. Some films are more sensitive to light than others. The films that need a little light are used to make pictures or night scenes and those which need more light are good for making scenes during the day. The films which need a little light are called very sensitive films and those which need abundant light receive the name "not very sensitive to light".
  
  It consists of a cellulose acetate base approximately 0.006 in. thick and coated with a light-sensitive emulsion that is made in large rolls about 54 in. wide and about several thousand feet long which slits into 35-mm strips, packed, and perforated in lightproof bags and cans in rolls 100, 200, 400, and 1000 ft in length.
  There are two different types of film: negative film, from which a print is made in order to see the original subject in its true likeness, and reversal film, in which a negative is first formed in the original film and from this a positive is formed in the same piece of film.
  
  Formats.- There are six formats of films which are determined by the total width and the useful surface of each picture.
  
  Amateur formats:
• 8mm (14 mm²)
• super 8 (21mm²)
• 9,5mm (50mm²)
• 16mm (70mm²)

Professional formats:

• 35mm (390mm²), the most used
• 70mm (1070mm²), used in the years 60 and 70 
• 70 mm, IMAX used at this moment
  
  
  PROJECTORS
  
  
  A film projector is an optic-mechanic device which is used to show movies, it project them in a screen. Most of the optic and mechanical components, except the concerning ones to illumination and sound, are also present in film cameras.
  
  This device consists on a point of light whose rays are picked up by a curved mirror which throws them to a transparent film, at the same time they pass through an objective (lens) that increases the luminous pictures which are projected in the screen.
  
  The projector has, the same as the photographic camera, two bobbins: a feeder that provides the film to the projector and another, the receiver that picks up the film once projected. It also has a mechanism that transforms the photographed sound in real noises.
  
  The projector system in a modern motion picture theater has five main assemblies:
• Optical sound head. - Reproduces optical sound (photographically recorded).
• Projector head. - Projects the image onto the screen.
• Lamphouse. - Furnishes the illumination for the picture.
• Shutter and the platter system.- Feeds the film through the projector head.
• Some projectors have a second sound head for the reproduction of magnetic sound (magnetically recorded).

Commercial projectors project the film to a speed of 24 pictures per second. Other projectors do it to 18 pictures. According to the film format, the projectors can be:

• Super 8mm and 8mm (single-8) projectors
• 16mm projectors 
• 35mm projectors