1. DGMD S-72 Graphic Storytelling: Comic Book Art and Narrative
#2: Intro to Cinematography
Intro to Comic Layout: Closure and the Senses
In-class Prompt #1.
Steps for Developing a Story in Pictures.
Photoshop for Editing Scanned Drawings

2. Intro to Cinematography
What is Cinematography? What tools does it offer us as visual storytellers?

3. Intro to Cinematography
Cinematography is a visual language of Framing, Angles, and Edits which allow us, as visual directors, to manage the informational and emotional experience of our audience.
Consider these two sequences from the manga Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.
How does each sequence use framing and angle to draw us into the moment?

4. Intro to Cinematography
1. CAMERA FRAMING is about information. By controlling how much the user sees, we help them focus on a specific place, person, or action:
Wide = where we are
Medium = who is there
Close = what they are doing
What is the framing of each of these shots? How do they draw us into the moment of the story?

5. Intro to Cinematography
2. CAMERA ANGLES is about power relationships, affecting how we feel about the subject. Note the language of these angles from Terminator II directed by James Cameron, and how an emotional experience is embedded in the names:
Looking-Down shot = the subject is less powerful, unhappy, or in trouble
Eye-to-Eye shot = we are at the subject’s level; we are them.
Looking-Up shot = the subject is powerful, in command, we are in awe of them
Terminator 2, directed by James Cameron

6. Intro to Cinematography
3a. EDITING is about juxtaposing images to progress a story.
Each important story beat should ideally be presented in multiple shots.
Consider the opening of Little Miss Sunshine, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.
What happens in each of these shots?
What do we understand from their combination?

7. Intro to Cinematography
3b. EDITING is how we build drama into the moments of our story!
EXERCISE 1: The shot below shows a person entering a room, all in a single, wide, eye-to-eye shot.
This is essentially just a poster; It creates no drama, no anticipation, no sense of importance in the mind of the audience.
How could we break this moment into multiple shots to build drama with this character’s entrance?
Try varying the framing and angle in each shot.

8. Intro to Cinematography
3c. EDITING: Consider this moment, described in David Mamet’s On Directing Film:
Imagine a stream through a dense wood, where a deer is drinking. The observer steps on a branch, and the deer raises its head.
Rather than a single, wide poster image, which would not tell the viewer where to look, we can share this moment in three more focused shots, to communicate, in combination, a sense of alertness.
EXERCISE 2: With a partner, design these three shots.

9. Intro to Cinematography
3d. EDITING also has rules we need to follow, to not lose the audience:
Follow Rule of Thirds for composition.
Maintain Sidedness (see next slide and clips from The Muppet Movie and A Few Good Men).
Respect the 180 degree line (Note the 3 ways to cross it).
Try Insert Shots and Match Cuts.
Try Dutch Angles: turn the camera on the z-axis, so that architectural lines are not parallel to the sides of the frame/panel.
These rules and the proper use of these tools are critical in filmmaking, but are a bit more flexible in comics, because of our ability as readers to LINGER.

10. Intro to Cinematography: Rule of Thirds
(a) Compose your characters and main architectural elements on the two lines made when dividing the frame by thirds.
(c) Avoid center framing (static) or allowing your character to sit too far left, right, top, bottom.
(b) Put one element in the back and the other in the foreground.
In this standoff, the blue gunslinger is positioned on the left-side Thirds Line, and the red gunslinger is positioned so the tension between hand and gun is on the right-side Thirds Line.

11. Intro to Cinematography: Sided-ness
Maintain character sidedness to maintain audience orientation. Typically, we keep the main character in the scene on the left, as we are oriented in the Western world to “read” left to right. EXAMPLE 1: The Muppet Movie: “Something Better” song: Note how the camera cuts do not change sidedness. From front, back, side, or walking, Kermit stays on the left.

12. Intro to Cinematography: Sided-ness1 2
EXAMPLE 2: A Few Good Men: “Markinson’s Dead”: Director Rob Reiner uses Sided-ness in this scene to establish authority. The character on the right is in the right. The camera cuts and actor blocking carefully combine to place the character in charge at any moment on the right side: 3 4 5 6 7

13. Intro to Cinematography: 180 degree rule
Imagine a line drawn between the two characters in a scene: the “Line of Action”.
To help keep the audience oriented, the camera cannot cut from one side of that line to the other.
There are three ways to cross the line without doing it in a single cut. What are they?

14. Intro to Cinematography: 180 degree rule
There are three ways to cross the line without doing it in a single cut. What are they?
1. Pan the camera around to the new position. 2. Cut to an intermediary shot behind one character or above both, looking down. 3. Walk the characters through a door: it’s magic!

15. Intro to Cinematography:
Match Cut: Two shots, one ending at the moment of impact and one starting at that moment but from another angle, showing the bounce-off. Can be good for showing the force of an impact.
Insert Shot: A shot removed from the action, showing something relevant in the area, that will be important later. Often used for foreshadowing, or to show the collateral damage of an action.

16. Cinematography and Performance
To summarize: The framing of shots in a film can establish a sense of place with a wide shot, connect us to a character with a medium shot, and help us focus on an action with a close shot, while the angle can make us feel awe or pity for a character, or create identification with an eye-level shot. Editing drives the story forward by juxtaposing these shots with varied framing and angles to create drama, and we need to pay attention to character sidedness to maintain viewer orientation.

17. Cinematography and Performance
So, what should you do for Cinematography in your Performance Animations? Normally, a film is created by storyboarding first, but to emphasize character animation this past week I asked you to focus on performance first. So this week you will add drama to your film with dynamic angles to emphasize the audio and main movements of your performance. As a rule of thumb, animation tends to be a medium of fast cuts. For a short fil, in particular, your shots should typically be between 1-3 seconds each (20-90 frames). For an second short film like your performance animations, I would like to see 3-5 shots (2-4 cuts-- usually just 3 shots and 2 cuts). CAMERA SET-UP: Start by creating a camera and setting the upper left Viewport to Panels > Perspective > Camera01. To see the limits of the render frame in the camera viewport, turn on View > Camera Settings > Resolution Gate. Hit Display Render Settings (film clapboard with gear icon, upper right) and set Image Size to 1280 x 720. Note the Resolution Gate updates to the new size. With the Camera01 selected, hit [D] and move the pivot to the base of the body.

18. Cinematography and Performance
CAMERA ANIMATION: Turn on Auto Keyframe Toggle (lower right). Set keyframes for the shot lengths: Two keyframes per shot, one at the start and one at the end, with the next shot starting exactly one frame later to create a clean cut. Set the Camera for the starting shot of your film by Moving and Rotating it in any of the views until you like the framing in the Camera Viewport. Be sure the time is set to 1, and hit [s] to set a keyframe for all channels. Choose how long you want that shot to be held (usually until the end of a motion and/or audio phrasing, 1-3 seconds long) and hit [s] to set another keyframe. Shot 1 is done. Start Shot 2 exactly one frame later: hit [s] to key all channels and then Move/Rotate the camera for the second framing and angle. Choose the end of the shot, hit [s] to set a keyframe there. Repeat for Shot 3 and any remaining shots: one frame later, hit [s] to key everything and then move/rotate to get desired shot. Choose end of shot, hit [s]

19. Cinematography and Performance
CAMERA ANIMATION: An Example See this example, with audio “Don’t you… EVER… use that tone of voice with me, MISSY. WHO do you think you’re talking to?” Here is the starting single-frame poster for the performance. Character starts by looking in her microscope, then looks at camera and stands up to approach viewer (uses microscope, table, and chair as props).
Here are three potential shots to build drama:
1. A close-up low-angle shot from the POV of the microscope slide, as if we are a microbe in her sight.
2. Then a cut right before the big “EVER” to a medium eye-to-eye shot, to see her looking off-camera at the person she is addressing.
3. And finally a wide shot from below as she approaches the viewer.

20. Learn More About Cinematography
Learn more about film editing! Here are some inspiring sources:
David Mamet’s On Directing Film is a short discussion of visual narrative by one of the great 20th century American storytellers in theater and film.
The YouTube series “Every Frame Painting” by Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos is an exploration of editing in a wide variety of film genres, styles, and techniques from many directors. Watch to expand your visual storytelling toolbox!
Start here, with the first video: Steven Spielberg’s “Oners” (long shots):
Then watch their thoughts on Lynne Ramsey’s “The Poetry of Details” (even more useful technique for comic artists):
Then explore the rich and diverse series! We watch the Jackie Chan one when we discuss action in a later class.