about writing with light, cinematography inspirartion and being a young dude from London

I just got this mail on my CML (Cinematography Mailing List) address. It says it all.



"Yesterday we, members of "Cinematographer's Language and Style" discussion club went to see "Lebanon"...

When you see this film you do not think about how Giora Bejach, ACT (Israeli Association of Cinematographers) combined 16mm, DV and Red One material into a 35mm print. You care less it was RED or film, or what work flow was chosen.

You are mesmerized by power of images. Power of images that is gluing you to the seat for 90 minutes. No 3-D, no FX, no vistas, no "stars", no long tracking shots, no nothing - except a great work of DP in the best traditions of the fine cinematography.

Variety wrote: " Samuel Maoz's [director] pic, 99.9% of which is set within an Israeli tank, actually has the least to do with Lebanon per se. The story could be set in any tank, any country, any war -- a cinematic Kammerspiel that's as much a formal challenge for its creator as it is a claustrophobic experience for
audiences."99.9% was shot inside a tank and the result was CAMERIMAGE's The Golden Frog - remarkable!

What can we expect a DP to do inside a tank? Black hole! What can a DP like Giora Bejach do?
A lot...

First of all you can use light! Director of Photography is a Director of Writing by Light!
Light can write on film, on CMOS, on whatever, but write by light .....

Write - as Giora Bejach did - in harsh light with no diffusion, write in soft light with 3 layers of 215, light directly and light by bouncing... "Write" in ratio 1:3 or in ratio 1:8 ... "Write" in tungsten or with Lite panels, but
write!

Giora used all "letters" of cinematographer alphabet, he created great cinematic "words" from them, he created symbolic images-phrases, his visual phrases told visually the often difficult to watch story and he got the Prize for this!

Those kind of films and those kind of talented people give all us hope that someday even the most visually disadvantaged people would understand that cinematography is the talent of vision, talent of seeing, talent of expressing, talent of creating visual symbols.

And it would give all of us hope that great cinematography will continue to be with any mm, K's and sensor size.

Watch this film - a lot of food for thought!


Yuri Neyman, ASC
Director
of Photography
Founder of Gamma and Density Co.
www.gammadensity.com
Los Angeles, CA"



Looking at Yuri Neyamn's lanuage I start to think if any of my colleagues from the film school i finished would write about cinematography in this language. I have a feeling it would be not arrogant enough for most of them, not cool enough. It might be about the general trend to be uber chilled and cool and advertise yourself, or just because they are very young and techsavy and they mostly care about log lines and who is right about certain gammas choices.
The other possibility, the one that they just do not feel it, that they do not see the light in this way is rather not possible, since we are talking about ... cinematographers - writers with light.