"Life is color"

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Parent Category: Engels

Category: Training

Created: Tuesday, April 04 2017 20:17

Published: Tuesday, April 04 2017 20:17

Written by Bart

Kennemer dunes 360° today. Start [ finish ]

Min/max temperature: 7°C/16°C; humidity: 84%; precipitation: 1 mm; sea level pressure: 1025 hPa; wind: NW 1.9 km/h; visibility: 11.0 kilometres; First Quarter Moon, 61% visible

"[When I began] the business was so new then that the cameraman, as I recall it, had nobody to consult with. […] You were more or less completely on your own […] A great many individuals, directors and producers, realised the importance of each and every person on a motion picture […] The same ideals are present today as they were when I began. In the early days, the cameraman had to do practically everything himself, with his own hands. Now, he has many assistants who do the actual work, but under his direction. So I would still be called upon to exercise all the various things I formally did, but directing other people to do my work physically. [Looking back upon my first color picture], not having had any experience with color, I do believe that my thoughts were to try to control color. The good Lord, when he goes to paint the exterior, has almost lavish palette of color in the world. So my thinking was an attempt to control color, to eliminate color unless it could be used dramatically. I don't want the color to control me. I recall [ a] scene [with] a table covered with a white cloth, and on that cloth was a bowl of fruit. The bowl of fruit consisted of every kind of fruit one could think of, a complete conglomeration of color. [It] dazzled me when I looked at it. So first I emptied the bowl and put back fruit until it almost looked as if there was no color there, then I mounted a red apple in a very important position there where you could not help but see it. [This] bowl of fruit consisted of a red apple -- it was almost the only color there -- and it was startling on the screen. That was my idea of the control of color.[…] There are subjects that may lend themselves to black and white, but put them in color, and see if they're not better, or equally as good. I think they will be better. […] Everything is color, therefore you don't even think about it. Life is color"

Hal Rosson in 'The Art of the Cinematographer' by Leonard Maltin, page 96, 97, first published in 1971 by Dover Publications, Inc. New York