Abstract
This chapter explores ways to research and position the practice of cinematography and the figure of the cinematographer. Cinematography is a particular form of thinking and collaborative activity, and a specific form of praxis that combines visual ‘enskilment’ processes, aesthetic organisation and communities of practice culture. The chapter presents brief examples of cinematography research case studies under six thematic banners: text, technology, art form, process, culture, and document. The purpose of these themes is to underline how categories prioritise different qualities of research material, and that using practice-oriented interrogation may give visibility to evidence hitherto ignored. The author is a director-cinematographer and ethnographer, who draws on contemporary discussions of practice in anthropology; film production and pedagogy.
References
Alton, J. (1995/1949). Painting with Light. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (2000/1981). Forms of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes towards a Historical Poetics. In M. Holquist (Ed.), Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin (pp. 84–258). Austin, TX: University of Austin Press.
Banks, M., Conor, B., & Mayer, V. (Eds). (2016). Production Studies, the Sequel. New York: Routledge.
Bowes, F. (2014). “Real is Good. Interesting is Better”: Stanley Kubrick’s Cinematographic Authorship. Undergraduate thesis, London College of Communication/University of the Arts London.
Bozak, N. (2012). The Cinematic Footprint: Lights, Camera, Natural Resources. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Bruno, G. (2014). Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality and Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Carringer, R. L. (1996). The Making of Citizen Kane. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Coleman, L., Miyao, D., & Schaefer, R. (2017). Transnational Cinematography Studies. London: Lexington Books.
Corrigan, T. (2011). The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Da Vinci, L. (1980). The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Deleuze, G. (1993/1988). The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Fife-Donaldson, L. (2014). Texture in Film. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gherardi, S. (2006). Organizational Knowledge: The Texture of Workplace Learning. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gherardi, S. (2012). How to Conduct a Practice-Based Study: Problems and Methods. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Goodwin, C. (1997). Professional Vision. American Anthropologist, 3, 606–633.
Grasseni, C. (Ed.). (2009). Skilled Visions: Between Apprenticeship and Standards. New York: Berghahn Books.
Greenhalgh, C. (2003). Shooting from the Heart: Cinematographers and their Medium. In M. Leitch (Ed.), Making Pictures: A Century of European Cinematography (pp. 94–156). New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Greenhalgh, C. (2005). How Cinematography Creates Meaning in Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai, 1997). In J. Gibbs & D. Pye (Eds), Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film (pp. 195–213). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Greenhalgh, C. (2007). Traveling Images, Lives on Location: Cinematographers in the Film Industry. In V. Amit (Ed.), Going First Class? New Approaches to Privileged Travel and Movement (pp. 72–86). New York: Berghahn Books.
Greenhalgh, C. (2008). Emotion in Teaching and Learning Collaboration in Film Practice Education. In N. Austerlitz (Ed.), Unspoken Interactions: Exploring the Unspoken Dimension of Learning and Teaching in Creative Subjects (pp. 171–187). London: University of the Arts London.
Greenhalgh, C. (2010). Cinematography and Camera Crew: Practice, Process and Procedure. In J. Postill & B. Brauchler (Eds), Theorising Media and Practice (pp. 303–324). Oxford: Berghahn.
Greenhalgh, C. (2016). Cottonopolis: Cinematography, Ethnography, Historiography and Texture. In R. Cox, A. Irving, & C. Wright (Eds), Beyond Text? Critical Practices and Sensory Anthropology (pp. 156–162). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Greenhalgh, C. (2018, forthcoming). Cinematographic Encounters with Natural Light Colour. In D. Young (Ed.), Re-Materialising Colour. Canon Pyon, UK: Sean Kingston Publishing.
Greenhalgh, C. (2018, forthcoming). Cottonopolis: Experimenting with the Cinematographic, the Ethnographic and the Essayistic. In B. Hollweg & I. Krstic (Eds), World Cinema and the Essay Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Greenhalgh, C., & Lane, C. (2009). Performing the Cinesonic: Gazetteer Explorer Yarns and Sagas. In L. Fuschini et al. (Eds), Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Guillet de Monthoux, P., Gustafsson, C., & Sjöstrand, S. (Eds). (2007). Aesthetic Leadership: Managing Fields of Flow in Art and Business. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gunn, J. (2012). Stanley Kubrick: Epistemology and the Cinematic Process. Undergraduate thesis, London College of Communication/University of the Arts London.
Hutchins, E. (1996). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ingold, T. (2011). Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge.
Jayasankar, K. P., & Monteiro, A. (2016). A Fly in the Curry: Independent Documentary Film in India. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
John-Steiner, V. (2000). Creative Collaboration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986/1979). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Manning, E. (2009). Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Marks, L. (2000). The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mayer, V., Banks, M. J., Thornton, J., & Caldwell, J. (Eds). (2009). Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries. New York: Routledge.
Pandian, A. (2015). Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Rutherford, A. (2006). “Buddhas Made of Ice and Butter”: Mimetic Visuality, Transience and the Documentary Image. Third Text, 20(1), 27–39.
Scott, A. J. (2005). On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry. Princeton and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strati, A. (1999). Organization and Aesthetics. London: Sage.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Young, F., & Petzold, P. (1972). The Work of the Motion Picture Cameraman. Oxford: Focal Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Greenhalgh, C. (2018). Cinematography: Practice as Research, Research into Practice. In: Batty, C., Kerrigan, S. (eds) Screen Production Research. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62837-0_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62837-0_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62836-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62837-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)