Posts Tagged ‘Cinematography’

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I believe I first heard of the obscure word Chiaroscuro many many years ago as an art elective student in Victoria School – My then art teacher, a distinguished Irish gentleman named Paul O’shea, was an accomplished artist who taught the subject with such passionate fervor that Art history left a deep, lasting impression on me and continues to be a big source of inspiration for my works today. Mr O’shea also pronounced Chiaroscuro ( and Contrapposto ) beautifully; I lucidly remember my classmates and me grinning in childish pleasure every time the word escaped his lips.

Chiaroscuro, simply put, means light and darkness. In painting terms, it denotes the use of deep variations in and subtle gradations of light and shade to create the illusion of three-dimensionality, often to dramatic effect. The Baroque artist Caravaggio was a champion of Chiaroscuro, creating paintings ( Supper at Emmaus, below ) as hauntingly beautiful now as they were 400 years ago.

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Some screengrabs off my recently completed graduation film project “Umi no Namida” ( Tears of the Sea ), where I tripled as cameraman/cinematography, storyboard artist, as well as editor. For any filmmaker there’s always the indescribable rush of excitment and pleasure as one watches the film take shape slowly during the editing stage, so I guess those all-nighters hadn’t gone to waste.

Recently just as I was starting to get jaded with the largely nondescript, unsatisfying Japanese films that I have had access to here in Tokyo, comes a mind blowing piece of work that utterly sweeps me off my feet, myself smiling and swearing unwittingly throughout the film’s viewing, marvelling at its sheer brilliance and beauty. Based on a short story of the same name by renowned writer Murakami Haruki, Tony Takitani ( directed by Ichikawa Jun, whose previous film Byoin De Shinu To Iu Koto ironically inflicted me with severe soporificism ) explores the issues of isolation, solitude and loss. This film is in a word, beautiful; the quiet photography, subdued palette of colours that lend to the film’s intended feeling of emptiness, the music, poised piano arrangements mirroring the visual’s quiescent mood, the treatment and art direction, each scene decorated with the aloofness of an Edward Hopper painting, the screenplay, conversations and exchanges like soothing poetry but with non of the rigidity, more like the words of a child, honest, direct, austere. My highest recommendations.

You can get the Japanese 2 disc special edition of the dvd here.

Watching Brad Silberling’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is like tasting the delicious icing and toppings on an otherwise bland cake; its like savouring the attractive, beautifully illustrated cover of an otherwise boring novel. That much said, the film’s astonishing photography and production work is unlike anything we’ve seen since Sleepy Hollow, granted, they were done by some of the same folks.

If you’d cared to stay just a few minutes longer for the end credits, one will be greeted by a cornucopia of the best talents in the business; ILM, as ever for the CG and animation, cinematography by Emmaneul Lubezki of Sleepy Hollow, Great Expectations; editing by Michael Kahn, who edited most of Spielberg’s recent films; production design by Rick Henrichs of Sleepy Hollow; costume design by Colleen Atwood of Gattaca, Silence of the Lambs; music by Thomas Newman of American Beauty, Meet Joe Black, and the list goes on.
Let’s just hope next time the cake is as tasty as the icing itself.