AIC, 1988 - AIC Associazione Italiana Autori della Fotografia ...

AIC
Immagine da computer graphic di John Lasseter
will turn language and culture upside
down, and make the relationship
between television, cinema and
publicity infinitely more complex.
With the advent of High Definition —
the new technology applied to the
creation of the image — but not only
because of this, the right moment has
arrived — which the Greeks call
"kairos" — for the principles governing
form in cinema to undergo a
metamorphosis. There is, therefore, no
point in reiterating all the pros and
cons of the cinema versus television
versus publicity argument. Also
because the "wealth" of images
transmitted today, rare not aimed at
enriching the viewer' spirit, but rather
impoverishing both his spirit and his
world, slowly dragging them down into
the blackness.
The reason for this, affirms Godard, is
that we continue to produce images
without considering the light. Thus,
the contribution that the Director of
Photography could make to a film is,
paradoxically, lessened at the moment
when his rote has become
fundamentally important: for example,
Vittorio Storaro's "role" in "The Last
Emperor". Even so, it has been
possible, through Storaro's theoretical
and practical contribution, to radically
change the approach to lighting that
the cinema has adhered to for so long —
and which only the publicity spots try
to imitate, usually without success.
Let's take advantage of this change in
lighting techniques to propose,
somewhat impertinently, a method to
be applied to lighting, which considers
it as the prime requisite of the image.
This method, to be applied when
working on a concept for the light in
relationship to the new technologies
available, involves broadening that
same concept to make it function on a
technological level, taking it out of its
original sphere and turning it into
something resembling a formula; in
other words, using it to progressively
transform the light into a technological
form.
One can refuse to accept this method,
but only if one continues to wave the
flag of "Romantic Beauty",
much-beloved of Goethe, assigning to
light the function of differentiating
between the inner and outer worlds,
representation and reality. However, in
doing this, one refuses to recognize that
the system of creating images with,
optical techniques, in which the light,
as Goethe so poetically maintains, in
representing things also represents their
souls, is steadily breaking down under
the continual pressure exerted by the
new electronic technologies.
Technologies which use artifice in the
generation of their analogical images,
revealing the cinema's technobgical
soul or, in other words, its being a
machine that "reproduces" reality.
An example of this is being able to use
the laser in film-making — a source of
light that couldn't be more modem —
and exploit its characteristic
time/space coherence with the
computer which, in itself, is proof of
how the figurative representation of
light is changing, how scientific and
mathematical its bgic is becoming. It
will be said that the laser is a special
effect. It certainly is for people who see
the cinema in a conventional rather
than scientific light; and will remain
so, if the Director of Photography does
not succeed in creating a style of
lighting — which Tafuri did so
effectively for Luci Lontane — in which
a balance is achieved between the
continuity of the laser and
discontinuity of conventional lighting.
This balance can only be achieved if
the Director of Photography is able to
create his images by combining a
concept of the light as applied to
painting, with a concept which
functions according to the bgic of
technology which, in the case of the
laser, considers light purely as
numerical information.
If we then move on to images created
with computer graphics, from the way
of representing the image to a way of
simulating it, the question of light is
turned right around. Because creating
an image with computer programming
techniques means no longer working
with an optical space which co-exists
with the object and the image, but
with a virtual space in which the light
waves are substituted by a numerical
language and the speed of light is
tranformed into the speed of calculus.
Thus, it is the formal elegance of the
calculus which is the prime requisite of
the image, as it is essential to its
simulation, which does not
communicate an already existent
reality, but a virtual reality, a hybrid,
half-object and half-image, which is no
longer material, no longer created by
enegry, but the product of calculuses,
symbols and formal language.
The end result of all this? A radical
split in the morphogenesis of the
image. A split which poses serious
problems for the Director of
Photography when he has to combine
the two types of image in one: for
example, an image filmed with an
Arriftex and another created with
computer graphics which, apart from
having to have the same movement,
also have to have the same quality of
light-
To cbse this article, let's return to the
beginning, for a moment. The new
technobgies used to create the image,
have provoked a crisis as regards the
expression of form in cinema, which the
Director of Photography, more than
anyone, has to seek to resolve. As it is
a crisis that cannot be solved by
adaptation, but only revolution he
therefore has to transform himself into
a technobgical artist, continually
questioning the conventional methods
adopted in the figurative
representation of light, and continually
updating them.