10 films that teach you everything about filmmaking

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is shot with low levels of lighting for a very simple reason: playing with lighting can make some very interesting shadows. The film’s cinematography may be extreme, but it’s a perfect example of how darkness and shadow can emphasize evil, and how light can emphasize good.

More than this, the jagged, twisted lighting literally helps to emphasize the madness within the film; characters are literally trapped in a nightmare. Another point of interest, is that German Expressionist films like Dr. Caligari were filmed in war torn and poor Weimar Germany. Shadows may be effective, but they’re also cheap.

The nineteen fifties were the golden years of television; every American household owned one, so why bother go to the cinema? It was a question that film directors had to answer, and answer they did. The Searchers is a glittering example of a film that delivered its audience an experience they’d be unable to replicate in their own living rooms. Its technicolor is inherently beautiful. It’s grand, it’s immersive and it’s obviously vibrantly colorful.

John Ford and his cinematographer Winton C. Hoch pushed the envelope further by filming in a high-res widescreen format known as VistaVision. The Searchers is BIG, and should be viewed in a cinema whenever possible.

Stanley Kubrick was so determined to film certain scenes of Barry Lyndon using natural light, that he went to the length of using camera lenses that had been developed by NASA. Most famously, this allowed Kubrick to film indoor night scenes using only candlelight (try it sometime, it’s near-impossible).

When he did deploy electric light, cinematographer John Alcott went to great lengths to make sure that the lighting looked as natural as possible by using filters. Using natural light (or natural looking light) is a great way of making a film look realistic, but Kubrick and Alcott’s extreme lengths created a particularly please aesthetic that replicated eighteenth century paintings.

What it can teach you about: Length of Shot, Camera Movement

Long takes are traditionally used for unintrusive and natural-feeling scenes. John Woo used the long take to devastating effect in the action bonanza Hard Boiled. Modern action films often heavily edit and shake up the action to create a false sense of adrenaline. Cinematographer Wang Wing-Heng does exactly the opposite here.

By using a long, uninterrupted three minute take during the final siege, he enhanced the peri by impressing the critics with just how REAL the chaos looked. Pyrotechnics fly, actors get clobbered, and the audience watches wide-eyed at the action packed brilliance of it all.

What it can teach you: Camera movement, Lighting, Focus

Each scene in Gosford Park was shot using two cameras filming simultaneously. Unusually, in each scene the camera is always moving (even if it’s only very subtle movement). Almost everything is kept in focus, and indoor shots have soft lighting spilling in every direction. This allowed the actors to act freely, and complete scenes without the interruption of having to reposition the camera and relight each scene.

Many critics praised the “gliding” quality of Andrew Dunn’s cinematography. The set-up firmly elevates the importance of character interactions within the movie.

What it can teach you about: Camera Movement

In the wrong hands, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind could have been a computer generated special effects bonanza. Instead, Michel Gondry thought small, and used trap doors and quick costume changes to illustrate Joel’s oscillating subconscious.

More than this, he captured the narrative using a handheld camera and made an obviously unreal experience feel like a reality based documentary. Why? As fantastical or distorted as they may be, our memories and our imaginations feel real to us. As a result, many of us not only found Gondry’s film realistic, we also found it nostalgic