Cinematography sets the overall look and feel of the film’s visual narrative. Each visual on the screen can serve and enhance the story – it’s cinematographers responsibility to ensure that each element is a close-knit and supports the story.
The film director and cinematographer work cohesively, as the cinematographer has to make sure that their choices support the overall director’s vision for the film.
Many aspire to be the eye behind the camera, while in order to achieve that one has to learn cinematography from basics to the visual elements of the film, to camera operations, and much more.
Few basic tips for beginners are:
- Learn Cinematography basics
Spend a few months gaining significant knowledge in both technical and practical aspects. The basics to learn cinematography includes – operating different cameras, basic video compositional techniques, light and sound design, film and video editing techniques and much more.
At the end cinematography is much more than manning the camera – it’s about understanding the entire movie learning process.
- Finding the Inspiration
Once you learn cinematography concepts and tools required for cinematography, you can start its practical implementation. Apart from skills, tools and artistic eye to create the magic the next big step is finding your inspiration to become successful in the field.
You can find inspiration from a movie, from your day to day life or anything. At the same time try to find what you like doing? – Is it creating meaningful films? Breathtaking movie with the moving pictures? Being part of a big production house? What made you want to learn cinematography ?
- Spend time at Film sets
Experience is always the best teacher. If there is an opportunity to visit any working film set, this is the easiest way to validate how well you learn cinematography? And the add on advantage is you can do it all without any pressure.
This will expose you to the behind the scenes, pros of being a cinematographer, camera operations, Director, set designers, actors, Production, Work culture on a movie set and many more.
- Build your Network
One can learn cinematography, gain skills and technique but while it comes to making a film it is always a collaborative task. Sometimes success depends on your skills and how well you know people.
Infact, start building your connections from the beginning , start attending workshops, offering to do some local projects and make yourself available for the referrals.
- Keep Learning
With the ever changing world of technology ii is very important to keep upgrading yourself. The success and relevance depends on the ability to adapt and use them to your advantage.
Learning never stops whatever knowledge you have gained while you learn cinematography should keep on enhancing on a regular basis.
While you keep all the pointers you have granted while you learn cinematography the film world is pretty small and one needs to have a lot of passion and patience to succeed. There are various filmmaking schools, colleges and institutes in India from where one can learn cinematography. Annapurna College of Film and Media is one of the best film colleges in India, which offers dual specialization in film and media for both Bachelors and M
