April issue of Sight and Sound is cinematography special with a title “Seeing the Light”. S&S contributors Roger Clarke and Edward Lawrenson at Poland’s Cameraimage festival (held in December in Lodz) had the chance to interview international cinematographers about their craft and currently ongoing debate on digital and analogue cinema. Viewpoints of  a baker’s dozen cameramen are assembled in the cover story “Cinematography. Talking Shop.”

Do you have a preference: celluloid or digital?

Karl Walter Lindenlaub [credits include Rob Roy (1995), Independence Day (1996), Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)]: I’m very cautious about digital. I know it’s coming, I can see the possibilities, but there are deffinitely a lot of big drawbacks as well. The danger is to run to it because it’s new, forgetting what we have. Film has matured over a hundred years or so, and it’s never looked this good or been this easy. The mechanical design of cameras has gone through a lot of changes and we basically have the best equipment we’ve ever had right now, with the biggest flexibility to do whatever we want, yet suddenly we’re going over to something that makes noise and needs cooling and needs cable a lot of the time. I’ve done tests, I haven’t done any movies yet. For the projects I was doing, it’s turned out film was better-looking or more practical. [..]

Cesar Charlone: The last three films I’ve worked on have all been digital. City of God was my first fully digital film; I put the credit for the colourist together with mine because I consider that he was equally important to the creative process.

I see digital as a frame to hang images on. El Baño del Papa, for example, comes from 16mm, mini-DV, 35mm and VHS sources. I make analogy with sound mixing: when I walked into Framestore in London to work on The Constant Gardener, the studio reminded me of a DJ booth. I joke that now cinematography is painting with a mouse, not painting with light. [..]

*Full text can be found: Sight and Sound, 04’09, 18-24. p.

Prepared by: Zane Krumina