Talk:Cinematography/Archives/2015

Lighting

The current lighting section is identical to a piece of text on this page, as well as being rather poorly written. What should be done about this? 211.30.6.86 (talk) 08:51, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

The lighting section could use more information. Maybe include the different types of lighting techniques? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Softball67 (talk • contribs) 18:23, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Dubious optical printer claim

It is claimed in the "Other special techniques" section that Cecil Hepworth used optical printing to obtain his reversed motion effects. I very much doubt it, and although I haven't the time to research Hepworth's methods now, that would be at odds with every history of optical printing (meaning printing by projection, as attributed to Hepworth) that I have ever encountered. More likely, the claim is only someone's OR assumption (there is no citation) in the grand tradition of supposing that special effects had to be done either in-camera or with an optical printer.

In fact, contact printing methods can be used in the lab to reverse motion, create lap dissolves, combine multiple images, and even do matte work—no projection optics are absolutely necessary to produce any effects that come to mind, except those that require a change in the size of an image. An optical printer is a wonderfully versatile machine, but not necessarily the best or most foolproof one for producing a given effect. In the hands of lesser mortals than Linwood Dunn, it can introduce errors such as noticeable changes in size, position, and even angle that pop in and out at the start and end of the effect, glitches either impossible or unlikely with contact printing.

Just as some folks who came of age in the Photoshop era cannot imagine how photos used to be "photoshopped" before there were electronic computers, even some well-known experts on film history in general cannot conceive of how something as simple as a lap dissolve could possibly have been done without an optical printer, except by two passes of one length of negative film through a camera, which is a risky one-shot-at-it proposition even if it does avoid any generational loss of quality.

If no authoritative source is forthcoming, I will delete the claim in due course. AVarchaeologist (talk) 17:57, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

• 7 November 2015: no response since the above was posted a month ago, so removed unsupported claim. 66.81.241.78 (talk) 10:11, 7 November 2015 (UTC)