#141 Cinematography & Editing

Chaz DeSimone Academy Awards, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Film, Movie, Oscars, Typography
141 Cinematography & Editing
#141 Cinematography & Editing
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Cinematography & Editing is filmmaking. Oscar finally decided to include these important awards in the live telecast.

On Feb­ru­ary 12 the Acad­e­my announced it would not show four award cat­e­gories to home view­ers (to be pre­sent­ed dur­ing com­mer­cials at the event):

  • Cin­e­matog­ra­phy & Edit­ing
  • Live Action Short
  • Make­up & Hair

As Nick Mur­phy (@nickmurftweets) tweeted:

By cutting Cinematography & Editing from the show, the Oscars declare themselves as nothing more than a celebrity & marketing circus.
Photography & editing is filmmaking. It’s as simple as that.

And from Alfon­so Cuarón (@alfonsocuaron), who is nom­i­nat­ed for pro­duc­ing, direct­ing, writ­ing & cin­e­matog­ra­phy for his film Roma:

In the history of CINEMA, masterpieces have existed without sound, without color, without a story, without actors & without music. No one single film has ever existed without CINEMAtography & without editing.

More tweets here, some clever & amusing.

Mr. Cuarón has just described SILENT CINEMA!

We inter­rupt this arti­cle to take you back 100 years…

Alfon­so Cuarón just described the basic ele­ments of all film­mak­ing — cin­e­matog­ra­phy & edit­ing — & my friend Joe Rin­au­do would agree that if you take away the cam­era & the edit­ing block, you don’t have a film! In silent cin­e­ma there is no sound, there is no col­or, & some­times there’s hard­ly a plot or sto­ry. But it is film­mak­ing, because there is cin­e­matog­ra­phy & edit­ing. (Sim­ply decid­ing where to start a film & where to end it, even if it is one con­tin­u­ous scene, is editing.)

Joe is the founder of Silent Cin­e­ma Soci­ety. His vast col­lec­tion of silent films, which he metic­u­lous­ly restores & presents to audi­ences on his 1909 hand-​crank Pow­ers Cam­er­a­graph Mov­ing Pic­ture Machine, is tes­ta­ment to the truth of Mr. Cuarón’s statement. 

Silent Cinema SocietyThat’s Joe Rinaudo with his 1909 Powers Cameragraph, and to the right his American Fotoplayer

Joe Rin­au­do’s pas­sion & pur­pose is to keep silent cin­e­ma alive. It’s amaz­ing how enter­tain­ing silent films are…& how dan­ger­ous the stunts were — in my opin­ion, that’s half the dra­ma right there! Joe is thrilled when the younger mem­bers of the audi­ence come up to him to ask about the films & check out his pro­jec­tor. (He also shows authen­tic glass lantern slides dur­ing reel changes.) This means he’s got future gen­er­a­tions inter­est­ed in the begin­nings of Hol­ly­wood before there even was Hollywood.

Visit SilentCin​e​maSo​ci​ety​.org & subscribe — it’s free.

Spend some time on the web­site, as it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry & enter­tain­ment. Be sure to lis­ten to Joe play­ing the Amer­i­can Foto­play­er—bet­ter turn down the vol­ume first!

For anoth­er treat, take a look at this clip from last year’s Oscars. Joe Rin­au­do was asked to set up a recre­ation of an itin­er­ant mov­ing pic­ture show, which were shown in small town halls, church­es & tents. This was a tent. (An elab­o­rate one, of course, host­ed by the Acad­e­my.) Joe hand-​cranked sev­er­al shorts through­out the evening, and a few celebri­ties took their hand at crank­ing the 1909 Pow­ers Cameragraph.

Here’s Joe Rin­au­do crank­ing & Robert Israel accompanying:

Next is Gary Old­field crank­ing the vin­tage Pow­ers Mov­ing Pic­ture Machine:

Back to the present: the 2019 Academy Awards

On Feb­ru­ary 12 the Acad­e­my announced it would not show four award cat­e­gories to home view­ers (pre­sent­ed dur­ing com­mer­cials at the event):

  • Cin­e­matog­ra­phy
  • Edit­ing
  • Live Action Short
  • Make­up & Hair

After the Acad­e­my’s announce­ment to exclude the four cat­e­gories from the live tele­cast, there was quite an uproar—read these tweets, some of which are quite fun­ny — which lead to the Acad­e­my to reverse its deci­sion & include all the awards in the telecast.

I am glad Oscar decid­ed to broad­cast live, the pro­fes­sion­als who bring movies to life through their tech­ni­cal & artis­tic exper­tise, not to men­tion their pas­sion. Their fam­i­lies & friends can rev­el in pride (whether they win or not) as they watch along with mil­lions of view­ers who enjoy the fruits of their labors.

All of the awards are impor­tant, as they each add to the final pro­duc­tion of the phe­nom­e­non­al cat­e­go­ry of enter­tain­ment called cin­e­ma. But how—just how!—could they think to exclude cin­e­matog­ra­phy & editing?

(It would be akin to my indus­try, graph­ic design & adver­tis­ing, leav­ing out pre­sen­ta­tions for lay­out & copy­writ­ing in our award pre­sen­ta­tions — the Clios & Beld­ings. I woud­n’t feel my work was worth any­thing, even if I did­n’t have some awards already.)

I hope the win­ners & nom­i­nees at this year’s Acad­e­my Awards are proud of their achieve­ments — includ­ing those who will be accept­ing the Oscar live on TV for Cin­e­maog­ra­phy, Edit­ing, Live Action Short, & Make­up & Hair.

POST-​AWARDS UPDATE

Full list of winners & nominees, 2019 Academy Awards

The 2019 Oscars aired live on Sun­day, Feb. 24 at 9/​8c on ABC. 

Best Picture

Green Book (Jim Burke, Charles B. Wessler, Bri­an Cur­rie, Peter Far­rel­ly and Nick Val­le­lon­ga, Producers) 
Black Pan­ther (Kevin Feige, Producer)
BlacK­kKlans­man (Sean McKit­trick, Jason Blum, Ray­mond Mans­field, Jor­dan Peele and Spike Lee, Producers)
Bohemi­an Rhap­sody (Gra­ham King, Producer)
The Favourite (Ceci Dempsey, Ed Guiney, Lee Magi­day and Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, Producers)
Roma (Gabriela Rodriguez and Alfon­so Cuaron, Producers)
A Star Is Born (Bill Ger­ber, Bradley Coop­er and Lynette How­ell Tay­lor, Producers)
Vice (Dede Gard­ner, Jere­my Klein­er, Adam McK­ay and Kevin Mes­sick, Producers)

Actress in a Leading Role

Olivia Col­man (The Favourite) 
Glenn Close (The Wife) 
Yal­itza Apari­cio (Roma)
Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born)
Melis­sa McCarthy (Can You Ever For­give Me?)

Actor in a Leading Role

Rami Malek (Bohemi­an Rhap­sody)
Chris­t­ian Bale (Vice)
Bradley Coop­er (A Star Is Born)
Willem Dafoe (At Eter­ni­ty’s Gate)
Vig­go Mortensen (Green Book)

Actress in a Supporting Role

Regi­na King (If Beale Street Could Talk) 
Amy Adams (Vice)
Mari­na de Tavi­ra (Roma)
Emma Stone (The Favourite)
Rachel Weisz (The Favourite)

Actor in a Supporting Role

Maher­sha­la Ali (Green Book) 
Adam Dri­ver (BlacK­kKlans­man)
Sam Elliott (A Star Is Born)
Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever For­give Me?)
Sam Rock­well (Vice)

Directing

Alfon­so Cuaron (Roma) 
Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos (The Favourite)
Spike Lee (BlacK­kKlans­man)
Adam McK­ay (Vice)
Pawel Paw­likows­ki (Cold War)

Animated Feature Film

Spider-​Man: Into the Spider-​Verse (Bob Per­sichet­ti, Peter Ram­sey, Rod­ney Roth­man, Phil Lord and Christo­pher Miller)
Incred­i­bles 2 (Brad Bird, John Walk­er and Nicole Par­adis Grindle)
Isle of Dogs (Wes Ander­son, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales and Jere­my Dawson)
Mirai (Mamoru Hoso­da and Yuichi­ro Saito)
Ralph Breaks the Inter­net (Rich Moore, Phil John­ston and Clark Spencer)

Cinematography

Roma (Alfon­so Cuaron)
The Favourite (Rob­bie Ryan)
Nev­er Look Away (Caleb Deschanel)
A Star Is Born (Mat­ty Libatique)
Cold War (Lukasz Zal)

Costume Design

Black Pan­ther (Ruth E. Carter)
The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs (Mary Zophres)
The Favourite (Sandy Pow­ell)
Mary Pop­pins Returns (Sandy Powell)
Mary Queen of Scots (Alexan­dra Byrne)

Documentary (Feature)

Free Solo (Eliz­a­beth Chai Vasarhe­lyi, Jim­my Chin, Evan Hayes and Shan­non Dill) 
Hale Coun­ty This Morn­ing, This Evening (RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes and Su Kim)
Mind­ing the Gap (Bing Liu and Diane Quon)
Of Fathers and Sons (Talal Der­ki, Ans­gar Frerich, Eva Kemme and Tobias N. Siebert)
RBG (Bet­sy West and Julie Cohen)

Documentary (Short)

Peri­od. End of Sen­tence. (Ray­ka Zehtabchi and Melis­sa Berton)
Black Sheep (Ed Perkins and Jonathan Chinn)
End Game (Rob Epstein and Jef­frey Friedman)
Lifeboat (Skye Fitzger­ald and Bryn Mooser)
A Night at the Gar­den (Mar­shall Curry)

Film Editing

Bohemi­an Rhap­sody (John Ottman) 
BlacK­kKlans­man (Bar­ry Alexan­der Brown)
The Favourite (Yor­gos Mavropsaridis)
Green Book (Patrick J. Don Vito)
Vice (Hank Corwin)

Foreign Language Film

Roma (Mex­i­co)
Caper­naum (Lebanon)
Cold War (Poland)
Nev­er Look Away (Ger­many)
Shoplifters (Japan)

Makeup & Hairstyling

Vice (Greg Can­nom, Kate Bis­coe and Patri­cia DeHaney)
Bor­der (Goran Lund­strom and Pamela Goldammer)
Mary Queen of Scots (Jen­ny Shir­core, Marc Pilch­er and Jes­si­ca Brooks)

Music (Original Score)

Black Pan­ther (Lud­wig Goransson)
BlacK­kKlans­man (Ter­ence Blanchard)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Nicholas Britell)
Isle of Dogs (Alexan­dre Desplat)
Mary Pop­pins Returns (Marc Shaiman)

Music (Original Song)

“Shal­low” (A Star Is Born) 
Music and Lyrics by Lady Gaga, Mark Ron­son, Antho­ny Rosso­man­do and Andrew Wyatt

“All the Stars” (Black Pan­ther)
Music by Mark Spears, Kendrick Lamar Duck­worth and Antho­ny Tiffith
Lyric by Kendrick Lamar Duck­worth, Antho­ny Tiffith and Solana Rowe

“I’ll Fight” (RBG)
Music and Lyric by Diane Warren

“The Place Where Lost Things Go” (Mary Pop­pins Returns)
Music by Marc Shaiman
Lyric by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman

“When a Cow­boy Trades His Spurs for Wings” (The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs)
Music and Lyric by David Rawl­ings and Gillian Welch

Production Design

Black Pan­ther (Han­nah Beach­ler and Jay Hart) 
The Favourite (Fiona Crom­bie and Alice Felton)
First Man (Nathan Crow­ley and Kathy Lucas)
Mary Pop­pins Returns (John Myhre and Gor­don Sim)
Roma (Euge­nio Caballero and Bar­bara Enriquez)

Short Film (Animated)

Bao (Domee Shi and Becky Neiman-Cobb)
Ani­mal Behav­iour (Ali­son Snow­den and David Fine)
Late After­noon (Louise Bag­nall and Nuria González Blanco)
One Small Step (Andrew Chesworth and Bob­by Pontillas)
Week­ends (Trevor Jimenez)

Short Film (Live Action)

Skin (Guy Nat­tiv and Jaime Ray Newman)
Detain­ment  (Vin­cent Lambe and Dar­ren Maho)
Fauve (Jere­my Comte and Maria Gra­cia Turgeon)
Mar­guerite (Mar­i­anne Far­ley and Marie-​Helene Panisset)
Moth­er (Rodri­go Soro­goyen and María del Puy Alvarado)

Sound Editing

Bohemi­an Rhap­sody (John Warhurst and Nina Hartstone) 
Black Pan­ther (Ben­jamin A. Burtt and Steve Boeddeker)
First Man (Ai-​Ling Lee and Mil­dred Iatrou Morgan)
A Qui­et Place (Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl)
Roma (Ser­gio Diaz and Skip Lievsay)

Sound Mixing

Bohemi­an Rhap­sody (Paul Massey, Tim Cav­a­gin and John Casali) 
Black Pan­ther (Steve Boed­dek­er, Bran­don Proc­tor and Peter Devlin)
First Man (Jon Tay­lor, Frank A. Mon­taño, Ai-​Ling Lee and Mary H. Ellis)
Roma (Skip Lievsay, Craig Henighan and Jose Anto­nio Garcia)
A Star Is Born (Tom Ozanich, Dean Zupan­cic, Jason Rud­er and Steve Morrow)

Visual Effects

First Man (Paul Lam­bert, Ian Hunter, Tris­tan Myles and J.D. Schwalm)
Avengers: Infin­i­ty War (Dan DeLeeuw, Kel­ly Port, Rus­sell Earl and Dan Sudick)
Christo­pher Robin (Christo­pher Lawrence, Michael Eames, Theo Jones and Chris Corbould)
Ready Play­er One (Roger Guyett, Grady Cofer, Matthew E. But­ler and David Shirk)
Solo: A Star Wars Sto­ry (Rob Bre­dow, Patrick Tubach, Neal Scan­lan and Dominic Tuohy)

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

BlacK­kKlans­man (Char­lie Wach­tel, David Rabi­nowitz, Kevin Will­mott and Spike Lee)
A Star Is Born (Eric Roth, Will Fet­ters and Bradley Cooper)
The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Bar­ry Jenkins)
Can You Ever For­give Me? (Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty)

Writing (Original Screenplay)

Green Book (Nick Val­le­lon­ga, Bri­an Hayes Cur­rie and Peter Farrelly)
The Favourite (Deb­o­rah Davis and Tony McNamara)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
Roma (Alfon­so Cuaron)
Vice (Adam McKay)

Here’s anoth­er cat­e­go­ry that has been exclud­ed every sin­gle year — ever since its one & only pre­sen­ta­tion at the first Acad­e­my Awards:

Best Unique and Artistic Quality of Production

The Acad­e­my Award cer­e­mo­ny was orga­nized for the first time in the year 1929. Lat­er on, with the pass­ing time, it under­went many changes. “Oscar for Best Unique and Artis­tic Qual­i­ty of Pro­duc­tion” is one of the cat­e­gories of awards that had a very short exis­tence in the award cer­e­mo­ny. This cat­e­go­ry was also known as “Best Artis­tic Qual­i­ty of Pro­duc­tion.” It was only award­ed, for the first and last time, dur­ing the first Oscar cer­e­mo­ny, and may be regard­ed an unnec­es­sary vari­a­tion of Best Picture.

In 1929, “Oscar for Best Unique and Artis­tic Qual­i­ty of Pro­duc­tion” was giv­en to Sun­rise: A Song of Two Humans, also known as Sun­rise, an Amer­i­can film direct­ed by Ger­man film direc­tor F. W. Mur­nau. The cen­tral idea of the movie was adapt­ed by Carl May­er, from the short sto­ry Die Reise nach Tilsit — by Her­mann Sud­er­mann. In 1989, this film was reck­oned “cul­tur­al­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly, or aes­thet­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant” by the Unit­ed States Library of Con­gress and cho­sen for preser­va­tion in their Nation­al Film Reg­istry. In 2002 crit­ics’ poll for the British Film Insti­tute, Sun­rise was named the 7th-​best film in the his­to­ry of Motion Pictures.

—article from Awards & Shows where you’ll find information about Oscar Awards, Filmfare Awards, Zee Cine Awards, Star Screen Awards, Grammy Awards, IIFA Awards, and Golden Globe Awards

 

Concept & Design

This poster was a lot of fun! I was able to pull from my col­lec­tion of “Gold­en Age” movie titles which were, for the most part, hand-​lettered, & when col­or was intro­duced, shown in vivid hues. I select­ed a peri­od font, Arca­dia, and paired it with my own hand-​lettered ver­sion of a “cin­e­mat­ic title amper­sand”— based on what would nor­mal­ly be writ­ten as “Pro­duced by” or “Direct­ed by” in hand-​lettered script.

I added a bit of motion blur to the back­ground, and over-​saturated the col­ors in true Tech­ni­col­or style.

As you can see, the back­ground image is inspired by a hor­ror scene — a typ­i­cal high­way in rush-​hour traffic.

Enjoy the Oscars

 Please comment here.

Production notes for #141 Cinematography & Editing:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Program: Adobe Photoshop
Font: Arcadia
Ampersand: Chaz DeSimone, hand-​drawn (Photoshop)
Credits:
Stock image: aerial view of I‑40 highway in N. Carolina from Blue Ridge Parkway by digidream /​ deposit​pho​tos​.com  (altered by Chaz DeSimone)
Twitter feeds: article at Time​.com
Other editorial credits as noted in article.
“&” replaces “and” in all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.

For pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design, please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

Desimone? Damn good!

Enjoy & share…
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One thought to “#141 Cinematography & Editing”

  1. Wow! I feel like I just took a short course in the his­to­ry of Oscars and your cin­e­mat­ic design is a treat! Danke!

    Reply

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