OK then.... Good question.
As a DOP, your job is to work in collaboration with the director to tell the story in images. The Director has final say, and some times the director wants a very specific image, and "sees" the story in his or her head. Then again sometimes the director focus on acting, and the blocking in the scene, and relies on the DOP to capture the essence of the emotional or physical impact of whats happening on camera.
The mood of the photography really helps to tell the story. So lets go though a couple of moods.
Fear:
This was from Jack Daniel Stanley's "Cold Calls".
The main heroine is being accosted by a creepy phone call.
What do we need to express. She is alone. She is scared. She has no idea where the Caller is.
So i lit the scene to have the feel of a dark moonlit night. For the most part, i throw the rules of three point lighting out the window. it really only works for interviews. Now if you've ever sat in the dark, and actually looked around you will notice, though dark, once your eyes adjust, there is actually light everywhere, even in the deepest shadows. So to shoot a dark scene like this, i actually put up a 500w softbox and put 3 sheets of CTB on the lamp. this dropped it down a couple stops, and gave the room a VERY cool color temperature. Despite the fact that i was shooting on tungsten lamps, i set the camera to 56K and let the room go a bit blue. This sells the moonlight, and fills the room with a soft light thats not terribly directional. I allowed the camera to intentionally under expose a half stop. When youre shooting on DVCproHD, 5D, EX1 whatever...., in 56K you can let the cameras go a little under if youre using blue light. The grain appears in the reds before the blues. hence why the shot looks clean, despite the low luminosity. There were a few small nightlight like practicals on in the room, and they brought the background to life. I had my gaffer Phil Warren put half CTB on the practicals to bring them into play in the now blue world. I feel the shot reads solitude, anxiety and fear. The performance allowed it to gel in a very effective way.
Drama:
These images are from two dramatic film i shot.
The first, a love story, needed a soft dreamy feel and the location, lent itself to this. The tall summery grass, and warm sun gave this piece a romantic nostalgic feel. the actors, literally rolling in the grass agreed. To keep the midday sun at bay we used a huge silk, held a few feet above the frame line to soften the shadows. Essentially using the sun, and existing light, to modify it to create a pleasing image.
The second and third images are from John Levy's "Deep Score" needed a naturalistic feel to sell the story. It was supposed to have occurred in a realistic world. I augmented daylight again, by assiting the natural light coming into to the room from huge windows, by attaching 4, 4x4 kinoflow banks to the the ceiling. This gave the sunlight the necessary boost to bring the room up to exposure while mimicking the direction and source of natural light... in essence making the film look completely natural, though a majority of the light is actually man made. ( roger deakins is the master of this...)
Horror:
"Samantha"
Cannibal Corpse "Evisceration Plague" (sorry for the crap quality, i had to frame grab the stills from Vimeo)
When it comes to horror... all the rules go away. Your lighting sources can be anything really, same goes for placement and the quality of the light. In Samantha, The black and white film, i lit that to looks like a surreal doll house. The director and i wanted it to look like a black void, with random bits of furniture. Despite the set being built from scratch, we did our best to obscure it.
The Cannibal Corpse Music Video Evisceration plague, was modeled after a shaft of sunlight that penetrated the old wooden slats of the barn location we were shooting in. We simulated that natural light again, by putting several 2.5k HMI lights outside ever window, and crack we could find in the buildin, and simply centered the action around the shafts of light. The stark contrast, makeup and physicality of the actors make the terrifying strory of zombies chasing a young man come to life.
IF you guys have questions, keep em coming!
