On screen, every form of art involved in creating an image merges with the others and, like milk and coffee blending irreversibly in a cappuccino, transforms into something that transcends the sum of its individual parts. The cinematographer is the one who manages and completes that journey of translating what is written in the screenplay into visual form. Within the frame—where images come to life—their work unfolds across at least six parameters:– what the director wants,
– what the director would like,
– personal interpretation,
– negotiation with all artistic departments,
– the crew,
– the timeframe for production.
It must be acknowledged that, despite increasing demands for quality, there is generally less time, less budget, and fewer staff compared to the past. The cinematographer’s role begins with the pursuit of a shared vision with the director and becomes a technical roadmap rooted in the very concept of the crew. It’s a team effort embedded in the “playing time” that makes shooting a film or series akin to a competitive sport.*
Over the years, the cinematographer’s craft has undergone drastic changes in method. We’ve moved from the engineered three-point lighting setups of the 1930s (key – fill – backlight), at a time when film stock was almost blind to light (Gone with the Wind, 1939, was 12 ASA), to a visual freedom where the idea of vision has become more important than the chosen working method.
The idea of visual naturalism, free from the rigid three-point setups still taught in academies until not long ago, begins with Stanley Kubrick and reaches full form in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Godfather (1972 – Coppola/Willis), Apocalypse Now (1979 – Coppola/Storaro), and likely others. These extraordinary films exemplify modern lighting, where naturalism overtakes academic illumination. The three lighting points evolve into solo lights. Backlighting, once simply used to separate the subject from the background, now transcends its primitive function, becoming conceptual through the bokeh effect—the lens’s out-of-focus area—reviving its original purpose of separating subject from background.
Light sources move from outside the frame to within it: like the table in Dr Strangelove (1964) or the opening of A Clockwork Orange (1971), just as has always been the case in painting. This way of constructing images—where cinematography and set design communicate—would take nearly thirty years to become standard practice. A transformation completed with the latest digital cameras, which have brought human vision and camera vision to near equivalence.
Kubrick’s lighting methods became a model, paving the way for an approach that today is increasingly established, and which in some cases has become a precise discipline known as practical light design. This technique involves designing a set’s lighting using visible sources within the scene, such as lamps or candles placed strategically in the set design. The ballroom scene in Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is a remarkable example.
It’s a lighting model that, in Adolescence (directed by Philip Barantini – Netflix, 2025), makes the single-take concept of the miniseries possible, marking an evolution of these techniques in both lighting and camera use.
Naturally, an approach focused more on “vision” doesn’t imply that one method is better than another—each has its own merits. But the markers have undeniably changed: “night” and “day,” once indicated only by scenographic or costume cues (such as lit lamps for night or a lady’s daytime hat), are now interpreted differently. In the modern idea of naturalism, day is true day (even when lit artificially), and night is genuinely night.
Once switched on, Fresnel-lens projectors were shaped and transformed using artisanal set treatments to create realistic effects. The base light had a credible simulation of sunlight through arc lamps or some discharge lamps, but all other lighting effects were achieved by transforming the raw light from Fresnel projectors, manually sculpting the light they produced.
With the arrival of fluorescents and now LED lights, there’s less need to alter the base light of fixtures, leading to a loss of that positive craftsmanship on set but a gain in speed. Still, the idea of transforming the base light remains relevant even with LED fixtures, which may seem ready to use but in fact are not.
The widespread industrial use of LED lights—which can reproduce colours unimaginable in the tungsten era (and not necessarily referring to professional lights)—has led to a mix of lighting and colours virtually everywhere, from homes to shops to streets. I like to call this “unintentional colour”.
By “unintentional colour”, I mean the hues that fill our vision due to a chaotic, uncontrolled mix of lighting. The myriad lights of a street—warm LED strips, blue, green, icy bulbs, fluorescent tubes, a lone sodium lamp lighting a dark alley, or a supermarket bulb that turns out to be freezing cold once installed at home—create a colour not governed by any particular logic.
This is “unintentional colour”, as these lights—aside from public lighting, which follows engineering logic—are mostly placed to grab attention. The phrase unintentional colour aims to establish a possible vocabulary to describe the mixed lighting found everywhere around us.
The cinematographer works with this “invisible” matter that surrounds us, rebuilding the atmosphere of a story, bringing light to the scene. And this is precisely where the conceptual beauty of the craft lies: to illuminate rather than obscure. Shadows themselves are born from what is illuminated. The very idea of light carries the notion of giving life.
We all had to learn that light exists—and that light is a malleable, sculptable, controllable substance. Yet despite all the changes—film, digital, LED—the metaphor of the cappuccino still holds true.
From The Rectangle of Play.
