Triangulating Instrumentalist, Technicist, And Formalist Academic, Approaches to Cinematic Lighting Semiotics

Abstract

As a practicing cinematographer and lighting technician initially trained at a private South African tertiary education institution specializing in film and performance, and now enrolled at a state-funded South African university for a Master’s in Creative Media Production study, I have recognized a curriculum deficit relating to lighting application versus academic discourse on this topic. On the premise that semiotic quality should be a key consideration when it comes to filmmakers’ lighting choices, in my current study I aim to contribute to the development of a holistic approach to cinematic lighting semiotics education to help unleash the full communicative potential of lighting. I am triangulating three approaches to meaning making through cinematic lighting: the instrumentalist approach of selected standard pedagogic texts for cinematography students; the technicist approach of craft literature as emblematized in American Cinematographer; and the more formalist approach of film semiotics theorization pertaining to light and shadow. Creating a framework based on such synthesis stands to help augment curricula, and to this end I will also be developing a student booklet as well as applying the framework in a practical reshoots of three key scenes from F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). This latter will in effect recast this piece of Weimar cinema in a modern light – demonstrating in the process what can be done when modern technologies are applied to filmmaking in a semiotically deliberate, theoretically astute manner. This presentation concentrates on how I developed the synthesized framework and what it entails.