The Diving Bell and The Butterfly Cinematography Review

Overall Look:

In the movie, “The Diving Bell and The Butterfly”, the cinematographic aspects add up perfectly to the overall look of the movie. In the New York Times video, by Randy Kennedy, he states, that the director of the movie, Julian Schnabel was a painter before he become a director and that you could view his movies as you would view a painting. This can be seen when director does extreme long shots of the main character when he goes to the beach with his family or goes on trips with his speech therapist. These extreme long landscape shots can be viewed as if you are looking at a still painting on a wall. The film stock is done well in capturing a heartfelt color film that has great use of lighting within the movie. The use of lighting in the hospital and the use of nature light with outdoor scenes are nicely done. There is a wide variety of framing and angles used throughout the film. The director makes good use of masks on the camera as well as an iris shot. The angles used really help get the point of view from the main character on how the accident has limited how he sees the world and the people who interact with him now. 

An example of a hat placed on the main character and used as a mask on the camera.

An example of an Iris shot. When the main character is seeing the doctor sewing up his own eye.
You see the frame of the eye closing, losing site of the doctor sewing it up. 

Images:

There are a few images that stand out in the movie. One is the scene of a man floating in the water in scuba gear. The meaning behind the scene tends to be a common theme in the movie, where the main character is like the scuba man just floating around in the water, both needing help from a machine to breath, but able to enjoy their surroundings around them. Another image that stands out is the one below. Even though the main character has suffer a bad stroke that has left him paralyze, he still has be imagination. This can be seen in the these shots that he visualizes well, of what the parents, nurses, and children would of looked like. 

Shot Lengths:

The common shot lengths I found were short focal length lens, which can be seen right after he enters the hospital and trying to get a view of his surroundings. The next one is medium long shots, this can been seen when he is sitting outside on the hospital or on a ledge type thing over the ocean looking that waves.

Example of a medium long shot.

Shot Types:

There are quite a few shot types in the movie. One is close-ups, when the people who are interacting with the main character are speaking to him. This leads to what are extreme close-up shots where the actors to lean in to camera lens when filming a scene.

Camera Angles:

 There are many character points of views though out the whole movie. This gave the audience a feel of what the characters in the film along with the main character was feeling and dealing with the aftermath of what has happen. There was a good aerial view shot, of the main character happy in car without a care in the world on his way to pick up his son.

Composition:

 The composition of each of the scene when evaluating each crucial scene is done great. The rule of thirds can been seen, with a front, middle, and back ground having meaning to what the scene is trying to get across to the audience.

Camera Movement:

One of the best Camera Movements is when they placed the camera in the wheel chair to create a dolly shot that gives a good point of view as if it were the main character’s point of view. This is done well, since when the wheel chair moves, all the bumps and noises are prefect. This can be seen in the image below. 

Setting up the shot to take footage from the wheel chair.

Cinematography Style: 

 By making the audience care deeply for all the characters in the film especially the main character, to an extent that it didn’t matter what language it was being presented in, you felt for them. That is a great purpose of making the cinematography so noticeable in the film. You left you feeling of warmth, love, sadness, and inspiration.