THE DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY 227Imagination is represented by the director, who
in turn is heir to the ideas of the scriptwriter, as he
is to those of the original author of the story. Three
minds, and three contributing sources of imagina-
tion have shaped the film before the cameraman can
begin to visualize it as a physical entity.^2
In the ideal version of this working relationship,
the director’s vision shapes the process of render-
ing the mise-en-scène on film, but the cinematogra-
pher makes very specific decisions about how the
movie will be photographed.
When the collaboration between the director
and the cinematographer has been a good one, the
images that we see on-screen correspond closely to
what the director expected the DP to capture on
film. As cinematographer John Alton explains,
The screen offers the advantage of an ability
(although we do not always utilize it) to photograph
the story from the position from which the director
thinks the audience would like to see it. The success
of any particular film depends a great deal upon the
ability of the director to anticipate the desires of the
audience in this respect....... [T]he director of photography visualizes
the picture purely from a photographic point of
view, as determined by lights and the moods of indi-
vidual sequences and scenes. In other words, how to
use angles, set-ups, lights, and camera as means to
tell the story.^3
As cinematographers translate visions into realities,
however, they follow not inflexible rules but rather
conventions, which are open to interpretation by the
(^2) Freddie Young and Paul Petzold, The Work of the Motion Pic-
ture Cameraman(New York: Hastings House, 1972), p. 23.
(^3) John Alton, Painting with Light(1949; repr., Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1995), p. 33.
Setting up a shotOn an interior setting for The Social
Network(2010), director David Fincher (left) and
cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth (center)——aided by an
unidentified camera operator or technician (right)——work
with a video-assist camera to set up a shot. Fincher and
Cronenweth also worked together on Fight Club(1999) and
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo(2011). Cronenweth was
nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography on The
Social Network.