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What's the difference between Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography?

Comments

[alethea-eastrid.livejournal.com]

At a ballpark guess, Cinematography refers strictly to camera placement, movement, lighting, etc. Art Direction involves the decoration of the set, and I'm not sure how far into set design and costume oversight it goes.

[daft.livejournal.com]

Art Directors are pretty much in charge of the overall "look" of a film, so they can (and will) put the kibosh on any costume pieces that they don't feel fits the look. They tend to be the Project Manager of the artistic crew, coordinating the different departments (scenic, costumes, make-up, etc) to make sure that the overall film has a cohesive feel.

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

Art direction is the overall look and feel of the film. It includes the sets and settings. Cinematography is specifically about how the scenes are committed to film.

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

If memory serves - the difference between technical and artistic. You can be brilliant technically and have no artistic life. You can be brilliant artistically, but have not enough technical skill to make it happen.

[peregrinning.livejournal.com]

A short version:
Cinematographer = in charge of camera work.
Art Director = in charge of the objects (other than actors, usually other than costumes) that the camera is seeing.

A long version:
"An art director, in the hierarchical structure of a film art department, works directly below the production designer, in collaboration with the set decorator, and above the set designer. A large part of their duties include the administrative aspects of the art department. They are responsible for assigning tasks to personnel, keeping track of the art department budget and scheduling, as well as overall quality control. They are often also a liaison to other departments; especially the construction department. In the past, the art director title was used to denote the head of the art department (hence the Academy Award for Best Art Direction). On the movie Gone with the Wind, David O. Selznick felt that William Cameron Menzies had such a significant role in the look of the film, that the title Art Director was not sufficient, and so he gave Menzies the title of Production Designer. [2] The title has become more common, and now Production Designer is commonly used as the title for the head of the Art Department, although the title actually implies control over every visual aspect of a film, including costumes."

"A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera (the art and science of which is known as cinematography). The title is generally equivalent to director of photography (DP or DoP), used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image. The term cinematographer has been a point of contention for some time now; some professionals insist that it only applies when the director of photography and camera operator are the same person, although this is far from being uniformly the case. To most, cinematographer and director of photography are interchangeable terms."

[ladypeyton.livejournal.com]

Just a guess, but I'd assume that art direction has more to do with creating story boards and cinematography has more to do with actual camera work.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

Other people have already given the answer I had in mind ("technical, camera" v. "artistic, everything else"), so I'll just go off on a tangent and observe that 'cinematographer' is an anagram of 'megachiroptera' (giant bats).

[dryfoo.livejournal.com]

There is a nice description of each of the main film positions (including those two) in a book by William Goldman, _Adventures in the Screen Trade_. The last section of the book takes the example of a short story, turns it into a screenplay, then he talks with a director, cinematographer, art director, editor, music director about how each would work on the screenplay/movie.

Very informative, and the rest of the book has plenty of gossip and stories about what Goldman saw during a career in Hollywood.

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

Cinematographers generally wear jeans. Art directors don't.

[laurion]

If it were a painting it would be the difference between theme/composition and technique/technical mastery. Something of a substance/style question.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Lots of people have posted good information. But I object to the frequent suggestions that cinematography involves no Art, just technical skill. If it were so, no one would feel the need to give an award for the field.