Resources
Where to go after these sheets: one structured free course, one essential essay series, two still libraries for studying frames, and the six books that people keep on the shelf.
Video series
StudioBinder · The Shot List
The best structured free course. Ten episodes covering camera shots, framing, angles, depth of field, camera rigs, movement techniques, lenses, frame rates, scene transitions and editing methods.
- The full playlist (opens in a new tab): all ten episodes in order
- Ep. 1: Camera shots (opens in a new tab)
- Ep. 2: Shot composition (opens in a new tab)
- Ep. 4: Depth of field (opens in a new tab)
- Ep. 6: Camera movement (opens in a new tab)
- Scene transitions (opens in a new tab) · Editing techniques (opens in a new tab)
Every Frame a Painting
Essential viewing. A series of video essays about film form, editing and cinematography made by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou between 2014 and 2016, and widely considered a pioneer of film criticism on YouTube.
- Start with Akira Kurosawa: Composing Movement (opens in a new tab).
- Background on the series (opens in a new tab), then search the channel for their essays on Edgar Wright, Spielberg and David Fincher
Other channels worth following
- Lessons from the Screenplay: structure and scene writing, with strong visual analysis
- Nerdwriter1: single-scene close readings
- Lewis Bond / Channel Criswell: especially the essay Color in Storytelling
- In Depth Cine: the most technical of the group, good on lenses and lighting setups
Film still libraries
FILMGRAB (opens in a new tab)
A free, hand-curated reference library. Its founder, a cinematographer, started it in 2010 to make reference images easier to find; it now covers nearly 4,000 films. Browse by director, cinematographer or aspect ratio.
ShotDeck (opens in a new tab)
The professional standard, created by Lawrence Sher, ASC (Joker) as a collaborative tool for filmmakers. Filter by colour palette, aspect ratio, composition style and mood, which is ideal for studying how one lighting or framing idea plays across hundreds of films.
Books
| Title | Author | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| The Five C's of Cinematography | Joseph V. Mascelli | Camera angles, continuity, cutting, close-ups, composition (the classic primer) |
| Film Art: An Introduction | Bordwell, Thompson & Gorman | The standard academic text on mise-en-scène and film form |
| Cinematography: Theory and Practice | Blain Brown | The working cinematographer's handbook |
| Shot by Shot | Steven D. Katz | Visualising and staging scenes; the best book on blocking |
| The Filmmaker's Eye | Gustavo Mercado | Composition rules, and when to break them |
| In the Blink of an Eye | Walter Murch | The philosophy of editing, from the person who wrote it |
Team Deakins, hosted by Roger and James Deakins, is a superb free resource for hearing how a master cinematographer actually thinks through a problem, usually in far less mystical terms than you would expect.
Cinematography & Mise-en-Scène cheat sheets · built from The Foundations of Cinematography and Mise-en-Scène.