Captain Blood Part 3

This is my final entry about the classic film, Captain Blood. I could go on and on, but that would just be spoonfeeding you all the great imagery. Go look it up for yourself. You can find it on Netflix.

Anyway, act 2 of the story deals with the prisoners' revolt and how Dr. Blood becomes the pirate Captain Blood. The revolt is staged at night, creating lots of dramatic lighting. I think the prisoners were probably aiming for dramatic lighting to increase the effectiveness of their escape. Note this shot:

It could have been lit any number of ways.  The filmmakers could have created a full moon so as to fully illuminate the ship. But since a moonless night is better for a coup, the art director used that to his advantage. The main light source is from windows, but mostly from cannon fire. The cannons create a sheet of smoke and every subsequent blast lights it up, creating a beautiful sillouhette of the ship. The haze of the smoke also creates a nice separation of foreground & background layers.

Meanwhile in the town, Blood and his gang are escaping guards and soldiers at every turn. Note the use of shadow cast on the wall again (like in the early scene of Dr. Blood working on the patient). This composition keeps our hero in the foreground, and his enemy on a giant stage behind. But because it is a cast shadow, the bad guy is HUGE in the frame, putting our hero at a disadvantage (visually).
This is a nice subtle shot. Blood comes into an archway. He is rim lit so that his silhouette reads against the far wall...
But then he comes around the wall and steps into the light, his white shirt and fair skin standing out nicely against the gray wall.

The rest of these shots are random moments throughout the story. I pulled them out because I like the layering effect the cinematographer managed. Also there is an abundance of readability - characters standing out (dramatically at times) from their background. It;s all part of insuring that the audience is looking exactly where you want them to.

This is a beautiful moment. There are several planes of props and characters, creating deep space and extreme perspective. Notice that the light source (not the candles) is coming from below. It creates and uneasy feeling, and also casts those looming shadows on the wall. Those shadows create a darkened space for our two prominent actors to read against. See? There are 4 characters in the scene, but only two are significant to the moment. the others are just set dressing. You can see them, but you don't pay much attention to them.

Again, layered elements for drama. One character is lit fully so as to have the stage all to himself. He is small in the frame, so they used the candelabra to block off part of the frame so it wouldn't feel so empty. The frame is effectively split in half and the soldier fills his side of it like an el Greco painting.

This moment isn't terribly dramatic. However, I like the use of the low horizon (even though the top of the hills splits the frame almost perfectly in half). The Galley of the ship is the darkest element in the frame, and it is set against the lightest element - the clouds. That is where your eye goes first - to the point of greatest contrast. However, in this moment, there is another element that doesn't come across as well in a still. There are three rowboats mid frame. In motion, your eye will be attracted to movement. And if everything else in the frame is still, the greatest contrast will be whatever is moving.

This frame might be from early in the film, I don't quite remember. The downshot increases the perspective just a little, and puts Dr. Blood "above" the other character. If the camera were shooting level, Blood would have been smaller in the frame and his head would have been below the other guy's. Once again, it's got a nice dramatic foreground element (the lantern), and even though there are two characters in the shot, the lighting on Dr. Blood keeps our attention on him.

During one of the battle scenes, they increased the level of visual frenzy by putting the camera beneath the stairs. In this case, the foreground element blocks part of our view, which is disquieting. The camera is angled which puts more tension into the shot, too.
One particular trick they did in this film, which I can't show in stills, is that whenever we are on board a ship, the camera slow rocks forward and back, creating the subtle feeling that we are rocking on the water. In that it was all shot on a sound stage, it's a very effective touch.

I end on this shot of Olivia de Havilland in repose. It's not a dramatic shot by any means. It's a very sedate moment in the story. I point it out for its sophisticated use of values (the gray scale). This room is full of stuff: furniture, moulding, drapery, windowpanes... lots of shapes and lines that could interfere with the shot. But with careful use of lighting as well as set dressing, Miss de Havilland is perfectly the center of our attention. She is dressed in white surrounded by a white pillow and white sheets. Everything else in the frame is middle gray to black. The illumination outside the windowpanes fights a little, but not horribly. If they were any darker, this would look like a gothic romance.

I hope you've enjoyed my little exercise. Good night.