Peter Biziou: Vignettes

From American Cinematographer, This Is Your Life by Eric Rudolph (June 1998)

To suggest the "surveillance" feel, Biziou used "slightly unusual camera angles and positions, and framing foreground elements in a stronger way, which seemed to support the uneasy feeling" that was inherent in the story.

Weir saw The Truman Show as a chance to utilize the long-abandoned silent-era cinematic technique of vignetting the edges of the frame to emphasize the center. He used this technique to suggest that the cameras watching Truman were indeed hidden behind or contained within various objects.

"I had become hooked on vignettes, as used by people like D.W. Griffith. I love the technique purely on its own, as a simple but highly effective cinematic device. It was somewhat surprising to me that vignetting hadn't yet been revived."

- Peter Weir

To create the vignettes, which Biziou says also helped convey "a more obvious, menacing feel," the cinematographer used a variety of gobos placed in front of the lens. Some of the effect was also added or enhanced digitally by postproduction supervisor Mike McAllister, whom Biziou credits with "doing a great deal to subtly enhance the look of the film."

Ellen Kuras: Swing-Tilt Lenses

From American Cinematographer, 4 Little Girls by Eric Rudolph (January 1998)

"We used swing-and-tilt lenses to selectively focus on certain parts of the images to enhance the narrative. When we shot news clippings, we would sometimes start sharp on the first couple of lines of the article and then rack from soft focus to sharp focus for the headline. We did this so the viewer would first get an idea of what the article was about and then get rolled into the impact of the headline, which states the facts in a few bold words. We thought this was more effective than having viewers just read a series of headlines. With photos and some of the documents, such as the death certificates, we would rack-focus to the date of the bombing or the cause of death to give a more emotional feel to the image. We were constantly looking for those sorts of opportunities in the pictures and documents."

-Ellen Kuras, ASC