The cinematography task of Raging Bull

"In the beginning there was just a guy with a camera"-by Michael Chapman

Cinematography, the technique of movie photography of both shooting and development of film, including the camera angel, level, height, distance.

Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (USA, 1980) is a good example of having such a wonderful cinematography. We have been focus on the Genira Fight in the movie.

For the first scene of the fight is that Jake LaMotta walking to the ring. It employed one of the tracking camera work which is steady camera, while Jake is walking to the ring, the camera stays steady while the camera is moving backward. It is using deep focus all the frame is in focus while settings and figures are equally important. And it use medium shots which is more initmacy and focus on emotions of Jake.

The second scene is the entrance to the ring, the director uses the telephoto lenses which enable to zoom in and zoom out, also separate the character from the background. It has used panning to follow the whole movement of Jake while entering the ring. The effect of the close-up/medium close-up shots is because in order to focus attention on Jake's expression.

The third scene is the fight by using low angle and the shot type of BCU, the effect of using this camera angles and shot type is to show that Jake has a huge momentum and power to defeat another contestant.

The forth scene is end of the fight, it has used a canted angle by showing Jake has finished the fight and sat down resting to show that he was exhausted and tried his beat on the battle. And when the announcement was out, it started to use slow motion in order to let audience to focus on this scene since it is important to notice.

The very last scene is the celebration of Jake winning the battle by using tilt shot while Jake has worn the belt and this technique help people focus on the belt, the result of the winning the battle. The purpose of the extreme close-up is to let people remember the main spot of the scene and to focus on the character. And the camera was using the lower spot (the warm eye) which let the audience feel that Jake has made a huge success.