This week’s reading focused on the idea of cinematography not only being a practice of recording an event but also making choices based on light, framing, exposure, or movement, affecting how we see and feel a story. This notion came to mind while I was reading an interview with Greig Fraser, the cinematographer for The Batman (TheWrap). Fraser discusses how he approached the film as an “urban noir” in which darkness is not an absence; it’s an environment that is punctured strategically with small pockets of light. These choices are almost a textual study of tonality and exposure. Batman, for example, often emerges from darkness not because the frame is crudely underlit, but because Fraser provides just enough light on the eyes or the texture of the suit that gives us a presence we can read.
What I find remarkable is how these choices orient our understanding. The reading indicated how framing and lens selection can shift our relation to the space to make you feel more included or excluded. Fraser anchors even the action sequences in point of view, for example the car chase scene, which doesn’t overwhelm with spectacle but places us inside the Penguin’s perspective (which in turn enhances the fear Batman’s character is supposed to embody in this movie). As a result, we are not only spectators of the action, but we are also more connected to the characters.
Some reviewers claimed that the film was “too dark,” which shows the risk of pushing contrast and shadow too far. But Fraser’s work strengthens the principle that cinematography’s role is not decoration but narration. Light, contrast, and framing all become instruments of meaning: Batman as a figure always partially obscured and disclosed, someone we can glimpse but never fully know. The interview reveals how much craft undergirds that sensation, and it offers a good embodiment of what our reading this week refers to as “writing in movement.”
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