Program Overview

Program Overview

The university program is designed to equip students with the technical and scientific knowledge, as well as a cinematic culture, to perform various functions in the field of image and cinematography. Upon completion of the program, students will have acquired the skills and competencies to work as a multicam廨a operator, second assistant operator, documentary cameraman, scientific cinematographer, and on short films, as a first assistant operator, cameraman, and director of photography.

Program Objectives

The program aims to provide students with the following knowledge, capacities, and competences:

• Ability to implement a multicam廨a shoot
• Ability to compose a frame
• Mastery of aesthetic and dramatic effects of framing in fiction and documentary
• Ability to design and realize the lighting of a fiction or documentary film
• Technical and artistic direction of light
• Ability to adapt to reporting conditions, in a reduced team, and assume responsibility for the image
• Mastery of the functioning and use of an S16 camera
• Theory and practice of camera tests
• Ability to occupy the functions of an assistant operator
• Knowledge of sensitometry and its application to photography direction
• Notion of color grading (DaVinci platform)
• Mastery of an image post-production software (AE)
• Fundamental knowledge of optics and photographic chemistry
• Notion of holography
• Optical applications in scientific cinematography
• Use of simple machinery equipment (dolly, traveling)
• Ability to analyze a frame and lighting
• Ability to use visual culture to conceive a film's image
• Visual memory
• Competence in the functioning and use of various cinematography and lighting equipment (cameras, machinery, lenses, filters, projectors, lighting equipment, and their effects)

Specific Skills

The program also focuses on developing specific skills, including:

• Mastery of light measurement instruments (exposure meter, thermocolorimeter)
• Implementation of cinematography equipment
• Mastery of dramatic and aesthetic effects of camera movements, image composition, and lighting
• Leadership of an image team (electricians and machinists)

Personal Qualities

The program requires students to possess certain personal qualities, including:

• Imagination and abstraction ability
• Observational skills

Aptitudes

Students should also have:

• Good physical constitution
• Ability to adapt to specific and diverse working conditions (e.g., shooting on board a helicopter, plane, or boat)

Evaluated Competences

The program evaluates students' competences in:

• General knowledge: good level of optics and wave physics, good technical knowledge in electricity
• Specialized knowledge: good visual culture, fundamentals of narrative forms and cinematic editing to imagine the representation of an action in time and space, and its breakdown
• Theoretical and technical knowledge in photography, optics, and photographic chemistry
• Basic knowledge of sensitometry (response of silver supports to light conditions)
• Notions of laboratory techniques

Technological Evolution

The program acknowledges the need for constant updates in knowledge due to the technological evolution of equipment used, such as the development of High Definition video.