1Building on previous issues of this journal that explored the concept of atmosphere in fields such as architecture and theatre, this special edition shifts the focus to cinema, a medium uniquely equipped to craft and convey atmospheres through its distinct characteristics. From the grain of a classic film reel to the total immersion provided by virtual reality technologies, cinema uniquely crafts atmospheres that shape how we feel and understand the world around us. These atmospheres are not merely background elements but integral aspects of how films convey meaning, emotion and experience. This issue seeks to explore the multifaceted nature of cinematic atmospheres, examining how they are created (as acts of artistic production) and experienced (as acts of audience reception). By bridging perspectives from aesthetics, phenomenology and artistic practice, we aim to open new dialogues on the links between cinema’s unique characteristics and the broader concept of atmosphere. Through the contributions assembled here, we suggest ways of thinking about the connections between the seventh art and notions of atmosphere, and we aim to understand more specifically how atmosphere can be transcribed and apprehended through the prism of cinema, by focusing on its ontological particularities.
2Although originally derived from classical languages to refer to gaseous vapours and air, and used predominantly as a scientific term from the 17th century onwards, the term “atmosphere” has become a key concept in the humanities and social sciences over the past two decades. In these domains, the notion of atmospheres is an effective device for investigating a range of themes and questions because there is no requirement to make any a priori commitments in respect of dichotomies such as self/world, individual/collective, mind/body and inside/outside. A fundamental definition of an atmosphere that operates here is as “feeling” or emotion that exists beyond the borders of an individual body (Riedel, 2019). As such, atmosphere captures the idea that feelings not only exist within people but can also exist relationally between people and the space where they exist. Atmospheres are conceptualised as arising from interactions between people and their environment, as what Böhme calls “intermediate phenomena” that have “no secure ontological status” (Böhme, 2013, p. 2).
3This in-between and insecure aspect of atmosphere, where it is treated in multiple approaches as something abstract and impalpable, speaks to the way that we believe it can be used to open up new understandings of its relevance in film studies, where it has received very little attention except in a fragmented or thematic way. With this issue, we want to draw on this diversity of approach that the concept offers, while focusing on the notion of cinematographic atmosphere itself, in order to gain a closer view of this subject. As Robert Spadoni points out in his analysis of atmosphere in film, there is often “a tendency to view the phenomenon [of atmosphere] as primarily or exclusively associated with an artwork’s environmental character and, in the case of a film, its settings, sounds, and depictions of weather” (Spadoni, 2020, p. 48). Following Spadoni, our aim is to go further than this tendency and to discuss how the atmospheres may be used in matters of content, technology, process and sensation in film. Specifically, we hope that taken together, the contributions will help the reader to investigate how atmosphere and cinema question, relate to and redefine each other.
4The term “atmosphere” (and its related words, “ambiance” or “mood”) is widely used in the field of film studies. We can, for example, talk about the overall atmosphere of a film, a sequence, a scene or even a shot. We can also talk about a sound or lighting ambiance that contributes to the creation of a specific atmosphere. For example, as Rémi Adjiman has emphasised, “in the context of cinematographic perception, the sound ambiance contributes in a preponderant way to the atmosphere, it is an enveloping background that encompasses the spectator” (Adjiman, 2018, p. 139).
5According to the Italian film theorist Ricciotto Canudo (1923), cinema is the seventh art, as it combines the six arts that preceded its creation: architecture, sculpture, drawing, music, dance and poetry. It is due to this combinatory aspect as well as its specific characteristics, particularly in terms of space and time, that cinema seems ontologically linked to atmosphere and is perhaps the best placed of all the arts to articulate it. Even in the analysis of atmospheres in processes entirely unrelated to cinema, there are links which shed light on the ontological convergence with atmosphere in cinema. One such example is Wall (2019), who, in an analysis of the dynamics of public order policing, makes a distinction between “affective atmospheres and the techniques aimed at creating them” – what he calls ‘atmotechnics’. Atmotechnics are the techniques that aim “to create, manage or change affective atmospheres” (Wall, 2019, p. 147). This active, technical sense of atmosphere connects to Gregersen’s proposal to speak of “atmosphering” as a verb and not of atmospheres as a noun, homing in on the “dynamic intermingling of things, bodily practices, drives, meaning-making, and historically configured, culturally conditioned subjects” that engage in the process of atmosphering” (Gregersen, 2021, p. 631).
6What is at stake here is the relationship between atmosphere and perception. Gernot Böhme, who is often quoted by the authors of this issue, developed his notion of “aesthetic of atmospheres” as a comprehensive theory of perception. Böhme is among those, like Hermann Schmitz and Tonino Griffero, who have, as Robert Sinnerbrink has argued, revitalised questions around the relationship between the phenomenology of film and affect (Fuery, 2024, p. 17). For Böhme, “the first ‘object’ of perception are the atmospheres,” adding further that the atmospheres are “the background against which the analytical eye distinguishes things such as objects, shapes, colours…” (Böhme, 2018, p. 47). The “aesthetic of atmospheres,” as defined by Böhme, refers to the sensory experience of space, where the mood or tone of an environment influences the viewer’s perception and emotional state. As the “perception includes the affective impact of the observed, the ‘reality of images’, the living body and its feeling” (ibid.), Böhme highlights how the bodily state is linked to an environment and how that works in the perception of an atmosphere. Atmosphere in film is part of the construction of a certain representation of the world that the spectator is made to experience. Experiencing an atmosphere in this cinematic way allows us to apprehend the represented world more deeply, rather than by simply observing it, from a passive distance. This approach to cinema enables a sensitivity from which new understandings of the worlds being represented can emerge. By combining image and sound, image depth, movement and time, cinema is an art of re-construction, of re-presentation. It would appear that cinema allows the viewer to get as close as possible to the re-creation of an atmosphere, in line with Böhme’s conception. Understanding this, the approach represented by the contributions to this journal issue move on from the creation of an aesthetic, which is to say the analysis of a poesis, to attending to its reception. In doing so, we can, in accord with Riedel’s interpretation of Morton’s notion of ambient poetics (2019, p. 17), realise that an effect of atmospheres is a sense of coherence between cinema’s representational universe and its spectatorship. This is, as Riedel puts it, an “experienced homogeneity of a (social) situation without confusing it with the actual emotional state of every person present or with the social unity of a community” (Riedel, 2019, p. 90). Tonino Griffero (2019a, 2019b, 2022b, 2022a) calls this capacity to allow people to feel first, and then to think, ‘pathicity’. It is a term that uses atmosphere to challenge the assertion of emotion as operating at an individual level, locating it rather between people and their environments, as “ecological-emotional invitations”, bound up with the ways a spectator may apprehend their “peri-corporeal lived space” (Griffero, 2022b, p. 90‑91).
7Cinema appears to have realised that atmosphere is an inherent affect of the medium from its earliest days. Indeed, as early as 1952, Etienne Souriau talked about the “atmospheric marvel of the filmic universe” (Souriau, 1952, p. 139), highlighting, in particular, the chemical characteristics of the film reel and how its ‘grain’ plays an essential role in the representation and perception of cinematic atmospheres. All this is to say that the links between the theories of cinema and atmospheres have always been present, although they have been tenuous, because they have existed without being properly known.
8Several papers in this issue highlight the fact that the specificities of the spectator’s cinematic experience have much in common with the experience of atmosphere itself as it is broadly conceived and defined. For example, Isabelle Singer demonstrates in her article that Alfonso Cuaron’s film Roma (2018) proposes a reconstitution, through individual and collective memory, that is a re-creation of a world, which in turn helps to produce an immersive, intimate and emotional experience for the spectator. Also, in her paper, Louise Bouvet explores how cinematic atmosphere is an aesthetic phenomenon that embraces the viewer, blurring the distinctions between screen and life, and enabling a “singular modulation of perception” based on an emotional and sensory interaction with the film. Moreover, to tackle the specific issue of atmosphere in cinema, Louise Bouvet’s paper can be considered an excellent introduction to the topic itself. With an approach combining philosophy and phenomenology, she lays the foundations for questioning the cinematic atmosphere and its reception. She explains how the relationship with the spectator, conceived from the outset, implies a form of responsibility on the part of the director, that is an essential ethical obligation towards the spectators, who must be able to allow themselves to be transported in order to experience the cinematic atmosphere fully.
9If cinematographic perception is indeed very singular for the spectator, we can also consider that the act of capturing images and/or sounds in the production process can also be considered a specific perception of an atmosphere. For example, by taking an interest in animals, researchers such as Elio Della Noce and Lucas Murari argue that “the act of filming is an ecological act of perception” (Della Noce & Murari, 2022). This assertion highlights the fact that by choosing a shot scale, a certain light, a sound listening point, and so on, the director models a perceptual framework of their own, which will in turn be transformed by the viewer(s) when the film is shown. The cinematic atmosphere is thus co-constructed by both the director and the viewer(s). It is in these ways that understanding the creation and perception of cinematic atmosphere during production as well as in screening can be shown to be key to grasping its impact on the viewer’s experience.
10Some papers in this issue aim to provide a comprehensive exploration of how filmmakers actively craft these intangible yet powerful elements. For example, Olivier Gaudin, focusing on Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow Up (1966), examines how editing choices, variations in sound and lighting, framing effects and the instability of the camera help to create ambiguous and unsettling atmospheres that disorientate the viewer, as if to signify the disorientation of the characters themselves. By comparing this film with other works by the Italian director, Gaudin also highlights the fact that it would be possible to detect a specifically located atmosphere in a director’s filmography. Gaudin is able to stress that Rome is a crumbled city in L’eclisse (1962), that Ravenna melts into chemical mists and coloured vibrations in Il deserto rosso (1964), and that London is fractured to the point of illegibility in Blow up. He explains the fact that alongside this geographical locatability, the landscapes are often filmed in the image of the characters’ state of mind. As in Antonioni’s other films, this insight contributes to the apprehension of a particular, even recognisable, atmosphere attributable to the author himself. Gaudin also feels the need to contextualise the film’s release, setting the background for the period when the film was made, what it was intended to show and what it represented. The analysis of these works demonstrates that the approach to atmosphere in film cannot be purely aesthetic, since the spectator’s reception of the film is necessarily rhetorical (Soulez, 2011). This is an enlightening proposition, for in considering that a film is the director’s re-transcription of a specific atmospheric perception, we can also consider whether the spectator’s experience would enable them to share this perception and to find it again, recognising it in film after film.
11Having laid out the foundations to our approach in the above, it seems essential to us that the analysis of cinematic atmosphere that follows should be structured in terms of its examination both of cinematic creation and its sensory reception. The variety of articles selected for this issue enables us to do this efficiently.
12Many specific elements do indeed contribute to the creation of cinematographic atmosphere. Chief among these are space and “mood”. As mentioned above, Böhme explains that his aesthetic of atmospheres is essentially a spatial experience. In cinema, it is commonplace to talk about the atmosphere of a location (whether it be exterior or interior, on set or in natural settings). In order to shape this atmosphere, a number of elements are considered from the pre-production stage of the film, through location scouting, the creation of storyboards, reflections on lighting and decoration, etc. The creation of a ‘mood board’ before shooting is also increasingly common. Taken individually and together, these elements reveal the importance attached to atmosphere by the film’s director and by the technical team. Drawing on artistic references (usually cinematographic or pictorial), the mood board could be considered to be the reference document for the atmosphere of the film as a whole. Created before shooting, it becomes a guide to be followed throughout the rest of the film’s creative process (shooting as well as post-production). In post-production, the sound editing, mixing and the colour grading continue to shape the atmosphere that was conceived before the shoot and shaped during it. The importance of “mood” to understanding cinematic atmospheres has most recently been addressed by Robert Sinnerbrink (2024), who argues that unlike emotion, mood lacks a “determinate intentional object,” and as such can direct our attention in an oblique way, as an “in-between” state. Sinnerbrink’s conception of atmosphere asserts that mood and emotion can work together in cinema to manifest feeling spatially, furthering our “attunement” (Stimmung) to a “world-disclosing” sensibility (Fuery, 2024, p. 17).
13The processes involved in creating cinematic atmosphere are varied and can range from meticulous craftsmanship to the use of cutting-edge technological tools, as Isabelle Singer’s text highlights here. In addition, Isabelle Singer, Olivier Gaudin and Andrea Pavoni, while focusing on different subjects, all stress the importance of the construction of the characters for the spectator’s perception of the atmosphere thus created. For example, Gaudin points out that Antonioni, particularly with his non-verbal approach and with his landscapes often being filmed in the image of the characters’ state of mind, ensures that the spaces and characters that inhabit these spaces interact to create a special, distinctive atmosphere. Singer, for her part, mentions the direction of the actors as one of the criteria to be used to create an atmosphere. These are very interesting proposals, as the question of characters is rarely addressed in studies of cinematic atmosphere. It is therefore not just the techniques that need to be taken into account here, but all the levers of action, for the ways in which they build an atmosphere. An example of how the process of making a film occurs from not only a highly technical point of view but also from an interactional point of view is described here through the lens of the film Roma. This example is all the more significant because in this film, the director wanted to reconstruct a memory, which is all the more subjective, being in an intimate and emotional register. The challenge he faced was how to transcribe such a set of personal situations through recollection. The complexity of the personal situations is revealed by the complexity of the corresponding atmospheres. And yet, also through this analysis, we can identify all the little technical things which, taken together, make up the atmosphere of a film. This technical approach cannot be divorced from the approach to feeling that seems to characterise much of the understanding of atmosphere in film.
14In an equally singular way, Charlie Hewison’s text deals with an original manner of capturing an atmosphere or several atmospheres at the time of the film’s creation. Introducing the notion of “sylphic images”, he explains how, in a highly experimental way, some films use images produced by the interaction between film and environmental forces (air, light, radioactivity) without the mediation of a camera. The creation of the work thus becomes intrinsically bound to the perception of the medium itself when confronted with a specific atmosphere, conditioned by environmental forces. That atmosphere then imprints itself directly on the recording medium, in a way revealing the invisible forces that make up the atmosphere: as Hewinson concludes his text, “the film […] becomes a material agent in an integration-unveiling of the atmosphere‑medium.”
15Following a completely different path, Andrea Pavoni questions the dimensions of ordinary atmospheres. Drawing on Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Uzak (2002) and evoking Italian neo-realism, he explores how cinema, and most specifically its temporal component, can construct ordinary, everyday atmospheres. To do this, he proposes a “tensional” approach to atmospheres, based on their vitality and their dynamic potential. This analysis questions not only the realism of atmosphere but also the realism inherent in cinema in an ontological way, and thus proposes an unprecedented renewal of the questions that have run through film studies since the creation of this art. We are thinking, of course, of the ontology developed by André Bazin (1975), where cinematic realism is not reduced to its technical and psychological aspects, but is understood in an ontological sense (such that the image relates to the very essence of reality) and also in a stylistic sense (where this ontology can only be realised through aesthetic choices). The questions that emerge here are specifically linked to documentary cinema and ‘cinéma‑vérité’.
16Furthermore, Pavoni’s proposal raises new questions about how, in the course of analysing the film, other elements emerge to describe its atmosphere, and what these elements are. Is the atmosphere more perceptible when we are dealing with the subject of everyday life? Are we made more sensitive to atmosphere, as Sumartojo and Pink suggest (2019), when we take the time to experience it through film? Andrea Pavoni seems to oppose representation to affect and goes so far as to speak of an affective spectacle. Whereas a film is the representation of a universe of whatever kind, the spectator’s experience of it is both subjective and sensual. This means that taking the context into account is essential, as it influences the viewer’s interpretation. Once again, the point here is that an aesthetic approach cannot be taken without there also being a rhetorical understanding (Soulez, 2011) of the conditions of reception.
17So, while a number of texts offer a variety of ways of thinking about the construction of atmosphere in cinema, the authors are also interested in how it is received by the spectator. Following Ernst Gombrich’s “constructivist” thesis, we can consider the spectator to be an actor in their own right. We must therefore take into account this “beholder’s share” (Gombrich, 1960), that is to say the way in which the spectator makes the work their own through their knowledge, their culture, their previous experiences, their emotions, their state of mind etc. Thus, the cinematic atmosphere can be considered to be co-constructed by three entities: the director and their production team, who create an atmosphere; the film, which is the medium for the atmosphere conditioned by the environmental conditions of its creation and presentation; and finally the viewer, who receives the atmosphere and models it in turn amongst others, who make it more than an individual, self-directed act. Louise Bouvet goes even further than the traditional constructivist thesis, pointing out that atmosphere can also have an impact on the viewer, shaping them in turn: “the atmosphere being no longer simply a nimbed ambiance in which the subject is engulfed, but a productive instance that shapes the spectator subject, participates in the creation of his personality and obliges him to a form of continual renewal of his perspective curiosity.” David Bordwell, in his characterisation of film theatres, considers that the audience is surrounded by multiple atmospheres created by “the tangible texture of film” (Bordwell, 2005), meaning the perceptual surface we encounter when watching and listening to diegetic worlds. In this conception, the “tangible texture” is both aesthetically conceived and polysensorial: “it is the many-sided feel of the places represented in films and art, along with what that collusion of sense, affect, and aesthetics conveys” (Deggan, 2013, p. 3).
18As it depends on the subject and can evolve over time, the sensation of an atmosphere is essentially subjective, sensual and ephemeral. The atmosphere itself is a very fragile thing, as Louise Bouvet points out in her text. We can therefore first ask ourselves how it would be possible to preserve the director’s intention with regard to the atmosphere created up to the point at which it is received by the nominal spectator. The conditions of reception inevitably play an essential role in the deployment of the work’s atmospheres and its perception by the audience. This is why some directors can give broadcasting instructions to ensure that their intentions are preserved, as for example in the case of the sheet created by David Lynch for his film Mulholland Drive (2001). This was intended for the projection department and included technical instructions such as increasing the volume by +3 dB above what is normally provided for in any particular theatre.
19It is also important then to note how the screening venue can influence the perception of atmosphere. For example, watching a film in a cinema equipped with a very large screen and sound equipment such as Dolby Atmos may be more conducive to recreating atmospheres than watching it at home on a television or a computer. In her 2022 book Atmospheres of Projection (reviewed in this issue by Steffen Hven), Giuliana Bruno explores the role of cinema and the visual arts in the creation of atmospheres by studying how projection, far from being reduced to a mere technique, allows for the creation of transient atmospheric spaces. She considers the space of projection to be “a space of potentiality in which many forms of mediation and intersection are made possible, in an atmosphere that is itself a transitory site, an intermediate space – a moving place between internal and external, subjective and objective, private and public” (Bruno, 2022, p. 7). She adds that the “act of projection is not simply a site of sensory mixture. Far more, it should be understood as a form of worldmaking as it creates, and is, a milieu” (ibid.). So, just as much as the film itself, the projection and its conditions must be taken into account in the construction and, above all, the specific perception of the cinematic atmosphere.
20The articles presented in this special issue highlight the complexity of studying cinematic atmospheres, which cannot be separated from the conditions of their creation, the intrinsic characteristics of the cinematic medium, or the act of reception. They also highlight the autonomy of the cinematic work itself, and how its own temporality and intrinsic characteristics create a changing and creatively unstable atmosphere. As atmosphere must be lived, felt and experienced, only a holistic analysis is capable of tackling this question of the cinematic atmosphere, and we hope that the different points of view represented by the contributors and the films they describe and analyse for this issue act as a point of reflection to reveal the richness of this term for cinema studies.
21Taken as a whole, these contributions, which take on various approaches to film studies, considering aesthetical, technical, philosophical and phenomenological perspectives, may be regarded as the starting points for future research that could be further developed. There is still much scope for further diversification of approaches and for extending the range of works studied.
22Far from offering a definitive definition of cinematic atmosphere, our aim with this issue is to open up new avenues of inquiry and dialogue. How do technological innovations, such as 3D, 4DX and virtual reality reshape the experience of cinematic atmospheres? What role do atmosphere and mood play in documentary and animated films? How can we further understand the relationship between cinematic space, sound, and the viewer’s sensory engagement?
23We hope this issue serves as a foundation for future research, inspiring interdisciplinary approaches that explore the transformative potential of cinematic atmospheres in creating meaning, emotion and connection. By situating atmosphere at the centre of cinematic inquiry, we invite scholars and practitioners alike to reconsider how films not only represent the world but also enable us to feel and inhabit it in profound and nuanced ways.
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