Defining and controlling the space of the frame

1. Defining and controlling the space of the frame • Aspect ratio • Masking • Camera placement • Focus • Perspective • Mobile framing

2. André Bazin (1918-1958) • An aesthetic of realism built from critical readings of the films of Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, and the Italian neorealist movement. • Founds ciné-clubs and begins writing on film during the German occupation of France during WW II. • Founder of Cahiers du cinéma, one of the most important international journals of film criticism.

3. André Bazin’s film aesthetic • Creative uses of screen space through . . . • Composing action in deep space. • Preference for the long take and moving camera. • Preference for films that “interpret” the physical world • Bringing out social connections between characters and their environments • An existential link exists between the camera and pro-filmic space.

5. Deep space composition and deep focus photography • Deep space • a strategy of mise-en-scene where all the planes of the image--foreground, middle ground, and background--are in sharp focus. Staging action in deep space requires large depth of field. • Deep focus • a use of camera lens and lighting that keeps both close and distant planes in the photographic image in sharp focus.

6. André Bazin’s film aesthetic • “The Camera and the Screen” • The camera may transform our perception of the world by bringing out otherwise hidden or unnoticed aspects of reality. • Deep focus composition as specifying “a point of view rooted within the set itself . . . . By uniting foreground, middle ground, and background, but not setting the planes off against each other, the actor is completely entwined with and works in a direct relationship to, his total setting. Every element of the reality on the screen, whether animate or inanimate, is interdependent.” • The camera’s creative and critical interpretation of characters’ relations to their spatial environment.

7. Types of mobile framing • PAN • camera swivels right or left on a stationary base. • TILT • camera swivels up or down on a stationary base. • TRACKING or TRAVELING SHOT • camera moves horizontal to the ground. • CRANE • camera mounted on a crane above ground and can move in any direction, • HANDHELD CAMERA • camera is supported by the camera person’s body; • Steadicam is controlled by a gyroscope.

8. Types of mobile framing • Crane • Dolly

9. Types of mobile framing Michael Snow, La région centrale

10. Know the difference between zooms and camera movements! • Both are types of mobile framing. However, • the camera does not move during a zoom; instead the frame is enlarged or reduced optically by varying the focal length of the lens. • Zooming--for example, changing the focal length of the lens from a telephoto to a wide angle--changes the perspective of the shot; moving the camera does not.

11. The appeal of the moving camera • Organizes space according to cinema’s intrinsic qualities as an art of time and movement. • Camera movement mobilizes and increases perceptual information. • Provides multiple perspectives on dramatic action. • Increases depth and volume of objects in frame. • Produces perspectives freed from the physical constraints of the body.

12. Analytic editing in Sabotage

14. Andre Bazin’s film aesthetic • The use of long takes and deep space encourages greater perceptual and mental activity in the spectator. • Editing by its nature rules out a desired ambiguity of expression. • The use of long takes and deep space intensifies a perception similar to our "natural attitude" to reality. • The use of the long take promotes a temporal realism.

15. Rules of the Game • Staging of action on multiple planes of depth. • Movement through multiple planes of action counters “lateral” orientation of Hollywood films of same period. • The moving camera as attentive observer and participant. • Mobility of camera activates all six sides of off-screen space.