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Cinematography: the Creative Use of Reality

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Cinematography: the Creative Use of Reality !"#$%&'()*&+,-./0,$/!*$&'"1$/23$/(4/5$&6"'- 78',(*93:./;&-&/<$*$# =(8*>$./<&$?&683@/A(6B/CD@/E(B/F@/0,$/A"38&6/7*'3/0(?&-/9G"#'$*@/FDHI:@/++B/FJIKFHL M8N6"3,$?/N-./0,$/;O0/M*$33/(#/N$,&64/(4/7%$*">&#/7>&?$%-/(4/7*'3/P/=>"$#>$3 ='&N6$/25Q./http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026556 7>>$33$?./FLRISRTIID/FF.UD Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press and American Academy of Arts & Sciences are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Daedalus. http://www.jstor.org MAYA DEREN Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality The motion-picture camera is perhaps the most paradoxical of all in can at once machines, that it be independently active and infinitely passive. Kodak's early slogan, "You push the but it does the was not an ton, rest," exaggerated advertising claim; a camera can even and, connected to any simple trigger device, take same a pictures all by itself. At the time, while comparable development and refinement of other mechanisms has usually in an resulted increased specialization, the advances in the scope and sensitivity of lenses and emulsions have made the camera capable of infinite receptivity and indiscriminate fidelity. To this must be added the fact that the medium deals, or can deal, in terms can of the most elemental actuality. In sum, it produce maximum results for virtually minimal effort: it requires of its a operator only modicum of aptitude and energy; of its subject it its matter, only that exist; and of audience, only that they can see. as a mass On this elementary level it functions ideally medium for communicating equally elementary ideas. as a so amor The photographic medium is, matter of fact, not phous that it is merely unobtrusive but virtually transparent, so more and becomes, than any other medium, susceptible of servitude to any and all the others. The enormous value of such to to ac servitude suffices justify the medium and be generally as a cepted its function. This has been major obstacle to the as a definition and development of motion pictures creative fine art own own form?capable of creative action in its terms?for its is as a can character latent image which become manifest only no if other image is imposed upon it to obscure it. Those concerned with the emergence of this latent form must assume a one therefore partially protective role, which recalls the advice of an art instructor who said, "If you have trouble drawing the vase, try drawing the space around the vase." Indeed, for the time being, the definition of the creative form of film involves as careful attention to what it is not as to what it is. Animated Paintings In recent first on the years, perceptible experimental fringes now in of the film world and general evidence at the commer 150 deren: cial art theaters, there has been an accelerated development : arts Cinematography of what might be called the "graphic school of animated The Creative film." Such films, which combine abstract backgrounds with Use of not are Reality recognizable but realistic figures, designed and painted use a by trained and talented graphic artists who make of resources sophisticated, fluent knowledge of the rich of plastic even emer media, including collage. A major factor in the gence of this school has been the enormous technical and in so laboratory advance color film and color processing, that now it is possible for these artists to approach the two-dimen screen sional, rectangular with all the graphic freedom they to a canvas. bring screen canvas The similarity between and had long ago been as recognized by artists such Hans Richter, Oscar Fishinger, were and others, who attracted not by its graphic possibilities (so limited at that time) but rather by the excitements of the film medium, particularly the exploitation of its time dimen a sion?rhythm, spatial depth created by diminishing square, a the three-dimensional illusion created by the revolutions of etc. spiral figure, They put their graphic skills at the service of as a means the film medium, of extending film expression.* new so The graphic-arts school does not much advance those as reverse early efforts them, for here the artists make use of the as an film medium extension of the plastic media. This is par one ticularly clear when analyzes the principle of movement no more a employed, for it is usually than sequential articula tion?a kind of spelling out in time?of the dynamic ordinarily an implicit in the design of individual composition. The most appropriate term to describe such works, which are often in teresting and witty, and which certainly have their place among is visual arts, "animated paintings." This entry of painting into the film medium presents certain parallels with the introduction of sound. The silent film had to it were attracted persons who had talent for and inspired by a new the exploration and development of and unique form of visual expression. The addition of sound opened the doors for the verbalists and dramatists. Armed with the authority, power, and laws, techniques, skills, crafts which the venerable literary arts over even had accumulated centuries, the writers hardly to paused recognize the small resistance of the "indigenous" a in film-maker, who had had barely decade which to explore and evolve the creative potential of his medium. * is Hans a in a use soon It significant that Richter, pioneer such of film, abandoned this approach. All his later films, along with the films of Man L?ger, Ray, Dali, and the painters who participated in Richter's etc. a later films (Ernst, Duchamp, ) indicate profound appreciation of the distinction between the plastic and the photographic image, and make enthusiastic and creative use of photographic reality. 151 success is The rapid of the "animated painting" similarly due comes to the fact that it armed with all the plastic traditions are as and techniques which its impressive heritage. And just on the sound film interrupted the development of film form the a more so commercial level by providing finished substitute, as a the "animated painting" is already being accepted form of film art in the few areas (the distribution of 16 mm. film shorts can to film series and societies ) where experiments in film form still find an audience. an The motion-picture medium has extraordinary range of common expression. It has in with the plastic arts the fact that a on a sur it is visual composition projected two-dimensional move face; with dance, that it can deal in the arrangement of can a ment; with theater, that it create dramatic intensity of can events; with music, that it compose in the rhythms and can phrases of time and be attended by song and instrument; can with poetry, that it juxtapose images; with literature gen can erally, that it encompass in its sound track the abstractions available only to language. seems to create This very profusion of potentialities confusion in the minds of most film-makers, a confusion which is dimin a ished by eliminating major portion of those potentialities in one or favor of two, upon which the film is subsequently structured. An artist, however, should not seek security in a over tidy mastery the simplifications of deliberate poverty; he should, instead, have the creative courage to face the danger of being overwhelmed by fecundity in the effort to resolve it into simplicity and economy. a While the "animated painting" film has limited itself to area on small of film potential, it has gained acceptance the it use an art basis of the fact that does form?the graphic art seem to form?and that it does meet the general condition of as an film: it makes its statement image in movement. This a opens the entire question of whether photograph is of the same as a order of image all others. If not, is there correspond to in a ingly different approach it creative context? Although the photographic process is the basic building block of the a motion-picture medium, it is tribute to its self-effacement as a servant no that virtually consideration has been given to its own character and the creative implications thereof. The Closed Circuit of the Photographic Process on means The term "image" (originally based "imitation") sense a or in its first the visual likeness of real object person, and act in the very of specifying resemblance it distinguishes and establishes the entire category of visual experience which is 152 deren: a or In sense not real object person.
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