Cinematic Movement

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SOME NOTES ON CINEMATIC MOVEMENTSRobert Gessner

Cinema is the most modern of the languages because it combines and utilizesthree contemporary disciplines: technology, science, and art. Cinema as technologymay be described as reproductive representation of reality, involving such technicalfactors as lens openings, shutter speeds, depth of field, emulsion sensitivity, lighting,and the like. As social science, cinema examines psychological and sociological per-ception, all that constitute cultural associations. As art, cinema appears to me tocreate faces of time extended into space and light, forming objects, both animate andinanimate, that convey emotional and intellectual meanings.

As a language, then, cinema may be utilized for whatever purpose its posses-sors might wish from astronomical studies to zen lyrics. As a humanistic discipline,however, its maturity and growth depend upon its unique grammar, which is whatrenders any language useful, whether it be mere craft or artistic creation. Grammaris truly the hub from which spokes may emerge and which, in turn, move the wheel.Grammars, actually, are notations of differences which enable distinctions of intent

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and appreciations of comprehension. Unfortunately, cinema lacks grammar - witnessthe hours of visual gibberish with an occasional moment of lucid and literate expres-sion. It may be argued that the study of grammar is not essential for a rapid Cook'stour through Europe; similarly, someone may spend a lifetime sitting before a TVlamp and not know what images could mean.

On one hand, there is the optimistic belief in Kant's dictum that the law ofuniversal causation is a principle of the possibility of experience. On the other hand,others than skeptics know that perceptional validity is subject to the similar fallaciesof reasoning by induction. Subjective or individual authority as receiver or audienceis based on grammatical knowledge on an elementary level, and the democratic hu-manities at the highest level. Personal talent, as sender and receiver, is not to betaken for granted. "Hundreds of people can talk," observed Ralph Waldo Emerson,"for one who can see."

All too obviously, seeing is reality. Seeing is looking, an optical capacity;perception is awareness, involving visual intelligence and visual sensitivity. Grammar,then, is the means of evolving seeing into perceiving.

The grammar of cinema has failed to develop, largely, I believe, due to thetyranny of the fixed frame. The most immediate of the dictators has been the pro-scenium stage, and the most ancient has been the dictatorship of the painter's frame.Time restricted by space is the only, or sole, inheritance cinema has acquired fromthe older arts, namely, movement within the frame. Space need not be restricted orconfined by frame any more than time is strictly to a matter of consecutive seconds.Curiously, this is also true in the novel. Alfred Kazin has taken Lawrence Durrellto task: "When Mr. Durrell so sharply separates space from time he is attemptingsomething which in the representation of actual human experience is impossible,since we do not think of space apart from time."

Men think generally of time in terms of three grammatical categories: past,present, and future. Cinema has past, present, and future, and more so. Movementwithin the frame may be normal, slow, or fast. The frame, through pans, tilts, andtracking, may have similar velocities of being normal, slow, or fast.

In addition to camera-controlled movements within frames and manipulation offrames themselves, edited motion is more variable than the traditional past, present,future.

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There are two types of present time in cinema: first, continuous, the ap-proximation of sixty seconds to the minute, the matched cut, the unity of time andspace in the continuity of an uninterrupted rhythmic flow. Mainly, the camera re-cords, the edit records.

Secondly, the parallel present. We may experience simultaneous space atsimultaneous time. We may, literally, be in two places at once, or, in the case ofIntolerance, in four places at four different ages simultaneously in an aesthetic aswell as an intellectual sense.

There are also two types of past time in cinema: first, the flashback, whentime is distinctly previous, though its unfolding may be continuous, but of that time.Thus far the flashback, or past time, has been primarily narrative. Perceptionallythis need not be the case, as Bertrand Russell observed in "The Limits of Empiri-cism." H. H. Price developed the thought in his book, Perception: "For if one as-sumes that there is, in fact, a universal correlation between two different sorts ofevents, it is possible to infer from an occurrence of one an instance of the other,with equal validity, whatever may be their temporal relationship; so that it seemslegitimate to say that the future 'determines' the past in exactly the same sense inwhich the past 'determines' the future." This we may observe in cinema when, atthe conclusion of a flashback, we are once again in the present, which then seemsto be the future. Conversely, following an accelerated or jump cut, a continuousflow may seem to be a flashback or a previous time, which is precisely what it is.Time in cinema is truly relative.

A second type of past time is a slower-than-continuous time other than slowmotion, a camera trick. It may be referred to as decelerated time, a prolongationof the present with part of the past. Like the Bunny Dance among the Sioux, thereis a step backward for every two forward. A minute may acquire, thus, more thansixty seconds. The slowing down is an edited factor, not done by shutter speed.

Future appears to be simply future: an accelerated edit, or jump cut, ac-complished by editing. Acceleration within the frame, another camera trick, alsoreduces the sixty-seconds-to-the-minute rhythm. Both the accelerated edit and thefast shutter speed are examples of future time brought closer to the present per-ception.

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Here follows a chart of lexical meaning, offered as a guide, not a decalogue,to the grammar of cinematic motion:

PAST 4< O PRESENT FUTURE(five techniques) (five techniques) (four techniques)

Slow motion Normal motion Acceleratedwithin frame within frame editingSlow pan or Normal pan or Fast pan orslow truck normal truck fast truck

Flashback Continuous Fast motionediting within frame

Parallelediting

Decelerated editAs summary, recognition of temporal alterations of space and objects may

be identified as: (1) subject movement, (2) frame movement, (3) continuous edit,(4) accelerated edit, (5) parallel edit, (6) past edit, (7) decelerated edit. Velocity,which may vary in any and all of the seven faces of time, is in terms of subject,camera movement, and shutter speed.

A final word about the films: Associative Study is an extra "short," an up-dating of the Kuleshov-Pudovkin experiment with the Russian actor Mosjukhin. Theprops are modernized; it is the first film to be shot inside Harvard's Loeb DramaCenter, and, I am told, appropriately so. The Faces of Time are numbered, nottitled for identification; under Number 2, the first section, labeled "A" is stillundergoing editing; the final segment, number 7 is also being editorially tested.

The subject matter has been designed to involve more than temporal identifi-cation. Other areas of inquiry are, for the time being: (1) Plastic alterations (size,angle, depth, scale); (2) Light alterations (medium, high, low keys, and texture);(3) Analysis of apperceptive atmosphere: associations prior to viewing, receptionalenvironment, receptional attitudes during viewing; (4) examination of optical capaci-ties; and finally (5) instruction in visual sensitivity and in visual intelligence.

NOTEProfessor Gessner's paper was accompanied by an extraordinary film he

made at Harvard during 1962-1963, The Faces of Time. The film shows how the

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variables mentioned in the article can all be used to produce similar effects; forexample, the movement of one object forward past another can be achieved throughobject movement or camera movement or even by changing lighting. The effects inProfessor Gessner's film are pure cinema - I could find no way, alas, to reproducethem in the fixed and two-dimensional pages of this journal. The Editor.

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Cinematic Movement

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