Formalist Motion Pictures
Using psychological studies of motion perception, Betancourt has argued that the motion seen in motion pictures is identical to the motion seen in paintings. He terms this second type painterly motion and argues that both kinds are invented by the subjective viewer: "Unlike motion in the real world that is physically eminent, the motion we see in movies and through the technique of painterly motion is entirely a result of a human perception. The motion we see does not exist outside our perception." Work by painters Francis Bacon and Peter Paul Rubens present the type of motion effect identified by Betancourt as being psychologically the same as real motion of actual objects in the world.
Betancourt's construction of formalism suggests a broader scope for applications of film theory than simply motion pictures since it focuses on both painting and experimental film. This approach was developed in his book, Structuring Time: notes on making movies. He approaches the motion picture as a series of distinct, but related domains of aesthetic manipulation: camera, image, editing, projection, screen, and sound.
Read more about this topic: Michael Betancourt
Famous quotes containing the words motion pictures, motion and/or pictures:
“Too many Broadway actors in motion pictures lost their grip on success—had a feeling that none of it had ever happened on that sun-drenched coast, that the coast itself did not exist, there was no California. It had dropped away like a hasty dream and nothing could ever have been like the things they thought they remembered.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will, therefore, always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in pursuit of it. No, we are complicated machines; and though we have one main spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometime stop that motion.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
““And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)