Frame and Shot
That which is within the frame (characters, props) is a relatively closed system, and can be treated as a spatial composition. However, it can never be completely closed, because of the way it can define the "out-of-the-frame". This is particularly apparent in the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. Deleuze defines the shot (which is dependent on the position and movement of the camera) as the movement-image (p22). The mobile camera acts as a general equivalent to forms of locomotion, for instance walking, planes, cars (p22). The great moments of cinema are often when the camera, following its own movement, turns its back on a character (p23). In this way, the camera acts as a mechanical consciousness in its own right, separate from the consciousness of the audience or the hero (p22). Montage (the way the shots are edited) connects shots and gives movement, even when the camera is not mobile.
Read more about this topic: Cinema 1: The Movement Image
Famous quotes containing the words frame and/or shot:
“Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist—the only thing he’s good for—is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning. Even if it’s only his view of a meaning. That’s what he’s for—to give his view of life.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)