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INFORMATION TO USERS
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T T-A/f-T Dissertation UIV11 Information ServiceUniversity Microfilms InternationalA Bell &Howell Information Company300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106
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8625615
C aserta , Theodore Masuk
REALITY INTO FILM: A STUDY OF THE CREATIVE STRATEGIES USED TODISSOCIATE FILM FROM THE ILLUSION OF REALITY
New York Un iversity Ph.D. 1986
University
MicrofilmsInternational 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106
Copyright 1986
by
Caserta, Theodore Masuk
All Rights Reserved
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PLEASE NOTE:
In all cas es this material has been filmed in the b es t possible w ay from the available copy.Problems enco unte red with this do cum ent have been identified here with a che ck mark V .
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Sponsoring Committee: Prof. Joy Gould Boyum, ChairpersonProf. Robert S. Berlin
Prof. Terence Moran
REALITY INTO FILM: A STUDY OF THE CREATIVE
STRATEGIES USED TO DISSOCIATE FILM FROM
THE ILLUSION OF REALITY
Theodore Masuk Caserta
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy in the School of Education, Health, Nursing and
Arts Professions New York University
1986
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Theodore Masuk Caserta 1986
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I hereby guarantee that no part of the dissertation which I have submitted for publication has been heretofore
published and (or) copyrighted in the United States of America, except in the case of passages quoted from other published sources; that I am the sole author and proprietor of said dissertation; that the dissertation contains no
matter which, if published, will be libelous or otherwise injurious, or infringe in any way the copyright of any other party; and that I will defend, indemnify and hold
harmless New York University against all suits and proceedings which may be brought and against all claims which may be made against New York University by reason of the publication of said dissertation.
THEODORE MASUK ̂ CASERTA
Date
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Sponsoring Committee: Prof. Joy Gould Boyum, Chairperson
Prof. Robert S. Berlin
Prof. Te rrence Morran
AN ABSTRACT OF REALITY INTO FILM: A STUDY OF THE
CREATIVE STRATEGIES USED TO DISSOCIATE
FILM FROM THE ILLUSION OF REALITY
Theodore Masuk Caserta
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of
Education, Health, Nursing and Arts Professions
New York University
- 1986
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This study's purpose was to describe and
analyze the creative s trate gies by which the
filmmaker/researcher dissociated a film from the
illusio n of reality. The rese arch first explo red the
theoretical rela tionship between film and reality by
a detai led analy sis of selected major film theories.
Once the unique aesth etic co nnection between
film and the illu sion of realit y was esta blishe d, the
filmm aker/re searcher wrote, directed, and edited his
own cine mat ic wo rk of art titl ed 1A, 2A & 3 A . This
work attempted to consistently dissociate itself from
the illusion of reality solely through the manipulation
of cinematic techniques and not through any unrealistic
or surrealistic content. The film's narrativ e depicted
a wom an's three suic idal attempts, the final attempt
being successful.
During the filmmaking process, the filmmaker
recor ded the steps, st rategies, and technique s used
to alter the film's relationship with the illusion of
reality. Afte r comp le tio n of the 16mra colo r sound
film (38 min utes in length), the film maker de scri bed
and analyzed the critical choices he employed to
acco mplis h his ends. Finally, he adapte d these findings
into a glossary of cinematic techniques for use by future
filmmakers, educat ors, and responders.
Conclusions and insights yielded by this
dis ser tati on fall into three maj or areas. First,
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this study confirmed that film has an inherent link
with the illusion of reality. It was perceived by
the filmmaker/researcher that he could not divorce
the chronological story into pure abstraction,
surreality, or expre ssiv e symbol. Generall y, no
matter how distorted the image or sound track became,
the semblance of narrative illusioni sm resisted
dissociation by technique along.
The second major f indi ng of the study
concern ed the natu re and use of cinemati c techniques,
especially their dissociat ing properties. The
largest finding was that techn iques act upon one
another sy ne rg is ti cal ly . Thus, the concept of
treating individu al tec hnique s and those techniques'
affecti ve respons e sep aratel y may not reveal an
accurate view of their aesthetic effect.
The third major area of conclus ions concerne d
the creative process, es peci ally regar ding this and
similar studies. Essentia lly, the beau ty of this
creative pro cess study, and of perh aps all such
studies, is the truth and clarity with which the
artist can learn from the researcher.
A print or videocassette of 1A, 2A & 3A can
be obtained through the university library.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The help and support of a number of people enabled me
to accomplish this research. Joy Gould Boyum, Ph.D.,
established the discipline and criticism that were so
necessary. Patricia Rowe, Ph.D., gave me consistent
departmental support. Jonathan Weil, Ph.D., at first gave
me tutorial help, but as time passed, became one of my
dearest friends. Terence Moran, Ph.D., generously offered
me the keen advice of logic. My parents, Eugenia Caserta
and S. J. Caserta, M.D., supported me in every way possible
to accomplish my goal. Consequently, the motion picture
1A, 2A &3A has been dedicated to them. The cast and crew
of that film offered their time and effort in the making of
a difficult movie. Finally, Professor Robert S. Berlin
offered me the advice, encouragement, and support that let
me learn and grow. It is to him that I dedicate this
dissertation.
iii
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TABLE OP CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................... iii
DESCRIPTION AND INFORMATION ON PROCURING THE FILM 1A, 2A & 3 A ........................................ vii
ChapterI INTRODUCTION ................................... 1
Context of the Problem ..................... 1Statement of the Problem ................... 3
Subproblems ........................... 3Delimitations ............................. 4Definitions ............................... 5
Need for the S t u d y......................... 7
Methodology...............................
12
II FILM AND THE ILLUSION OF REALITY: AN ANALYSISOF SELECTED MAJOR THEORISTS' VIEWS .......... 24
Introduction ............................... 24S u m m a r y ................................... 69
III A DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF THE CHOICESEMPLOYED IN ORDER TO DISSOCIATE A FILM FROM THE ILLUSION OF R E A L I T Y ..................... 77
Introduction ............................... 77
I m a g e ......................................
82Filmstock as Affecting the-Image . . . . 83Type of Films t o c k ................. 83Color Temperature of Filmstock . . . 84
Lens Effects as Affecting the Image . . 86Type of L e n s ....................... 86
Aperture as a Lensed Effect . . . . 89Depth-of-Field as a Lensed Effect . 91Filters as a Lensed Effect........ 93Special Effects Lenses for Lensed Effect . ....................... 98
Framing/Composition as Affecting Image . 102Off-Centered Framing/Composition . . 103
Oblique Framing/Composition . . . . 105 Mask Framing/Composition.......... 106Shooting Through a Mirror as a Method of Framing/Composition . . 108
Distance of View as Affecting the Image. 109 Angle of View as Affecting Image . . . . 109
Subject Angle of V i e w ............ 110Camera's Angle of Vi e w ............ 112
iv
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Page
Lighting as Affecting Image...............
114Type of L i g h t i n g ....................... 115Position of Lighting ................. 117Intensity of Lighting ................. 118Colored Lighting ..................... 118Special Effects Lighting ............ 119
Available Lighting ................... 120Special Effects as Affecting the Image . . 121
Change in Color Special Effects . . . . 122 Multiple Exposure Special Effects . . . 123
M o v e m e n t ........................................124Camera Movement ........................... 125
Panning Camera Movement ............... 125
Tilting Camera Movement...............
127Zooming Camera Movement ............... 128Hand-Held Camera Movement ............ 130Lens Movement of the Camera............. 131
Subject Movement ......................... 133Upward Motion of the S u b j e c t ...........134Downward Motion of the Subject . . . . 135
Movement Toward the Camera as CreatingSubject M o v e m e n t ..................... 136
Movement Away from the Camera asCreating Subject Movement .......... 137
Left-Right Motion of the Subject . . . 138Editing as Creating Movement ............. 138
Invisible Cutting.....................
140Jump C u t t i n g ........................... 142Rhythmic Cutting ..................... 143
Montage as an Editing Technique . . . . 143Long Take as an Editing Technique . . . 145Tonal Cutting............................146Insert Shot for Use in Editing . . . . 147
Movement as Created by Special Effects . . 148Fast and Slow Motion Special Effects . 148Dissolve Special Effects ............ 150
Multiple Dissolves as a Special Effect. 151 Dissolves to and from Red as a Special
E f f e c t ................................152
Freeze Framing Special Effects . . . . 154Sextet Framing Special Effects . . . . 155Flash Framing Special Effects ........ 156Reverse Motion Special Effects . . . . 157Rotating Multivision Five Lens with
Zoom as a Special E f f e c t ............. 158Superimposed Dissolve as a Special
E f f e c t ................................159
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Page
S o u n d ................................... 160Dialogue............................. 161
Synchronous Dialogue...............
162Sound E f f e c t s ...................... 163Parallel (Synchronous) SoundEffects 164Off-Screen (Asynchronous) Sound
E f f e c t s ........................ . 165 M u s i c ............................... 167
Commentative M u s i c .............. 168Contrapuntal Music ................. 168
IV A GLOSSARY OF CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES USED TODISSOCIATE A FILM FROM THE ILLUSION OFREALITY 170
V CONCLUSIONS ............................. 210
Film and the Illusion of Reality....... 210The Nature and Use ofCinematic Technique . 221The Creative Process ...................... 225
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................... 2 30
APPENDIX A TREATMENT ................................ 235
APPENDIX B SHOOTING SCRIPT .......................... 242
APPENDIX C SELECTED PAGES OF THE SHOT NOTEBOOK . . . 268
APPENDIX D LIST OF CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES..........
299 APPENDIX E LETTERS VALIDATING THE SCRIPT'SREALISM . 30 3
vi
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DESCRIPTION AND INFORMATION ON PROCURING
THE FILM 1A, 2A & 3A
The narrative of the film 1A, 2A & 3A involves the
successful suicide attempt of Isa, an attractive, married
woman in her early thirties. All scenes take place in and
around her two-story house. In the course of the narrative,
Isa will make three different kinds of attempts on her
life: suicide by overdose of pills, suicide by slashing
her wrist, and suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. The
last attempt is successful.
A print or videocassette of the film can be obtained
through Avery Fisher Center, Bobst Library, New York
University, Washington Square, New York, New York 10012.
vii
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CHAPTER I
1
INTRODUCTION
Context of the Problem
Film/ more than any other art form, depends upon a
mimetic illusion to gain its aesthetic effect. Using the
photographic image, it also employs movement and sound to
give us a startlingly realistic impression of the world-
out-there. So precise, in fact, is the moving picture's
ability to capture.this world, that the film medium creates
the illusion that we are actually perceiving reality.
Diverse film theorists emphasize film's unique
relationship to reality.1 Siegfried Kracauer, for example,
states:
Film renders visible what we did not, or perhaps even could not, see before its advent. It effectively assists us in discovering the
material world with its psychophysical corres pondences. We literally redeem this world from its dormant state, its state of virtual nonexistence, by endeavoring to experience through the camera.2
^e e Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974); Andrd* Bazin, What Is Cinema?,2 vols., trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); V. I. Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting, trans. Ivor Montagu (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1970); and Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc., 1973).
2Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 300.
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2
Andre Bazin observes that, while painters for two
thousand years have been trying to become more realistic by
creating the illusions of depth, perspective, texture, and
so on, the unique nature of film is that it starts with
reality as a given.^ Bazin and Kracauer believe that
film's basic power lies in its ability to capture reality
and that the filmmaker must firmly commit to, indeed
exploit, this power.
While no one would deny film's natural affinity with
reality, there are theorists, critics, and filmmakers who
are committed to an opposite view of film's power— finding
it in film's ability to manipulate reality so that it is
essentially altered or recreated. Susanne Langer, for one,
bases an entire theory of film on its dream qualities or
surreality. She states, "Cinema is 'like' dream in the
mode of its presentation. . . . "4 Rudolf Arnheim acknow
ledges the existence of film's partial illusion of reality,
but he theorizes that only by manipulating and altering the
facsimile, through form or technique, can film claim that
it is art.^
Whether or not one agrees with Arnheim and Langer, the
^Bazin, Vol. I, 12-13.
4Susanne Langer, Feeling and Form (New York: Scribner, 1953), 412.
^Arnheim 34-44.
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3
fact is that many filmmakers have indeed attempted to
dissociate film from reality. But the problem for the
filmmaker, given film's basic representational nature, is
how to achieve these surrealistic ends. More to the point,
can such ends be achieved not through narrative story or
content, but through the manipulation of cinematic tech
nique alone? This was the challenge of this dissertation:
to create a film that attempts consistently to dissociate
itself from the illusion of reality through technique alone
and to describe and analyze the critical choices employed
in the filmmaking process to achieve such dissociation.
Statement of the Problem
The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze
the creative strategies by which the filmmaker dissociated
film from the illusion of reality through the making of a
film and to record the filmmaking process.
Subproblems
1. To demonstrate on the basis of selected major
theoretical writings about the nature of film, film's
unique connection with reality.
2. To create a film (called 1A, 2A & 3A) that
attempts consistently to dissociate itself from the
illusion of reality through the manipulation of cinematic
technique alone.
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3. To record the steps, strategies and techniques
used to alter the film's relationship with reality.
4. To describe and analyze the critical choices
employed in the filmmaking process to dissociate the film
from the illusion of reality.
5. To adapt the findings of Subproblem 4 into a
glossary of cinematic techniques for use by future film
makers, educators, and responders.
Delimitations
1. The created film 1A, 2A & 3A is a film short,
thirty-eight minutes in length, not a feature film.
2. The created film achieves its dissociation from
reality solely through the use and manipulation of
cinematic techniques and not through the use of any
elements of subject matter, content, or plot that can be
termed unreal or surreal. In other words, in subject, the
film is a conventional narrative with a logical and
sequential plot. In this way, the filmmaker's strategies
would be isolated, examined, and finally interpreted as the
causes of the film's surreality.
3. The creative strategies and techniques recorded
and analyzed by the filmmaker are obviously restricted by
the form and content of this particular film.
4. The study of the creative process is limited to
the filmmaker's conscious creative strategies and choices
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5
employed in attempting to dissociate a film from reality
and does not encompass his unconscious thoughts and feel
ings or a search for the roots of these strategies and
choices in his personality or prior experiences.
Definitions
Cinematic technique refers to any aspect or element of the
cinema that is specific and intrinsic to the language,
grammar, or vocabulary of the film medium.6
Creative process refers to the creative artist's "process
of change, of development, of evolution, in the organiza
tion of subjective life."^ It involves both conscious and
unconscious processes, though in this study the emphasis
will be on the former.
Pre-shooting (synonymous with "pre-production") refers to
those activities of filmmaking which take place before
shooting, such as creation of the treatment and the
shooting script.8
Shooting (synonymous with "production") refers to the stage
of filmmaking which encompasses such activities as
6Adapted from Robert A. Armour, Film: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 22.
7Brewster Ghiselin, The Creative Process: A Symposium
(New York: The New American Library, Inc., 1952), 12.
8Adapted from Leo Trachtenberg, The Sponsor's Guide to Filmmaking (New York: Hopkinson and Blake, 1978).
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directing and photographing the film, recording the sound
track, and developing and work-printing the raw stock.8
Post-shooting (synonymous with "post-production") refers to
activities "involved in the completion of a film after it
has been shot and work-printed.1,18 This stage of film-
making concerns such activities as editing the image and
soundtrack, producing special effects, mixing the sound,
and printing the final film.11
Surreal(ity) refers to the use of cinematic devices to
render action as unreal, fantastic, and/or drearn-1ike.^
It is not to be confused with surrealist art or surrealism
as a movement "which attempts to express unconscious
reality and which as a result seems irrational and meaning
less,"1^ though the end result of this filmmaker's
manipulation of reality may not be unrelated to the
surrealist aim. The conscious creation of surreality
presupposes meanings above and beyond the literal meaning
or sign of the object or the thing represented and
^Trachtenberg.
18John Mercer, Glossary of Film Terms (Houston:
University Film Association, 1969), 64.
^Trachtenberg.
1 2 Adapted from the term "realism" as defined in
Mercer, 68.
1^Mercer 82.
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presupposes a truth beyond the mimetic.^
Need for the Study
This research was significant in two chief respects,
one specific to film study and one general to all creative
process studies.
As to the study's contribution to film:
1. Film educators, artists, and viewers could gain
insight from the knowledge of how a filmmaker chose his
strategies and arrived at the various techniques that would
achieve his goals. Such film educators as David Stewart,15
Robert Wagner,16 John Katz,17 and Stuart Hall16 all note
the importance of understanding the techniques and
strategies of film in order to make response to film a more
critical and sophisticated process. Stuart Hall, for
•^Personal communication, Professor Robert S. Berlin, April 27, 1983.
•^David Stewart, ed., Film Study in Higher Education (Washington: American Council on Education, 19 66).
16Robert W. Wagner, introduction, The Education of the
Film-maker: An International View (Paris: The UNESCO Press, 1975).
17John Stuart Katz, ed., Perspectives on the Study of Film (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971).
16Stuart Hall, "Liberal Studies," Studies in the Teaching of Film within Formal Education: Four CoursesDescribed, ed. Paddy Whannel and Peter Harcourt TLondon:The Educational Department, British Film Institute, 1968).
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8
example, notes the value to film responders of studying
these techniques:
. . - one has to give the student some basic familiarity with the techniques available to the director. The film is an independent art with a language of its own, and the student needs to know what is [sic] vocabulary is in order to be at all articulate about his response to it. . . .19
Edward Fischer, teacher, writer, and director, echoes Hall:
[Understanding filmmaking technique] . . . makes
students aware not only of the what but also the how of a production. One can never be an effective critic without this double awareness.20
Finally, educator George Stoney, a writer, director, and
producer of documentary films, notes how the creative
efforts of non-specialists can be enhanced by understanding
the creative process of filmmakers:
. . . the use of film . . . is now so widespread
that a surprisingly large number of people in other professions already find themselves in positions where they need to know how to work with filmmakers. Doctors, social workers, journalists, psychologists, they are all trying to use film now, and most are making a bad job of it because they don't know how to begin to think in film terms.^1
2. This study attempted to aid in the understanding
of the relationship between theory and practice. Although
film's relationship to reality has been extensively
19Hall 14.
20Edward Fischer in Stewart 37.
2^George Stoney in Stewart 95.
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9
explored in the realm of theory, this researcher sought to
examine the ways in which theory might translate into the
actual filmmaking practice. For instance, the filmmaker
asked whether the photographic process itself inherently
linked film to a realist aesthetic— a question pointedly
raised by Arnheim. Or did the formal elements of film
detract from its essential representationalism— as noted by
Bazin. These theoretical issues, among others, were
explored in the actual making of the film 1A, 2A & 3A and
in the analysis of the filmmaker's creative process. The
filmmaker examined how film's theoretical link with reality
actually affected the making of a movie.
Understanding this connection between theory and
practice could aid other filmmakers. Jerry Toeplitz,
Director of the Polish Film Academy, argues, for example,
that "without theory an art cannot advance, and artists are
tied to tradition.1,22 of more importance, knowledge of
theory and its connection with film practice would increase
appreciation and understanding of the medium for film
responders. It is in this regard that film theorist Bela
Balazs makes an impassioned plea for a curriculum of theory
for the non-specialist:
Until there is a chapter on film art in every textbook on the history of art and on aesthetics
22 .Cited by C. Young m Stewart 125.
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10
. . . and a place in the curriculum of our secondary schools, we shall not have firmly established in the consciousness of our generation this most important artistic development of our century.23
3. The product of the research was not only the
creation of a film but a glossary of techniques and
strategies that any filmmaker might employ in attempting to
dissociate a film from the illusion of reality. The
imitation of reality has always been natural to film. What
is less natural but still possible is the creation of
surreality. This glossary was intended to aid filmmakers
in the achievement and researchers in the investigation of
this end.
This study also contributed to further understanding
of the creative process in general:
1. It added to the body of literature documenting how
creative strategies and decisions shape the progress of a
work. Artists, theorists, and critics alike, from a
variety of art forms, have emphasized the importance of
documenting the creative process. Brewster Ghiselin in his
pioneering work on the creative process, provides a very
practical reason for studying it: " . . . insight into the
processes or invention can increase the efficiency of
^Bela Balazs in Katz 46.
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11
almost any developed and active intelligence.1,24 Rudolf
Arnheim notes the usefulness of studying a writer's
worksheets to gain insight into how a work evolves toward
its final form.25 In effect, the filmmaker/researcher's
"shot notebook," documenting his creative strategies from
pre-shooting to post-shooting, corresponds to a writer's
worksheets. (Samples of these sheets may be found in
Appendix C.) More than thirty years after it was stated,
Ernst Kris' call for documentation of the creative process
still remains largely unanswered: " . . . the history of
intuitive insight waits to be written."2® It is hoped that
this dissertation would help to build the available
knowledge for future researchers of the creative process.
2. Other creative artists from a variety of art forms
would be able to compare their own method of work with that
of the filmmaker/researcher. It was hoped that such
comparison would lead to greater insight into their own
work.
3. This research and the actual creation of a work of
24Ghiselin 12.
2^Rudolf Arnheim, "Psychological Notes on the Poetical Process," in Rudolf Arnheim, D. A. Stauffer, Karl Shapiro, and W. H. Auden, Poets at Work (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948).
2®Ernst Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York: Schocken Books, 1952), 23.
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12
art were of great benefit to the author's own development
as an artist. The analysis of and reflection on his own
creative process offered him an unusual opportunity to
enrich and expand his creative potential.
Methodology
The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze
the creative strategies by which the filmmaker dissociated
film from the illusion of reality through the making of a
film and the recording of the filmmaking process.
The methodology for each subproblem follows below:
Subproblem It To demonstrate on the basis of selected major theoretical writings about the nature of film, film's unique connections with reality.
This subproblem was organized in the following fashion:
1. The major theoretical writings on film were
identified from such major film texts as Richard Dyer
MacCann's Film: A Montage of Theories;2? Gerald Mast and
Marshall Cohn's Film Theory and Criticism;28 Louis
Giannetti's Understanding Movies;2^ James Monaco's How to
27Richard Dyer MacCann, ed., Film: A Montage of
Theories (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1966).
28Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
^^Louis Giannetti, Understanding Movies, 3rd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1982).
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13
Read a Film;3 >̂ Robert Eberwein's A Viewer1s Guide to Film
Theory and Criticism;31 Dudley Andrew's The Major Film
Theories; 32 an(j Andrew Tudor's Theories of Film. 33
2. The major theoretical writings that have been
published in English were examined by the researcher.
3. Of each major theoretical writing, such questions
as the following were asked:
a. How did each theorist define the essence of
cinema?
b. How did each film theorist view film's
connection with reality?
1) Did the theorist view film as essentially
an imitation or illusion of reality?
2) Did the theorist view film as recreating
or rearranging reality?
3) Did the theorist view film as an art form
that was independent of the real world?
onJUJames Monaco, How to Read a Film: The Art,
Technology, Language, History, and Theory of Film and Media {New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
3^-Robert T. Eberwein, A Viewer's Guide to Film Theory
and Criticism (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1979) .
33j. Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
33Andrew Tudor, Theories of Film (New York: Viking Press, 1974).
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c. How did each film theorist view surreality?
These questions were derived and adapted from key film
texts such as Giannetti's Understanding Movies and general
works on aesthetics such as Monroe Beardsley's Aesthetics;
Problems in Philosophy of Criticism. E a c h question was
answered for each major theoretical writing and presented
in narrative form (see Chapter 2).
Subproblem 2: To create a film (called 1A, 2A & 3A)that attempted consistently to dissociate itself from the illusion of reality through the manipulation of cinematic technique alone.
The creation of a film, like that of any other work of
art, involves a series of necessary and often mechanical
steps. The framework of the basic stages of filmmaking is
as follows:
1. Pre-shooting
a. Creating the treatment
b. Creating the shooting script
2. Shooting
a. Directing and photographing the film
b. Recording the soundtrack
c. Developing and work-printing the raw stock
3^Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (New-York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., 1959).
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15
3. Post-shooting
a. Editing the image and soundtrack
b. Producing special effects
c. Mixing the sound
d. Printing the final film
Subproblem 3; To record the steps, strategies, and techniques used to alter film's relationship with reality.
The filmmaker/researcher recorded his creative
decisions and procedures at three specific points during
the creation of the film, corresponding to the three
traditional, discrete stages of the filmmaking process:
pre-shooting, shooting, post-shooting (see Subproblem 2,
above). A working, ongoing "shot notebook" made such a
record possible and practical.
Pre-printed forms were made in order for the
researcher to annotate his decisions, strategies, and
intentions (see Appendix C). These forms, used for all
shots and every stage, were headed by the scene, shot(s),
stage of filmmaking, and the date in which that stage took
place. Space for notes was divided into the three
categories of cinematic techniques— image, movement, and
sound. Columns were reserved for the name of the
particular technique, comments about employment of that
technique, and the specific intentions that the filmmaker
had for employing it, i.e., the strategy.
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An easy reference system was arrived at by printing
the list of common cinematic techniques on the reverse side
of each form {see Appendix E). The techniques— divided
into the major categories of image, movement, and sound—
were derived by an analysis and synthesis of ten major film
textbooks: Ralph Stevenson and J. R. Debrix's The Cinema
as Art; R o y Huss and Norman Silverstein's The Film
Experience; Stanley J. Solomon's The Film I d e a ; 3*7 James
Monaco's How to Read a Film; Lewis Jacobs' The Movies as
og Medium; L o u i s Giannettx's Understanding Movies; Edward
Pincus' Guide to Filmmaking;39 Kenneth Roberts and Win
Sharpies' A Primer for Filmmaking; ^ and Leo Trachtenberg's
The Sponsor's Guide to Filmmaking.
The "shot notebook" was so arranged that each shot
35Ralph Stevenson and J. R. Debrix, The Cinema as Art,
2nd ed. (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1976).
Roy Huss and Norman Silverstein, The Film Experience: Elements of Motion Picture Art (New~York: Dell Publishing Company, 1968).
37stanley J- Solomon, The Film Idea (New York: Harcourt, Brace, JovanovichT Inc., I3T2T-
38Lewis Jacobs, The Movies As Medium (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1970).
^^Edward Pincus, Guide to Filmmaking (New York: New American Library, 1972T"!
^Kenneth H. Roberts and Win Sharpies, Jr., A Primer for Film-making: A Complete Guide to 16mm and 35mm Film Production (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-MerrilT Co., Inc., 1982) .
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17
was given a cover page with the script's description of it
(see Appendix B). Three separate pre-printed forms
followed, one for each stage of filmmaking.
At the pre-shooting stage, the filmmaker noted his
plans for the techniques, strategies, and intended effect—
essentially his reasons for choosing the specific tech
niques he proposed. For example, the filmmaker reviewed
the shooting script a number of times, deciding on new or
changing existing techniques for individual shots.
At the shooting stage, the filmmaker returned to the
"shot notebook" and the pre-printed form to record what he
actually did and why he made such modifications as he did.
He recorded the problems that developed in transforming his
ideas into the photography and recording of sound for the
film. This permitted him to compare the changes from one
stage to the next when later analyzed.
At the post-shooting stage of filmmaking— for example,
in the laboratory work— the researcher again returned to
the "shot notebook" and recorded new ideas that could be
employed as well as revisions of already existing
strategies.
Subproblem 4; To describe and analyze the critical choices employed in the filmmaking
process to dissociate the film from the illusion of reality.
The analysis of the creative process involved a
comparison of the techniques, strategies, decisions,
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18
intentions and the changes in these techniques, strategies,
decisions, and intentions at the various stages of the
filmmaking process: pre-shooting, shooting, post-shooting.
The "shot notebook" was the chief source and record in
comparing the filmmaker's process at the various stages of
filmmaking. Arranged as the notebook was in terms of the
cinematic techniques and the three stages of filmmaking,
the analysis was structured in terms of these techniques
and stages.
The analysis was divided into three steps: a
"vertical” analysis, a "horizontal" analysis, and synthesis.
1. The first step was a "vertical" analysis of each
and every shot— that is, an analysis which traced each
cinematic technique through the three stages of the
filmmaking process. The researcher chose to focus on
outstanding techniques from the three stages of any given
shot. He did this in the shot order of the finished film.
This chronological scanning permitted the researcher to
relate the various techniques of one shot to the techniques
of surrounding shots.
Significant cinematic techniques were addressed with
such questions as the following:
a. What was the specific cinematic technique or
group of techniques used by the filmmaker to
dissociate the film from reality and to
achieve an intended effect?
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19
b. How was the technique used by the filmmaker to
dissociate the film from the illusion of
reality?
c. What problems, if any, did the filmmaker
encounter in the use of the technique from the
pre-shooting to the post-shooting stages?
d. What changes/strategies in the use of the
technique were required to solve these
problems from the pre-shooting to the post
shooting stages?
e. What effect did the use of the technique have
upon other techniques in the given shot or
series of shots?
f. What did the filmmaker perceive as the
relative success or failure of the technique
in the fulfillment of his intentions?
Each of these questions was answered for every
important technique or group of techniques used to achieve
a specific effect in a shot.
While the vertical analysis was carried out for every
shot in the film and for every critical cinematic technique
employed, it is not completely presented in Chapter III due
to its repetitive and highly technical nature. Instead,
the researcher combined selected portions of the vertical
analysis with the horizontal analysis (see synthesis
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20
section below). It should be noted that the vertical
analysis was a necessary preliminary step to performing the
horizontal analysis (see below).
2. The second step of analysis was a "horizontal"
analysis which viewed each cinematic technique across a
number of shots rather than within a given shot in the
film. Every cinematic technique that was employed to
dissociate the film from the illusion of reality was listed
in alphabetical order. The researcher then noted the
numerous individual shots which employed each technique.
The horizontal analysis involved the search for patterns or
generalizations among the answers to the questions posed in
the vertical analysis (see above) for each repeating
technique. For example, if all instances of the use of
key lighting were examined, such similarities or patterns
as the following might have been found:
a. Similar problems in using the technique to
dissociate the film from reality
b. Similar strategies/creative decisions to
effect the desired dissociation
c. Similar effects upon other techniques and upon
the filmmaker's intentions.
3. The third step of analysis was a "synthesis" in
which the findings of the vertical analysis were merged
with those of the horizontal analysis. Each technique
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21
employed by the filmmaker was treated in the order of the
list of cinematic techniques in Appendix E. It will be
recalled that these techniques were grouped into three
major categories and into various subcategories. The three
major categories were as follows:
a. Image: Techniques which altered the quality
of the photography without relying on any
facet of motion to accomplish their effect.
b. Movement: Techniques which altered any motion
on the screen.
c. Sound: Techniques which altered any sonic
aspect of the film.
This system made possible the comparison of similar
techniques with one another.
It should be noted that the synthesis section trans
lated into the actual description and analysis presented in
narrative form in Chapter III. From the creative process
decisions of the vertical analysis and the patterns or
generalizations arrived at in horizontal analysis, the
researcher was able to focus on the more prominent and
salientdissociative strategies and effects. Moreover, it
was throughthis synthesis that the researcher arrived at
his six general effects discussed at the outset of
Chapter III.
The synthesis also provided the necessary preliminary
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22
information to fulfill the requirements of Subproblem 5
(see below).
Subproblem 5: To adapt the findings of Subproblem 4into a glossary of cinematic techniques for use by future filmmakers, educators, and responders.
Prom the specific findings of the synthesis section of
Subproblem 4, the researcher was able to reach general
findings as to how each technique could be employed to
dissociate any film from the illusion of reality.
Originally conceived as a handbook, the specific nature of
the findings was felt to resemble a glossary of dissocia
tive cinematic techniques rather than a working or "how to"
guide for filmmaking. Essentially, this task was one in
which all references to the particular film created for
this dissertation were eliminated. The conclusions reached
in this section must be interpreted with extreme caution
because a particular cinematic technique does not have a
discrete meaning or produce an intended effect in isolation
from a battery of other techniques. (See Conclusions,
p. 210.) Moreover, a given technique does not acquire
meaning or effect in isolation from a given film. Never
theless, certain generalizations and inferences could be
conjectured on the basis of the filmmaker/researcher's
experience in this particular study.
The cinematic techniques were organized in the
glossary in alphabetical order for easy referencing by the
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23
reader. Each technique included a brief definition, a
brief discussion of how it could be employed by a filmmaker
to dissociate a film from reality, and, where applicable,
its relationship to, and specifically dissociative effects
on, other techniques.
The glossary of cinematic techniques is presented in
Chapter IV.
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24
CHAPTER II
FILM AND THE ILLUSION OF REALITY: AN ANALYSIS OF SELECTED MAJOR
THEORISTS' VIEWS
Introduction
Film is not the only medium of communication dis
covered during the century spanning approximately 1830-
1930. The list of communicative media discovered during
this period is long, and includes the still photograph, the
record player, telephone, radio, telegraph, and the
lithograph. All these media, to use Marshall McLuhan's
term, are extensions of man's communicative nature and
attempt to replicate reality so that the respondent can
clearly understand what is being communicated. The chief
objective of these media was at least originally to render
reality in the most realistic way possible. It may, in
fact, be that the later of these media came into being
precisely because of their greater ability to reproduce
reality. For example, the telephone superseded the tele
graph's interpersonal function because it was more
realistic in its presentation of speech. Lithography was
an excellent medium for mass presentation of images, but
was superseded by other media which mass produced images
closer to our natural perception of reality.
Almost all film theorists acknowledge that film, too,
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25
attempts to reproduce reality and that film achieves this
end perhaps more precisely than any other art form.
However, to early theorists, this is less of an advantage
than a disadvantage. These theorists fight against the
insistent notion that film is a novel mechanical recording
device, and challenge the predominant view that cinema
tography is merely a scientifically based and engineered
invention that does nothing but form realistic-looking
pictures of the natural world. Such theorists, from Vachel
Lindsay to Christian Metz, stress the differences between
film as a mechanical and automatic visual recording device
and film as an art form in its own right. While film does
present a new astounding illusion of reality, it is also an
expressive medium, as creatively potent as any of the other
traditional arts but with an aesthetic all its own. Thus,
the majority of film theorists discussed in this chapter
present the differences between film and reality with the
purpose of elevating film to the status of an art form.
For practical purposes, the researcher will consider
such selected major English-language film theorists as
Lindsay and Metz chronologically. However, in the summary
to this chapter, he will treat these theorists more
generally, outlining their broad positions with respect to
various groupings and categories.
The American poet Vachel Lindsay wrote the first major
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26
work on the theory of film. He views cinema as a type of
aesthetic picture writing. Reality is only the raw
material used in the creation of these images.
Film depicts the real world; it forms a type of
"metaphoric window."^" But this viewing of the world is
artistically controlled to form an emotive effect. The
imitative "window-like" images of the medium are employed
to create a "metaphoric" impression. These abstractive or
metaphoric-like concepts are the basis of the viewer's
affective response. For example, Lindsay notes how, by
picking and choosing the particular images in the editing
process, the filmmaker raises his art from the simple
mimetic to the more complex arena of aesthetics.^
Film's ability to tell a story links it to the
narrative arts as well as to the graphic ones. This
implies that film uses a unique type of language-system.
Lindsay propounds that the " . . . invention of photography
is as great a step as was the beginning of picture writing
in the stone age."^
The analogy between film and language will become
familiar in this theoretical overview, and is later adopted
Rachel Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1970), 48.
^Lindsay 269.
■^Lindsay 199.
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27
by such theorists as Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, Peter
Wollen, and Christian Metz. Filin's connection to reality
implies the ability to comprehend cinema that is beyond the
ordinary perception of reality. According to Lindsay, film
does not merely create an accurate illusion of nature but
transforms it into an aesthetic expression independent of
the real world.
As Lindsay sees it, an audience, aware of these
independent aspects of the medium, discovers that film has
an aesthetic nature which establishes it as a new
expressive art form:
The more fastidious photoplay audience that uses the hieroglyphic hypothesis in analyzing the film
before it, will acquire a new tolerance and understanding of the avalanche of photoplay conceptions. . . .4
Let us hope that our new picture-alphabets can take on richness and significance, as time goes on, without losing their literal values.5
Lindsay sees film as an aesthetic medium that at times
can be compared to a pre-defined coding system. The
photoplay is art with all the richness and depth that is
inherent in any art form. The chosen images of a film form
a "vocabulary" or a window of metaphors which create
meaning and affect from the original images: It transforms
4Lindsay 209.
•’Lindsay 211.
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those images into a new cinematographic message.
The Photoplay; A Psychological Study by Hugo
Miinsterberg— a well-known psychologist and scholar— offers
a remarkably cohesive theory of film, especially consider
ing the time it was published, namely 1916.® Like Lindsay,
Munsterberg asserts that reality is only the raw material
with which the artist starts. From here, the connection
between reality and film lessens, for the filmmaker can
create endless new imaginative images and "adjust events"^
to suit his aesthetic ends. The viewer is brought into or
faced with a totally new world with a fantasy and reality
all its own. In short, the filmmaker can recreate and
rearrange reality with the freedom only found in the mind.
In the photoplay our imagination is projected on the screen. . . . In short, it can act as our
imagination acts. It has the mobility of our ideas which are not controlled by the physical necessity of outer events but by the psychological laws for the association of ideas. In our
mind past and future become intertwined with the present. The photoplay obeys the laws of the mind rather than those of the outer world.8
Film does have a link to reality, but this connection
is only the beginning of the artistic process:
®Hugo Munsterberg, The Film: A Psychological Study (published in 1916 as The photoplay: ^Psychological Study;
New York: Dover Pub1ications, Inc., 1970).
^Munsterberg 74.
^Munsterberg 41.
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A work of art may and must start from something which awakens in us the interests of reality and which contains traits of reality, and to that extent it cannot avoid some imitation. But it
becomes art just in so far as it overcomes reality, stops imitating and leaves the imitated reality behind it.^
Thus, Mtlnsterberg offers his view that film is much
more than a mechanical invention which creates facsimiles
of reality. In fact, Mfinsterberg questions just how real
that illusion is, demonstrating that film inherently alters
reality— even in its mechanical reproduction. The pivotal
arguments on which Mtlnsterberg rests his case are
psychological premises that were new to their day and are
still enveloped in controversy. They encompass how we
perceive movement, space, and temporality in the cinema.
The first psychological property, concerning movement,
and today called the "phi-phenomena," involves the way in
which we see the motion in motion pictures. Most believe
that we perceive moving images because of the phenomenon
of "persistence of vision." In other words, the motion
picture "fools" our eyes because they cannot see the
momentary blackness on the screen while one frame replaces
another. It is this defect of our visual perception which
creates the illusion of motion. In opposition to the
prevalent view, Munsterberg proposed an explanation that we
9MGnsterberg 62.
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30
are participating in a mental act rather than an optical
i l l u s i o n . a s Dudley Andrew states: "This single, basic
mental capability was enough to let Munsterberg conceive of
the entire cinematic process as a mental process. Cinema,
for him, is the art of the mind. . . . " H
The second psychological property that Munsterberg
addresses is the perception of space and depth. Obviously,
he observes that in reality we see three-dimensional space
and depth whereas in cinema, we look at a two-dimensional
image. But Munsterberg holds that when the viewer watches
a film he does perceive space and depth, although that
perception comes from different factors than the real
world:
. . . flatness is an objective part of technical physical arrangements, but not a feature of that
which we really see in the performance of the photoplay. We are there in the midst of a three- dimensional world. . . .!2
The viewer knows he is not seeing real depth but he
willingly suspends his disbelief in a two-dimensional
imitation in order to imagine a three-dimensional world.
The theorist pointedly observed that in film we "have
reality with all its true dimensions; and yet it keeps the
^Munsterberg 29-30.
Hj. Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction {New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 18.
l2MGnsterberg 22.
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fleeting, passing surface suggestion without true depth and fullness. . . ."13
Munsterberg identifies the third and last psychologi
cal property of cinema as involving an illusionary mental
process of filmic temporality manifested, for the most
part, in editing techniques. The ability of a viewer to
accept, understand, and be affected by a series of differ
ent moving images indicated to the theorist that indeed
some complex mental process is involved. Sometimes, shots
of seemingly discontinuous actions can be shown following
one another; yet, in a competently constructed film,
audiences will connect them and perceive meaning.
The objective world is molded by the interests of the mind. Events which are far distant from one
another so that we could not be physically
present at all of them at the same time are fusing in our field of vision, just as they are
brought together in our own consciousness.14
For Munsterberg, the imitation invites the recreation
of the illusion. He viewed the possibility of creating a
more technically realistic cinema with disapproval: "The
limitations of an art are in reality its strength and to
overstep its boundaries [i.e., create greater realism]
13Mlinsterberg 24.
•^Munsterberg 46.
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. . . we came to understand that the basic strength of cinema lies in montage, because with montage
it becomes possible both to break down and to reconstruct, and ultimately to remake the
material.18
Striving for an acceptable analogy, Kuleshov, like
Lindsay, equates the various juxtapositions of different
shots to the organization of language:
The shot is a sign, a letter for montage. Anychange from a normal point of view ought to beused by the director with an awareness of the
work of the shot as a sign.19
It must be noted, however, that Kuleshov thinks that any
type of cinematic language more closely resembles picture-
writing such as the Chinese ideogram than alphabetic
writing.
Kuleshov sees this manipulation or recreation of the
original imitative shots as the primary aesthetic of film.
He terms this process "creative geography."20 when two or
moreshots are edited together, " . . . the viewer himself
will complete the sequence and see that which is suggested
to him by montage. "2^
But this illusion of reality does reflect the real
world; film is not independent of its basis in nature.
Kuleshov 52.
I®Kuleshov 80.
2®Kuleshov 5.
2lKuleshov 54.
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Whereas Lindsay and Munsterberg look upon film as beginning
with an imitative illusion and transforming it into an
independently expressive aesthetic illusion, Kuleshov sees
film's link with reality as constant. Film, no matter how
manipulated or altered, must retain its connection to
reality, for this connection is one of its primary
attributes or elements:
The problem of art is to reflect reality, to
illuminate this reality with a particular idea, to prove something; . . . and one knows how to goabout it, that is, how to organize the materialof the art form.22
The theorist feels that film accomplishes this aesthetic
goal more completely than any other art form, especially by
way of its reorganization of reality through editing.
Vsevold Illarionovich Pudovkin reaches substantive
conclusions as to film's connection to reality. A student
of Lev Kuleshov, his theoretical stance resembles that of
his teacher. Pudovkin views editing or montage as the
essence of cinematic expression.
Pudovkin, like Kuleshov, begins by viewing film's "raw
material" as reality or, more specifically, photographed
reality. The filmmaker's task is to subjectivize that
imitation for his own artistic purpose. The author states
that "to show something as everyone sees it is to have
22Kuleshov 188.
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accomplished nothing."23 Pudovkin stresses cinema's
dissimilarity to the real world: "Between the natural
event and its appearance upon the screen, there is a marked
difference. It is exactly this difference that makes the
film an art.1,24
The illusion becomes different from its origin through
the process of editing, in order to form an expressive
impression. For example, the filmmaker selects or edits
particular views of reality:
By elimination of the points of interval the director endows the spectator with the energy preserved, he charges him, and thus the appearance assembled from a series of significant details is stronger in force of expression from the screen than is the appearance in a c t u a l i t y . 25
Creating the illusion begins before the editing stage.
The camera uses techniques which alter the imitation.
Pudovkin notes how certain techniques fundamentally change
even the shot's illusion of reality. For example, space is
altered by the lens:
[The camera] . . . view-angle is equal roughly to 45 degrees and, here already the director begins
23vsevold Illarionovich Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting, trans. Ivor Montagu (New York: Grove Press,Inc., 1970f, 91.
24pudovkin 86.
25pudovkin 94.
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36
to leave behind the normal apprehension of realspace.26
The angle in which the lens is placed before the subject
further manipulates reality in order to create meaning:
. . . set-up determines the expressiveness of the future image. . . . The selection of the camera set-up can intensify the expression of the image shot in many directions.27
Time can also be altered in the camera's recording
process. The speed of the camera forms new aesthetic
effects:
It is necessary to be able to exploit every possible speed of the camera, from the very highest, yielding on the screen exceptional slowness of movement, to the very least, resulting . . . in an incredible swiftness. Sometimes a very slight . . . walk of a human
being endows it with a weight and significance that could never be rendered by acting.28
Images, once photographed, are ready to be edited.
Here, just as with Kuleshov, Pudovkin sees that montage
allows for creative alteration that makes film an art.
. . . editing is the creative force of filmic reality, and . . . nature provides only the raw
material with which it works. That, precisely, is the relationship between reality and the film.29
The different shots of reality, already made
^Pudovkin 149.
2^Pudovkin 153-154.
2®Pudovkin 179.
29pudovkin 26.
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significant through camera techniques, now exist as a
"dissection into parts or e l e m e n t s . P u d o v k i n believes
that here, in the assemblage, those shots will cease all
relation to the mimetic role they once had with reality.
Like language, the parts form a new whole that can take on
entirely new meanings:
Just as in living speech, so, one may say, in editing: there is a word— the piece of exposed film, the image; a phrase— the combination of these pieces. Only by his editing methods can one judge a director's individuality. Just as each writer has his own individual style, so each film director has his own individual method of representation.31
Editing alone expressively alters both the spatial and
temporal aspects of the original imitative representation.-*2
Writing in the 1920's, Pudovkin was also aware of a
new dimension of cinema, namely sound. The addition of
sound— and more specifically, synchronous sound— would seem
to add to the realism of film. But Pudovkin argues that
sound can be recreated and altered to create aesthetic
effect unlike normal apprehension.
. . . sound is . . . much more significant than a slavish imitation of naturalism on these lines; the first function of sound is to augment the
potential expressiveness of the film's content.3*
3®Pudovkin 94.
-**-Pudovkin 100.
32Pudovkin 87-88.
3 3Pudovkin 183-184.
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from Kuleshov's emphasis.
Film captures the illusion of reality in the shot;
editing is a primary means of expressively altering or
recreating that imitative aspect:
Primo: photo-fragments of nature are recorded;Secundo: these fragments are combined in various
ways. Thus, the shot (or frame), and thus, montage.36
From this established theoretical stance, Eisenstein
is able to expand the notion of montage into the shot
within itself:
Conflict within the shot is potential montage, in the development of its intensity shattering the quadrilateral cage of the shot and exploding its conflict into montage impulses between the
montage pieces. As, in a zigzag of mimicry, the mise-en-sc&ne splashes out into a spatial zigzag with the same shattering.37
Eisenstein accepts the inherent imitation in photo
graphed reality. The shot certainly has a connection to
the real world, but this connection can be altered.
Whereas Kuleshov and Pudovkin see the individually
photographed shot as concretely linked to natural reality
not to be distorted or dissociated, Eisenstein sees it as a
transformable illusion.
Close-ups, moving camera shots, absolute dimensional variation of figures and objects on
36sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt,' Brace and World,Inc., 1949), 3.
37Eisenstein, Film Form, 38.
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the screen, and the other elements concerned with montage, are far more fundamentally bound up with
the expressive means of cinema and cinema perception than is involved in the task of merely facilitating the view of a face, or the "gettingover of a thought." . . .38
Although the cinematic illusion to some extent imitates
reality, it is expressive according to Eisenstein. The
creative freedom that is accepted in the editing, a given
among the Russian School, must be realized in the very
composition of the shot. Thus, Eisenstein expands the
principle of montage into the actual construction of the
photograph.
Film, to Eisenstein, has an aesthetic expression
unique among the arts: Cinema has "its own language,
its own speech, its own vocabulary, its own imagery. . . .
The new period of cinema attacks the question from within—
along the line of the methodology of purely cinematographic
expressiveness."^
Every aspect of film is expressive artistically. For
example, the role of the actor is malleable and, in its
effect, is metaphorically akin to montage.
We see this [acting] as not in the least different in principle from the montage process
in film: here is the same sharp concretizationof the theme being made perceptible through
38sergei Eisenstein, Film Essays and a Lecture, trans. Jay Leyda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 65.
39 Eisenstein, Film Essays and a Lecture, 33.
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determining details, the resulting effect of the juxtaposition of the details being the evocation
of the feeling itself.40
In photography, expressiveness develops the aesthetic
effect desired by the director. Eisenstein believed that
the camera, far from being a mechanically reproductive
machine, was a creative instrument.
This imagist treatment of representations is the most important task the cameraman has; in fulfilling it, he permeates all the minutest
details of the plastic solution of the film with the theme and his attitude to the theme.41
The introduction of color film seems to move toward greater
cinematic realism. But instead of welcoming the intro
duction of color film as increasing and almost insuring the
realistic illusion (as do his mimetic-oriented contempor
aries) , Eisenstein views color's expressive potential:
We want this new [color] screen to show us colours in organic unity with the image and theme, the content and the drama, the action and the music. Together with these, colour will be a
potent means of film impressiveness and film idiom.42
The physical editing of expressive shots creates new
aesthetic possibilities.
4®Sergei Eisenstein, The Film Sense, trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1975), 44.
4^Sergei Eisenstein, Notes of a Film Director, trans. X. Danko, ed. R. Yurenez (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1970), 148.
42Eisenstein, Notes of a Film Director, 118-119.
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. . . the juxtaposition of two separate shots by splicing them together resembles not so much a simple sum of one shot plus another shot— as it does a creation.43
Sound was a new technological development that seemed to
give greater realism to the cinema, but Eisenstein sees it
as a much more expressive element.
. . . co-ordination is far beyond that external synchronization that matches the boot with its creaking— we are speaking of a "hidden" inner synchronization in which the plastic and tonal elements will find complete f u s i o n . 44
Music interested Eisenstein more than any other acoustical
element, and he immersed himself in the formal properties
that could weld music to the image:
In matching music with the sequence, this general sensation is a decisive factor, for it is directly linked with the imagery perception of the music as well as of the pictures. This requires constant corrections and adjustments of the individual features to preserve the important general effect.45
It is clear that through every aspect and element of
cinema, there is enormous opportunity to alter, recreate,
and permeate the medium with expressivity. The illusion
created is aesthetically independent of the natural world.
The particular film an artist is working on dictates how
close the illusion of reality becomes:
43Eisenstein, The Film Sense, 7.
44Eisenstein, The Film Sense, 82.
45Eisenstein, The Film Sense, 78.
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The results fluctuate from exact naturalistic combinations of visual, interrelated experiences to complete alterations, arrangements unforeseen
by nature, and even to abstract formalism, with remnants of reality.46
To Eisenstein, then, film's link with reality is only
that it depends on the photographic origin of its images.
Cinema uses these facsimiles, but its art goes well beyond
them. Concepts, not physical reality, are the products of
film; film's mode of presentation serves only this end.
Whereas Eisenstein accepts realism's expressive
potential, Rudolf Arnheim ultimately denies realism's
import in the cinema. Arnheim, a German-born American
writing from the 19 30's, comes to the cinema from
psychology, as did Hugo Miinsterberg.
Arnheim stresses that film is the antithesis of a
gadget that records reality:
. . . the camera as an automatic recording machine must be made to realize that even in the simplest photographic reproduction of a perfectly simple object, a feeling for its nature is required _
which is quite beyond any mechanical operation.7
He sets out to establish that, far from being a "carbon
copy" of the natural world, film is intrinsically
unrealistic. While Arnheim acknowledges that film
originated as a mechanically representative instrument, he
4^Eisenstein, Film Form, 3-4.
47Rudolf Arnheim, Film As Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 11.
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seeks to expose the defects of the realistic illusion. He
asserts that these defects or unrealistic aspects of the
medium are what inevitably make film into an art. Whereas
Eisenstein accepts that film does have an expressive
relation to reality, Arnheim seeks to emphasize the ways in
which film is different from its mimetic relation to the
natural world. This stand places Arnheim as perhaps the
cinema's strongest proponent of the abstractive or surreal
film. For instance, he argues that:
The effect of film is neither absolutely two- dimensional nor absolutely three-dimensional, but something between. . . . The obliteration of the three-dimensional impression has as a second result a strong accentuation of perspective overlapping. . . . The result of all this is that sizes and shapes do not appear on the screen in their true proportions but distorted in
perspective.48
Another unreal element of film is the image, which, at that
time, was predominantly black and white:
. . . not only has a multicolored world been trans muted into a black-and-white world, but in the process all color values have changed their relations to one another: similarities presentthemselves which do not exist in the natural
world; things have the same color which in reality stand either in no direct color connection at all with each other or quite a different o n e . 4 9
For example, a person's skin can be the same shade of gray
^®Arnheim 12-14.
^^Arnheim 15.
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as the sky, or black rocks may have the same shade as a
brown tree trunk.
Arnheim's position enables him to accept every
distortion of the imitative photograph as potentially
fruitful artistic ground. Such techniques as camera speed
and motion,50 editing,51 lighting,52 and the frame itself53
have the ability to transform the mechanical representation
into a purely artistic illusion.If, Arnheim reasons, film is still considered realis
tic in spite of the multitude of facts contrary to this
notion, there must be some phenomenological explanation.
Arnheim rests his theoretical foundations on a precept
called "Partial Illusion."54
The theorist holds the belief that vision itself does
not produce a recording of reality but rather the sensory
raw material:
This discovery of the gestalt school fitted the notion that the work of art, too, is not simply an imitation or selective duplication of reality
but a translation of observed characteristics into the forms of a given medium.55
50Arnheim 181.
51Arnheim 132-133.
52Arnheim 15-16.
53Arnheim 16-18.
^Arnheim 15.
55Arnheim 3.
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Thus we can perceive objects and events [on film] as living and at the same time imaginary, as real
objects and as simple patterns of light on the projection screen; and it is this fact that makes film art possible.56
The image is only referentially related to the natural
world— the image being a partial illusion. Arnheim
believes that the unreal portion of the Partial Illusion is
the area of creative artistry.
Unlike the realists, Arnheim looked upon film's
mimesis as effectively weak enough to allow it to be
artistically manipulated: for example, unrealistic
perspective can easily be further altered; a subject's
movement through a quasi-real space can be manipulated
through camera speed and yet not seem absurd, etc. These
techniques or formal properties permit the partial illusion
to supersede the mimetic.
. . . the possibility of utilizing the differences between film and real life for the purpose of making formally significant images was realized. What had formerly been ignored or simply accepted was now intelligently developed, displayed, and made into a tool [i.e., through technique] to serve the desire for artistic creation. The object as such was no longer the first consideration. Its place in importance was taken by the
pictorial representation of its properties, the making apparent of an inherent idea, and so
forth.57
It was the partial nature of the cinematic image— its
56Arnheim 29.
57Arnheim 42.
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preexistent distortion— which gave free rein to the film
maker to employ technique to further dissociate the medium
from reality. The defects of the filmic illusion (two-
dimensionalism, lighting, framing, etc.) that Arnheim had
established were the very facets that made film an art form.
The creative power of the artist can only come into play where reality and the medium of representation do not c o i n c i d e . 58
The manipulation and formal alteration of film
relegates its aesthetic message to be independent of the
natural world. Arnheim, more than any other theorist,
emphasizes that independence. In later writing, Arnheim
predicted a total detachment from the photographic replica
tion. His radical stance regarding reality's role in this
type of film is apparent:
I would venture to predict that the film will be able to reach the heights of the other arts only
when it frees itself from the bonds of photographic reproduction and becomes a pure work of
man, namely, as animated cartoon or painting.59
According to Arnheim, the nature of film is clearly
surreal. The creation of meaning, by methods other than
through film's mimetic nature, holds for film its only
avenue of an independent aesthetic. Its eventual aim must
be to completely detach itself from this imitation and
58Arnheim 109-110.
59Arnheim 213.
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become autonomous in its aesthetic effect.
Bela Balazs, writing in Paris during the 1930's and
40's, lived in an intellectual milieu that, more or less,
had already accepted film as the Seventh Art; the battle
had been fought. But against all the theoretical proof
that film communicated its message through the non-mimetic
aspects of its image, there remained one paramount fact:
film creates the fullest impression of the natural world.
Rather than consistently deny this imitative aspect of the
medium, Balazs accepted it. To deny film's mimetic nature
and fight against photographic illusion was to weaken the
art form:
When a picture is no longer a copy of something and the image no longer evokes in us a reference to some object independent of it, which it represents and which might just as well have been
represented in some other way— if thus the picture appears to have an autonomous existence, a final reality, to be as it were self-contained, then it acquires that grotesquely immaterial lightness which makes even the most terrible happenings seem entirely harmless.60
The dichotomy between stylization and naturalness
presents Balazs with an ongoing problem of recognizing two
antithetical ends. Instead of concentrating on these two
polarities as divisive to the aesthetic of film, he
approaches them as being confluent to one another. But if
®®Bela Balazs, Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art, trans. Edith Bone (New York: Dover Pub1ications, Inc., 1970), 189.
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technique or stylization interferes with the reproductive
qualities of the art form, the aesthetic ramifications are
profoundly negative.
Balazs sees film's primary artistic attribute as
allowing the spectator to perceive reality cinematograph-
ically, and hence, as offering the viewer a new aesthetic
perception of reality. The theoretical emphasis is not,
like the Russians' view, to create a new and different
world— no matter how realistic or expressive; rather,
Balazs asserts that we are looking at our actual world in a
new and different manner. Even Kuleshov, the least
expressively oriented of the Russians, looked at film's
realism as a means of producing conceptual aesthetic
effects. Balazs, on the other hand, welcomes cinema as an
intrinsically reflective art form that makes possible a
unique phenomenological view of the natural world.
All other prior theorists treated photographic
replication as a more tangible and manipulable element of
film. Balazs, for the first time in film theory, begins to
touch upon a realist theoretical perspective that more
forcefully realizes film's objective, purely mechanical
reproductive tendencies as essential to the filmic
aesthetic. This new perception of reality's import in film
continues throughout the next thirty years and leads
Siegfried Kracauer to the most extreme realistic stance of
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all: the film aesthetic as almost completely linked to
mechanized representation, and this process is the artistic
heart of the medium. This aesthetic perception is affected
by two factors. First, the medium changes the way the
viewer experiences reality. A photograph of a boat differs
from actually seeing the boat; the cinema demands a new
condition of attendance. This is what Balazs calls
"physiognomies" by which he means that we are looking at
the face of man on the screen. Second, technique or
stylization contributes to this aesthetic perception.
Stylization affects the way the spectator experiences
cinematic reality.
Every technique has a particular manner of altering
cinematic reality. But unlike the surrealists, Balazs felt
that technique should enhance, not detract from that
illusion. Although stylization can alter or recreate
film's imitation of the real world, realism must permeate
every element of the work.
Balazs stresses, though, that the physiognomies of
objects and of the mise-en-scene are subordinate to the
physiognomy of the actor— of man himself; it is the face of
man that intrigues Balazs most. This cinematographic
"capturing" brings about a new and different relationship
between film and the viewer. The spectator is psychologi
cally able to "identify" with the characters on the screen:
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In the cinema the camera carries the spectator into the film picture itself. We are seeing
e