20 Camera Shot for 6 Seconds of Film
Remarks on cinema of the 90s. Excerpt from the book 'Movies of the 90s', by Jürgen Müller
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A black screen and renewed gunfire. The FBI agent shoots with her eyes shut. Another gunshot. Again the audience sees Clarice shooting. A black screen. Bill has been hit a second time. A black screen. The murderer is hit again, and we see the look of agony on his face. A black screen. One shot has hit a window blind, loosening it. The daylight penetrating the cellar reveals a steel helmet and an American flag. The camera then cuts back to the cellar and there, lying on the floor, we see the fatally wounded murderer. With his night-vision device covering his eyes, he looks like a dead insect.
Cinema, television and video
In the cinema, our perception of this sequence is reduced to the knowledge that, after the FBI agent has fired her shots, the murderer lies dead on the floor. It is only in the last few images of this sequence that we return to daylight and viewing at normal speed, whereas what we have just witnessed is for the most part below the perception threshold. It is not until Clarice loads her weapon that it becomes clear what we must have seen. She has actually used up all her ammunition of six cartridges. Although we haven't been able to perceive these six shots consciously, the final images make it possible to come to this conclusion. While the shots are being exchanged, the camera angle changes constantly; we see things alternately through the eyes of the murderer and of the FBI agent. The sequence described here is barely noticeable in the cinema. To see it at all, you really need to be able to break the picture sequence down into stills using a video recorder.
Clearly, as a means of reproducing scenes, the video recorder has an aesthetic potential comparable to that of a record player or CD player. It allows you to gain expert knowledge, whether you collect the films of a particular director or actor, or are interested in a particular genre.
With regard to video, Martin Scorsese is thoroughly optimistic, seeing in this technology the opportunity for engendering a new enthusiasm for the cinema. In a short article called "The Second Screen", he writes of the new opportunities that the video recorder has opened up. There is now no problem showing films that are hardly known anymore but deserve to be studied, and it is finally possible to compare film scenes directly. He also welcomes the wider distribution it has brought for some of his own films, which now reach a larger audience through video.
The video recorder also enables formal and aesthetic analysis by creating stills. You can study the content and composition of a shot or look at a film sequence in the same way as you can listen again and again to a virtuoso performance of a passage of music, just for the sheer pleasure of it.
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
A black screen and renewed gunfire. The FBI agent shoots with her eyes shut. Another gunshot. Again the audience sees Clarice shooting. A black screen. Bill has been hit a second time. A black screen. The murderer is hit again, and we see the look of agony on his face. A black screen. One shot has hit a window blind, loosening it. The daylight penetrating the cellar reveals a steel helmet and an American flag. The camera then cuts back to the cellar and there, lying on the floor, we see the fatally wounded murderer. With his night-vision device covering his eyes, he looks like a dead insect.
Cinema, television and video
In the cinema, our perception of this sequence is reduced to the knowledge that, after the FBI agent has fired her shots, the murderer lies dead on the floor. It is only in the last few images of this sequence that we return to daylight and viewing at normal speed, whereas what we have just witnessed is for the most part below the perception threshold. It is not until Clarice loads her weapon that it becomes clear what we must have seen. She has actually used up all her ammunition of six cartridges. Although we haven't been able to perceive these six shots consciously, the final images make it possible to come to this conclusion. While the shots are being exchanged, the camera angle changes constantly; we see things alternately through the eyes of the murderer and of the FBI agent. The sequence described here is barely noticeable in the cinema. To see it at all, you really need to be able to break the picture sequence down into stills using a video recorder.
Clearly, as a means of reproducing scenes, the video recorder has an aesthetic potential comparable to that of a record player or CD player. It allows you to gain expert knowledge, whether you collect the films of a particular director or actor, or are interested in a particular genre.
With regard to video, Martin Scorsese is thoroughly optimistic, seeing in this technology the opportunity for engendering a new enthusiasm for the cinema. In a short article called "The Second Screen", he writes of the new opportunities that the video recorder has opened up. There is now no problem showing films that are hardly known anymore but deserve to be studied, and it is finally possible to compare film scenes directly. He also welcomes the wider distribution it has brought for some of his own films, which now reach a larger audience through video.
The video recorder also enables formal and aesthetic analysis by creating stills. You can study the content and composition of a shot or look at a film sequence in the same way as you can listen again and again to a virtuoso performance of a passage of music, just for the sheer pleasure of it.
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
