The Shot

CERTAIN REITERATIONS

The basic  building block of Cinematic Architecture,  what we generally call , ‘the shot’… is a vulnerable entity. It must always have a weakness, a deficiency so that the preceding and the succeeding shots can integrate with it and support each other. Only then they will not be ‘like a castle made out of playing cards’  but rather like those interlocking pavement tiles that we all have walked over in high places, or they can sit together like pieces of a ‘jig-saw puzzle’ snugly fitting into each other’s deficiencies, I’d like to call.

A motion picture shot can easily ‘break down’ under stress;  is unlike a ‘poster’ ~  completely packed & exploding with powerful graphic, compositional, imagist & linguistic punch that is un-avoidable even if it crosses the edge of your peripheral vision at 120 kmph on a high or a free-way.  All it’s meaning comes to you in a flash. .. or a painting… or a photograph… all static, stand alone  entities saturated by semiotic nuts & bolts . 

Remember, motion picture shot  is merely a fraction of  mise-en-scene, a scene that is Iconic, that which works in five dimensions , three volumetric and two of time & sound. It is by no means merely a vehicle of ‘dialogue’ written by a writer following a script which in turn is following a story, which is told through  ‘good / ill fortunes’ of  main actors mouthing ‘lines’, ( actors: human beings representing other human beings ) ;  and which will then be ‘dubbed’ by other professional ‘voices’ inside a studio to lend it ‘the ring of truth’…which will be followed / swallowed by viewers tranquillized into obesity. Whereas there is no truth in this artifact constructed entirely of falsehoods. So much falsehood, so many lies have been perpetuated by motion pictures , both documentary as well feature types that if you & I can speak through this medium even an iota of truth …  (as we sincerely perceive it, at the moment of filming)  ;  we ought to be quite satisfied.

I’d like to urge you, dear reader, to pick up a motion picture camera and just look at it. It is actually an optical device very much like a microscope, a telescope or a periscope with a recorder attached. Looking at your camera with it’s synchronous sound recording capabilities, co-axial, radio, gun -  microphones one wonders as to what is the ‘industry’ laboring about? What are they looking at ‘carefully’ & what are they listening to ‘carefully’? what are they ‘articulating’ all that they look at and listen to, so carefully, for?

Rahatavalokit

Caca892