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CINEMATICS
Some Principles Underlying Effective Cinematography
Slavko Vorkapich
CINEMATOGRAPHY, considered as a medium of expression, is comparatively new. It is still experimenting and groping in its search for self-knowledge, in its attempts to find its own way of telling expressively what it seeks to convey. It is hybrid insofar as it imitates or borrows from literature, stage, painting and music; it is unclear and undecided as to its proper style and form.
If, in the old Socratic manner, we ask ourselves a few questions and try to answer them, we may find a clue leading to the solution of the problem.
What fundamental means of expression do we find in the art of painting? — Lines and colors. — And in sculpture? — Forms, volumes. — In music? — Tones. — That is clear. But how does cinematography express itself? — In pictures. — So does painting and photography. Evidently the answer is not satisfactory. So again we ask: What kind of pictures? — Motion pictures. — There, in that one word — motion — we have perhaps our clue.
The present article is an attempt to investigate in that direction and to see whether the proper language of cinematography might not be the language of motions.
We shall approach the subject, in a summary way of course, from three different angles: psychological, aesthetic and practical.
II.
AS SOON as the child begins to see, its attention is attracted by anything that moves. There must be something interesting in those vague changes of light and shade and those indistinct shapes that float across the baby's field of vision. Things are a little out of focus perhaps, nevertheless they are exciting because they — move.
For a while the child is only a passive spectator; it watches with curiosity whatever appears on its limited screen, but soon it demands to take active part in the general movement of life. You have to pick it up and carry it around.
Now the panorama swiftly changes; walls, windows and the objects in the room merrily pursue each other around for the entertainment of the little creature. The pleasure of visual change is enhanced by the travel through space of the child's own body. The instant you stop the movement, the baby voices an energetic protest. Obviously there is a keen delight in motion both visual and bodily. The latter is perhaps some pleasant physiological sensation caused by the displacement of the body's center of gravity. But if this is done
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