We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
CINEMATICS 31
the modern age being a dynamic one, its logical medium of expression should be the motion picture.
Motion is energy visualized, therefore motion is a symbol of life itself. Immobility is death. And yet, there is no immobility — within every atom the infinitesimal electrons keep on whirling.
Our world is infinitely rich in color, form, sound and motion. All, except the last have been used by man artistically to express his thoughts and feelings. Although the oldest of arts — dance — is an art of motions, it is very limited in its scope. It uses only the movements of the human body and of drapery. Now the cinema offers possibilities, almost unlimited, of creating symphonies of visual movement, by using a tremendous range of motions from the violent sweep of a tornado to the delicate drooping of an eyelid.
IV.
TO TREAT the subject from a practical angle without actual demonstration is rather difficult, especially for the present writer who is not a writer but a man used to thinking visually. However, we shall attempt to make a few observations.
The majority of the motion picture public seems to prefer pictures of action to those of mental subtleties. This is natural and perhaps closer to truth and the logic of the medium; for action is motion in a broader sense. But, for purposes of cinematography, the meaning of the word "motion" should be limited to only a certain type and certain views of actions. There are objects and persons which "photograph well", and there are motions which "cinematograph well", that is — expressively. As there is in music a difference between tone and noise, there is in motion pictures a difference between any kind of movement and — shall we say — cine-motion.
In almost every motion picture are to be found moments in which there occur some particular movements imbued with such intense life and power that they seem to carry us along, regardless of the meaning and the specific point of the story. What is there obtained perhaps accidentally should be sought, studied and used consciously.
The insistent emphasis on motion in the foregoing discussion may have created in some minds the wrong impression that the perfect picture would be the one in which the camera constantly perambulates and the actors wildly gesticulate or perform a sort of breathless ballet. Nothing of the sort. We must remember that an essential element of rhythm is — pause. Also, cinematically speaking, motion is not only actual movement but also certain types of visual changes, namely: lap-dissolves, fades, changes of focus, changes in iris, rhythmical cutting, etc. The last mentioned is one of the most important elements of expressive cinematography. A sequence of scenes — even static in themselves — cut in definite lengths in such a manner that we rhythmically feel each jump from one scene to another, has sometimes the capacity of creating a feeling of intense vitality.
There are two opposite methods of being expressive: by using a strict economy of means or by piling up a wealth of impressions. Some scenes demand a simplicity and directness of style, while some require an abundance of images. Into the latter method belong the