Film technique and film acting : the cinema writings of V. I. Pudovkin (1954)

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74 PUDOVKIN from the hurly-burly flow of life. But, in order to produce an edited representation of a given action, in order to take some piece of reality not specially arranged by him in editable form, the director must none the less, in one way or another, subordinate this action to his will. Even in the shooting of this demonstration we had, if we wished to render as vivid as possible a scenic representation of it, to insinuate ourselves with the camera into the crowd itself and to get specially selected, typical persons to walk past the lens just for the purpose of being taken, thus arbitrarily interfering with the natural course of events in order to make them serve for subsequent filmic representation.35 If we use a more complex example we shall see even more clearly that in order to shoot and filmically represent any given action we must subject it to our control — that is, it must be possible for us to bring it to a standstill, to repeat it several times, each time shooting a new detail, and so forth. Suppose we wish editably to shoot the take-off of an aeroplane. For its filmic representation we select the following elements : i. The pilot seats himself at the controls. 2. The hand of the pilot makes contact. 3. The mechanic swings the propeller. 4. The aeroplane rolls towards the camera. 5. The take-off itself shot from another position so that the aeroplane travels away from the camera as it leaves the ground.