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6.5 Porter’s composition puts two heads high on frame 6.6 Guided scanning in The Skyscrapers: As in the tableft and two low on frame right; the sloping white mass leau of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a central action is counter
of Eva’s bedclothes connects them (Uncle Tom’s Cabin; weighted by vectors converging on an off-center one.
or, Slavery Days, 1903).
But lateral staging poses a problem of visual balance. Only one character can stand at frame center. In spreading characters out, the filmmaker will need to highlight important elements lying outside the geometrical center of the format. Early directors experimented with cues that would steer attention across the figures. They soon discovered that movement, glances, compositional trajectories, sustained poses, and other elements could guide the scanning of the shot. In Porter’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edison, 1903), the death of Little Eva presents a strongly centered movement—the angel lifting her soul to heaven— but the shot design encourages us also to register the characters mourning on frame right (Fig. 6.5). When the foreman’s little girl denounces Dago Pete in The Skyscrapers of New York (Biograph, 1906), a string of accusing looks follows her centrally placed figure, pointing to him at the left side of the frame (Fig. 6.6).
The contrast between such comparatively “flat” interiors and “deep” action in exteriors is one of the most striking features of early cinema. Since walls were framed in straight-on views, interior staging tended to be very planimetric (Fig. 6.4). Characters entered from left or right and arranged themselves in friezelike patterns. By contrast, the daylight available from open-air shooting, combined with the relatively sharp lenses in general use, enabled directors to film exteriors in greater depth.28 Directors accordingly staged outdoor action in ways that WoOlfflin calls “recessional.”29 Here at least some planes cut obliquely into the picture plane. Now the background is no longer a perpendicular surface, and the characters stand or move along diagonals. Striking examples of recessional staging can be found in the chase films that became internationally popular around 1904. Typically the pursuit traces a diagonal path from the background, passing through frame center to leave the frame in the right or left foreground.30 Moreover, buildings, streets, walls, and other architectural features create angu
ON STAGING IN DEPTH
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