As soon as we give any interest to this formal aspect of the
presentation, we must recognize that the photoplaywright has here
possibilities to which nothing corresponds in the world of the stage.
Take the case that we want to produce an effect of trembling. We might
use the pictures as the camera has taken them, sixteen in a second. But
in reproducing them on the screen we change their order. After giving
the first four pictures we go back to picture 3, then give 4, 5, 6, and
return to 5, then 6, 7, 8, and go back to 7, and so on. Any other
rhythm, of course, is equally possible. The effect is one which never
occurs in nature and which could not be produced on the stage. The
events for a moment go backward. A certain vibration goes through the
world like the tremolo of the orchestra. Or we demand from our camera a
still more complex service. We put the camera itself on a slightly
rocking support and then every point must move in strange curves and
every motion takes an uncanny whirling character. The content still
remains the same as under normal conditions, but the changes in the
formal presentation give to the mind of the spectator unusual sensations
which produce a new shading of the emotional background.
Of course, impressions which come to our eye can at first awaken only
sensations, and a sensation is not an emotion. But it is well known that
in the view of modern physiological psychology our consciousness of the
emotion itself is shaped and marked by the sensations which arise from
our bodily organs. As soon as such abnormal visual impressions stream
into our consciousness, our whole background of fusing bodily sensations
becomes altered and new emotions seem to take hold of us. If we see on
the screen a man hypnotized in the doctor's office, the patient himself
may lie there with closed eyes, nothing in his features expressing his
emotional setting and nothing radiating to us. But if now only the
doctor and the patient remain unchanged and steady, while everything in
the whole room begins at first to tremble and then to wave and to change
its form more and more rapidly so that a feeling of dizziness comes over
us and an uncanny, ghastly unnaturalness overcomes the whole surrounding
of the hypnotized person, we ourselves become seized by the strange
emotion. It is not worth while to go into further illustrations here, as
this possibility of the camera work still belongs entirely to the
future. It could not be otherwise as we remember that the whole moving
picture play arose from the slavish imitation of the drama and began
only slowly to find its own artistic methods. But there is no doubt that
the formal changes of the pictorial presentation will be legion as soon
as the photoartists give their attention to this neglected aspect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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