2/4/08

Maya Deren, in her essay Creating Movies with a New Dimension: Time, explains how profoundly different the photographic process and the motion-picture process are. They are, essentially, united by nothing more than a lens and light-sensitive paper. The process of composing images (not just framing/composition, but also story/moral/imagery/critique/satire) change vastly. Motion Pictures, according to Deren, must rely on its aspect of motion over time to set it apart from its sister-media.

Cohl's The Great Pumpkin race, a trick-film from the early 1900's, extensively used this time/motion aspect of filmmaking. A photograph of these scenes would not give the comedic impression that was attributed by the motion; it would simply be a trick photograph. (I'd have more insight if I was a photography major, I assure you).

This also brings up comedy in Experimental Cinema. The Sidney Peterson wrote of this, noting that the filmmaker (the dynamiteur) seeks the most likely place to explode (climax, the nature of which is usually comedic), affecting the most people. Peterson says, however, her experience notes that the effective of these climaxes are less-than-successful. The star system has blinded the Western audience from enjoying artistic expression in motion pictures; they go to the cinema to be easily entertained, watching the studio's hottest star, with an "income equal to the combined salaries of all nine members of the Supreme Court". They simply walk-out on Experimental films.


...they are often dead before they are screened...