Aerial View: putting the Kine back into Kinema

When discussing great motion picture cinematography its very easy to think first of moody and emotive lighting, balanced and deliberate composition of the frame, arrangement of figures in deep space or complex shifts in rack-focus between subjects. Yet, too often I find our contemporary appreciation of, and discourse around, the moving image seams to neglect the core element that is the very origin of the word cinematography itself. The word Cinema derives from Kine, meaning motion. And as I have written previously about the GoPro camera “All the the DSLR’s F3’s and RED’s in the world will, of themselves, prompt your creative imagination no further than how sharply you can rack-focus and how pixel-dense your image can be. But pick up a GoPro and you immediately stop thinking about framing and focus, and instead start imagining images and sequences in terms of Space, Motion and Perspective. Hence I feel compelled to suggest that the most ‘cinematic’ camera released in the past few years is NOT an F3, or a 5D, its not a RED Epic or an Alexa, It’s the GoPro.”

I have recently been conducting research and background reading on the history of the middle east and the city of Jerusalem as part of large scale project I’m co-writing, and in doing so I came across this video - part of a forthcoming IMAX film on the Eternal City. 

Now of course, it wasn’t shot on a GoPro, but the same visceral feeling states are conjured up by hyper-real kinetic delight of motion on screen, of a camera moving through space in a way that defies our gravity bound, human body proprioception. This kinda of engagement with camera movement through space speaks to the uniquness of cinema, to the kinds of experience it can offer that noother medium can. Lots of mediums can tell a story, lst of mediums can delivery compelling imagery and ideas, but no other medium can transport you bodilly through space in a visceral experience.

Sometime ago I engaged in trying to develop a conceptual way to think through the effect and motivation of different camera movements and, in particular, to unite the technological apparatus of camera movement with the embodied aesthetic of that technology when deployed as a technique. Camera in Motion has been published in various print forms and is available here on my site as well. Perhaps useful for those looking to make their choices around camera movement motivated by more than just what ‘looks cool’.

Comments

[bradbell.tv]

The emergence of HDSLRs - SLR stills cameras that shoot decent video - has provided examples of what happens without motion. It's not too difficult to find examples of videos by pro photographers where *everything* is unusually static. Many videos are unintentionally like breathing photographs. The idea of on-screen action, and movement of the camera, and editing rhythm - the dance of cinema - is entirely absent. It's cinema bound by the constraints of photography, to deny what is essential about the medium. It's a fascinating phenomenon which emphasises your point: taking the kine OUT of kinema.

[Mike Jones]

Thanks so much for your comments bradbell.tv I think you've hit upon notion that 'how we make is what we make'. That the tools of creation directly effect the creation itself, it's aesthetic biases and form.

Do many things about the DSLR bias stillness. Huge sensors and shallow DoF mean hitting the mark with focus is very difficult - hence easier to not move either subjects or camera.

Even the physicality of holding and handling a DSLR is predicated on stillness and a still photographic sensibility.

The mechanics of a DSLR on so many levels motivate an aesthetic of stillness and whilst the opportunities this technology provides and the image fidelity it produces are amazing we also need to recognize that the tools we make with effect what me make and by proxy what we can perceive to make. Every technology has creative aesthetic biases and is essentially a trade-off.

I had to think that we would trade off the thing that makes cinema kinema...