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"It's impossible to consider character, except in connection to his surroundings." 

- Walt Braugher, Normal (2007)

The Steadicam: An evolution in film language, p.t 2

Ryerson film student Andrew Lounsbury penned this essay in the spring of 2008 for an advanced film theory course. In it, he uses various theories of camera movement to illustrate and expand on the claim that the steadicam has been a significant advancement in the evolution of film language. Please find selected paragraphs from this work in two parts.

Van Sant argues, “in life a story [like those told by the cinema] usually consists just of the highlights, but in your experience the rest of the day actually happens, and that has a profound impact on your experience” (qtd. in Thomson 65). In Elephant, Van Sant introduces us to a trio of girls, in one of the most elaborate and profound shots of the film, which contains only one cut (38:58).

At first, the camera movement in this scene may seem to be frivolous and unmotivated but upon closer inspection, we can see that it is far more complex than it first appears. Here, Van Sant encompasses Rahtz’s process and Johnson’s wandering camera, while adding his own style to the scene, using the camera as a narrating device. Van Sant could have cut the scene together from several shots, but made the choice (consistent throughout the entire film) to use the process as a dramatic tool. Vans Sant’s wandering camera is used for a different purpose than Kubrick and Scorsese’s, as Van Sant is not trying to suggest the presence of another entity. What he is doing is foreshadowing, in both a subtle and explicit fashion.

In the article, Seeing with the Camera, Irving Pichel discusses how directors express their vision and personal style with the power of the camera. In order for this to occur, writes Pichel, we must first think of the camera as a projection of the narrator’s viewpoint, rather than the spectator’s. “In this use of the camera a complete personality is created who, though not appearing before the audience’s eyes, is yet real and definite and as highly personalized as the real storyteller…who employs it” (Pichel 141). It is in this way that a director can achieve a type of personal and visual style that is acutely expressive.

Unlike Bazin, who claimed that it was less a technical evolution than the infusion of new blood and new subject matter, I believe that the language developed post-steadicam was of a technical nature. That is not to say that its invention instilled an expressiveness within the minds of directors, for that is simply not the case. What it did was provide the technical means for directors who had long envisioned the ability to move through space in a dolly-handheld hybrid fashion. As Geuens suggests, the power of the steadicam has effectively allowed directors to push their imaginations to the limit, resulting in a new film language that fuses Bazinian realism with complete camera expressiveness and style. Van Sant states, “since 1915, when people started to use editing to tell a story, we’ve had the convention of the reaction shot…but life is a continuous thing with a rhythm of its own, and when you cut to adjust that rhythm to suit the dramatic impact you create a new, false rhythm. Whereas if you’re shooting with one camera, you have to create a rhythm in the scene” (qtd. in Said 17). Could there be a better exemplification of Bazin’s theory? And moreover, can anyone deny that what Kubrick, Scorsese and Van Sant have accomplished with the steadicam is anything less than pure cinematic art?

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Bazin, André. “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. 6th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. 41-53.

Geuens, Jean-Pierre. “Visuality and Power: The Work of the Steadicam.” Film Quarterly Winter 1993-94: 8-17.

Pichell, Irving. “Seeing with the Camera.” Hollywood Quarterly (1947): 138-145. JSTOR. Ryerson Library. 30 January 2008. .

Rahtz, Robert. “The Travelling Camera.” Hollywood Quarterly (1947): 297-299. JSTOR. Ryerson Library. 29 January 2008. .

Said, S. F. “Shock Corridors.” Sight & Sound 14.2 (2004): 16-18. Wilson Web. 20 March 2008 .

Thomson, Patricia. “Walking the Halls of Fate.” American Cinematographer. October 2003: 60-71.

Girl on a path in Taylor Creek Park, Toronto

I couldn't find the photographer's full name, however the flickr link is below:

http://flickr.com/photos/61048844@N00/1402343259/

lost rivers & the glen cedar bridge

i have been visiting this bridge since before my father moved into the neighbourhood, when i was eleven or so. west end elementary schools hold cross country meets in the ravine, which is how i first came upon it.

i went back tonight, as i often do when visiting my dad. he took the dog down into the valley while i explored the bridge itself. i lay face down on the walkway and peered between two planks into the ravine below. a perfectly rolled and completely dry spliff was caught on an iron beam under the face of the bridge.

maybe the cops showed up and the owner panicked, dropping it between the cracks?

http://www.lostrivers.ca/

http://www.lostrivers.ca/points/GlenCedarB.htm

"Toronto's Ravines, Walking The Hidden Country," Murray Seymour, The Boston MillsPress, 2000

"City of York: a Local History," E.C. Millar & others, The Board of Education for The City of York, 1987

"Don Valley Legacy, a Pioneer History" by Ann Guthrie, The Boston Mills Press 1986

"Exploring Toronto" Annabel Slaight, & Ontario Association of Architects, Grey dePencier Pub., 1972, the chapter "Along the Escarpment" by Colin Vaughan and AnnabelSlaight.

"Over The Don" by Ron Fletcher, Publisher Ron Fletcher. 2002.

Special Places; The Changing Ecosystems of the Toronto Region," Betty I. Roots, etal.Royal Canadian Institute and UBC Press, 1999

"St. Clair West in Pictures, a history of the communities of Carlton, Davenport, Earlscourt, & Oakwood" 2nd Edition, Nancy Byers & Barbara Myrvold,. Toronto Public Libray, 1999

The Steadicam: An evolution in film language, pt. 1

Ryerson film student Andrew Lounsbury penned this essay in the spring of 2008 for an advanced film theory course. In it, he uses various theories of camera movement to illustrate and expand on the claim that the steadicam has been a significant advancement in the evolution of film language. Please find selected paragraphs from this work in two parts.

Film language is similar to human language in the sense that it is something that can be read and interpreted based on a pre-established syntactical structure. For instance, in film there are many different shots that, when edited in such a way, allow us to ‘read’ the progression of the narrative or story. Similar to human language, there are certain shots that are more expressive than others, and shots can be used in such a way that force us to interpret their meaning. “It was montage that gave birth to film as an art,” claims André Malraux, “setting it apart from mere animated photography, in short, creating a language” (qtd. in Bazin 42), and it has evolved along the conventions of continuity editing and parallel editing. In his essay, The Evolution of the Language of Cinema, André Bazin challenges this notion, claiming that editing is a vehicle used to create meaning which does not exist in the individual images, but arises from their collocation (42). Furthermore, the silent cinema would have been a complete art had its essence been all that plasticity and editing could add to a given reality (44). This, of course, is not the case, for since the inception of sound, films have grown fuller in their ability to represent experience, making use of both visual and aural techniques to evoke and signify their ideas. According to Bazin, all of the necessary conditions for creating film art existed by 1930, and therefore it was not so much the introduction of sound technology, but rather, the introduction of new talent, subject matter and the styles necessary to express it, that drastically influenced film language (46).

~~

…the use of moving camera can achieve things that would be impossible to achieve through editing (Rahtz 299). Although neither shot would be impossible without the steadicam, it is the use of the steadicam that makes them stand out, for to cut these sequences together would simply not be as effective. Rahtz argues that it is the process of moving with the characters, to get into their space and to eventually reveal their destinations, that is dramatically important (298).

~~

The wandering camera is not a new evolution in film language, as early filmmakers like Murnau and Welles had made use of it. What is of interest in these examples is the way both directors use the wandering camera to suggest a presence greater than the characters who are being filmed. In The Shining, Kubrick’s camera wanders suggesting the presence of the haunted hotel, while in The Aviator, Scorsese’s camera wanders, prompted by Hughes comment about the room giving him the ‘willies’, suggesting that their may be some mysterious presence lurking in the mansion. The steadicam significantly enhances the language of the wandering camera since the camera can truly wander, free from dolly tracks and jib arms, it is free to explore, providing directors with new opportunities for expressiveness.

L'Ennui

She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'Alright,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby

a part of the city where i never go

my dentist works up the street from where i went to high school. every nine months i come back for a cleaning. i take the 41 from keele station, up old weston road to eglinton, and step into a throng of northbound commuters outside the coffee time on the corner. i have only a vague idea of where they might be going; york university, for some, the old hospital on keele street. there is a plaza at lawrence with a walmart, and a few government offices further north at the 401, near the centre where i keep failing my driver's test.

the murals we painted on the side of a portuguese sports bar are still here. in the first, a ttc bus - one with parallelogram windows - speeds around a corner into a blue abyss of sky. in the second, a figure on horseback rides across a yellow-brick-road bridge. this one is on the side of another building, formerly occupied by a furniture liquidation centre. now its called "image beauty supply products."

the sidewalks have been repaved, but they're mottled with flattened wads of gum again and don't look much different. the school still hasn't managed to grow a lawn. it stands on the northwest corner like an aging monolith or a gravestone, and gives the impression of being seen in perpetual timelapse, clouds zooming by overhead.

the same jamaican papas sit outside their apartments, outside doorways tucked between the shops. their plastic lawn chairs bend, gleaming in the sun, slanting on the eglinton hill. on this hill we are closer to the sun, they are, and their dark skin is slick in the heat. from the top you can see forever, to what seem like the city's outskirts but must only be the beginnings of another city: mississauga, brampton. traffic moves at ten kilometres over the speed limit, like the buried water through the valley, past the panzerotto pizza and the jitz bar, the arena, the remains of the kodak plant.

i remember standing at all of these bus stops, and how different the buses smell here - like burnt, bleached paper. i remember the pride we had pulling into the rear parking lot in tyler's parents' bmw. the smoking pit, whose excavated earth reveals decades of cigarette stubs and fossilized potato wedge boxes. lunch at the court house, ketchup and mayonnaise, the sticky smell of chlorine from the centennial pool, and how all of the streets are named after world war II battlegrounds. the one girl who went to yale, and how everyone pretended they knew who she was.

the in-between, where no one is ever poorest but they've got no money to speak of. where no one seems to stay for long, except for the dentist, i guess. where the sky is bigger, and the houses and trees aren't new or old, but somewhere in the middle. where it was never as bad as it could get, and never good enough to stay for.