PDF: DISCONTINUOUS FILMS - Film Studies Association of Canada

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precursor of the modern movie camera and the beginning of a great split in the capture of light (camera) and its release (projector). With photography it had become possible to make instant pictures and only a few more instants would be required to make a continuous run of pictures. It was in building the projector that the late 19 th and early 20 th Century built better than it knew. For, ideally suited as it is to the projection of whatever the motion picture camera photographs, the projector is a MACHINE CAPABLE OF PROJECTING TWENTY FOUR TRANSPARENCIES IN SEQUENCE EVERY SECOND. The motion picture camera is quite limited in function. Generally speaking, it gathers light onto a sequence of frames in rapid order; it manufactures only continuous scenes; it will display whatever is put into it and is completely unlimited in the environment of the frame. We are now in the process of being released from the assumption of continuity and the cinematic schools this assumption has imposed. Delightful as it has been, continuity has given us little more than a visual re-hash of the literary experience (poems included). Anyone objecting violently to this statement surely has a big stake in continuous cinema. The same person will feel enormously threatened by discontinuous film. At the Fourth Ann Arbor Film Festival last year, many in the auditorium groaned during The Flicker, not bored but frightened. An Experiment The sort of Insight provided by William M. Ivins and Marshall McLuhan is particularly valu- CJFS • RCEC 99
able when applied to the projector’s environment. For example, Ivins, by isolating a sense in Art and Geometry is able to make the most obvious statements about touch and yet draw the most amazing conclusions from them. (Greek temples look the way they do because they are appreciated by the ‘hand’ and not the ‘eye’.) In a room is a projector and screen. People who have never seen a projector (or camera) before are brought into the room, given cans of clear and dark leader, editing tools, paint, bleach, whatever one may think of. They are told only that in a years time we want to see some interesting films. After projecting the various kinds of leader, our people become bored. To be less bored they would begin to make marks on the leader. Yes, much better. They would not be very likely to animate because animation grows out of a consciousness of the camera. This means a rapid appearance on the screen of designs flashing by at subliminal speeds. If our people were all intelligent, creative, etc., one would see at the end of the year a more exciting collection of films than at Cannes, New York, Ann Arbor or anywhere. If they ultimately invented a camera, continuous run would be regarded as a ‘gimic’ on theirs, just as single frame is on ours. Hopefully, this conceptual experiment has placed the reader outside his familiar film environment long enough to realize the tyrrany of the motion picture camera. The logical result of using a camera in filming is the use of the splicer. Splices used to bother a good many people, that is, not the appearance of splice-bars on the screen but the 100 Volume 10 No. 1
Page 1 and 2: Frame enlargements from The Maltese
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Page 7 and 8: ma. In a restaurant a couple conver
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PDF: DISCONTINUOUS FILMS - Film Studies Association of Canada

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