MOTIONS IN A PICTURE
Pictorial motion is thousands of years older than the motion picture.
It is as old as the oldest art of all, the dance. Before man had
learned how to weave his own fancies into plots, or how to make
drawings of things that he saw, he had doubtless often feasted his
eyes upon the rhythmic beauty created by dancers. Their art was
the composition of motions. We can well imagine how they began by
exhibiting bodily postures, gestures, and mimicry; how they proceeded
to add other movements, such as the fluttering of garments, the
brandishing of weapons, the waving of flaring torches, and how they, in
time, made their composition more involved by swinging themselves into
swaying groups, circling and threading fanciful patterns.
As a form of art the dance has been preserved through the ages in an
apparently unbroken history. And it has had various off-shoots besides;
for religious and secular processions, pantomime, and even drama, have
had their beginnings in the dance. Pictorial motion was to be seen
two thousand years ago in the Roman triumphs and processions, whose
gaudiest features survive in the familiar circus parade of today. And
the circus itself is in a sense the pictorial motion of animals and men.
In the presentation of drama, too, pictorial motion has always played
a vital part. When we look back over the history of the theater we
see that the managers were never satisfied with the mere physical
exhibition of actors and dancers, but began very early to add other
motions to their performance. A large variety of motions was added by
bringing animals upon the scenes. Fire was put into the service of
show. We know that its flame and flicker, borne in torches or beating
upon the witches’ caldron, was not uncommon on Shakespeare’s stage.
Water in the form of leaping cascades and playing fountains was used
at least two hundred years ago to make the scene more pictorial. More
recently, wind has been produced artificially in order to give motion
to draperies, flags, or foliage.
All this amounts to something far more than an attempt to bring nature
upon the stage. It is the creation of new beauty. The kind of beauty
which professional entertainers have for thousands of years spun
together from various motions into patterns simple or subtle, is the
beauty of art, for it comes from human personality expressing itself in
forms and combinations never found as such in nature.
Now, if these showmen are really artists, at least in intent, we may
well ask how they have combined their motions so as to produce the
pleasing effects which they desired. Have they worked hit-or-miss
and achieved beauty only by accident, or have they intentionally or
instinctively obeyed certain laws of the human eye and mind?
How does the director of a motion picture make sure that pleasing
motion will appear upon the screen? Does he alter, or select, his
subjects? Does he choose his point of view? Does he patiently wait for
the right moment? Or must beauty come by accident, as music might come
from a cat’s running over the keyboard of a piano?
There must be laws of pictorial motion, just as there are laws of
color, design, modelling, architectural construction, all of which
appeal to the eye without visible motion. And, since the motion picture
can capture and combine and reproduce a greater variety of moving
things than was ever before possible in the history of art, it seems
particularly important that we make earnest efforts to find out under
what laws these manifold motions may be organized into art.
In studying the movies one might easily come to the conclusion that
some directors aim only to make motions life-like. Their whole creed
seems to be that a heart-broken woman should move her shoulders and
chest as though she really were heart-broken, that a goat should act
exactly like a goat, and that a windmill should behave itself exactly
like a windmill. Now, it may be very desirable, as far as it goes, that
an emotion be “registered” fitly. But to aim at fitting expression
alone is to aim at naturalness alone. And this is not enough, because
there may be natural ugliness, and because even the beauty of nature is
essentially different from the beauty of art.
Shakespeare’s plays are not admired simply because they reveal human
character truthfully. Rembrandt’s paintings are not preserved in
museums merely because they are truthful representations of Dutchmen.
The Venus of Milo would not have a room to herself in the Louvre if
the statue were nothing more than a life-like figure of a woman partly
dressed. In drama, poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, and music,
it has never been considered that appropriateness, naturalness, or
truthfulness was in itself sufficient to distinguish the work as art.
And it surely cannot be so in the movies.
It certainly has not been so in the earlier arts of motion. The dance
as a form of expression is beautiful, but it is so far from natural
that if the average voter started out to express his joy or grief, or
love or defiance, the way a dancer does on the stage, he would be given
a free ride to the psychopathic ward. The stage pantomime is charming,
but if you behaved in the presence of your true love the way Pierrot
and Columbine behave, he or she, as the case may be, would probably
decide that you were too much of a clown ever to become a responsible
parent. The circus, too, though not properly to be classed as a form
of art, combines and presents a vast number of interesting motions
which you never expect to see outside the big tent. Dancers, pantomime
actors, circus masters and performers, all clearly strive to collect
our money by showing us the kind of motions which nature herself does
not show.
But do not become alarmed. We do not propose to establish a school of
unnatural acting in the movies. Let the women and men and greyhounds
and weeping willows and brooks be as natural as they can be, like
themselves and not like each other. Natural, yes, providing they be
not natural in an ugly way. If a brook is running in one direction
as naturally as it can, and a greyhound is running in the opposite
direction as naturally as he can, the combination of their contrary
movements may not be pleasing in a motion picture. Art is art, not
because it reflects some actual bit of nature, but because it is
endowed with some beauty made by man.
What other properties pictorial motion should have, besides correct
representation of action has been partly told in Chapter III, where
the demands of ease and economy of vision were made a condition
concomitant with beauty. We may further apply the same tests which have
been applied to fixed design. But, in order to get a firm grasp of our
subject let us first reduce pictorial motions to their simplest forms.
The simplest motion of all is the moving spot, especially when it is
entirely unrelated to a setting or background; that is, the kind of
moving spot which the spectator may see without at the same time seeing
any other thing, either fixed or moving. A familiar example in nature
is the dark dot of a bird flying high above us in a cloudless sky. An
example from the screen is the effect of a ball of fire shot from a
Roman candle through darkness, as in the battle scenes of Griffith’s
“Birth of a Nation.” But even so simple a moving thing as a spot has
two properties which are very important to the composer of motions. The
moving spot, like all other motions, has direction and velocity. The
buzzard soaring slowly in large circles affects us in one way, while
the hawk swooping downward sharply, or the crow flying in a straight
line, or the bat fluttering crazily in the air, affects us in quite a
different way.
When direction and velocity are controlled, even a single moving spot
may describe beautiful motion. Witness an airplane maneuvering high in
the sky, or a torch waved gracefully in the darkness. Beauty springs
from control; ugliness follows lack of control. But control is no easy
thing in the movies, for it is rare indeed that a director has only a
single moving point to manage. Almost always, he has the problem of
relative direction and relative speed. Moving things must be related
to other moving things, and also to fixed things. Even if the picture
consists only of a torch waved against a black background, we have the
problem of relating that motion to the four fixed lines of the frame of
the screen.
But can we expect a motion picture director to stop and think of so
small a matter as a ball thrown from one hand to another, to ask
himself whether such an action is beautifully related, in direction
and velocity, to everything else in the picture, fixed or moving?
Yes, we can expect him to do so until he becomes artist enough to
think of these matters without stopping. He should think about
pictorial composition until he can obey its laws without thought. Let
him remember that even a flock of geese can compose themselves so
appealingly in the sky and a herd of cows can wind so gracefully down a
hillside that a tender girl and a tough hobo will gaze alike upon them
in open-mouthed admiration.
The geese in the sky and the cows on the hillside are only a lot of
moving spots, until they arrange, or compose, themselves. They may
then illustrate the second type of moving object, that of the moving
line. A line may, for example, move along its own length in a way
which pleases the eyes. Such motions we see in the slender waterfall,
in the narrow stream, in such inanimate things as the long belting in
a factory, or the glowing line of a shooting star, and in the files of
geese, or cattle, or marching men.
A line may move in other directions besides that of its own length. It
may swing stiffly from one end, as in the case of a pendulum or the
rays from a searchlight. It may wave like a streamer in the breeze.
It may move sidewise, as in the long lines of surf that roll up on
the beach. It may move in countless other manners, as in the handling
of canes, swords, spears, golf clubs, polo mallets, whips, etc. Now,
of course, the director ordinarily thinks of a weapon as a weapon,
and not as a moving line. He studies the characteristic action of an
officer drawing his sword or of a Hottentot hurling his spear and tries
to reproduce them faithfully so that no small boy in the audience may
be able to pick out flaws. This is well, so far as it goes. A painter
would study these characteristic actions, too, and would suggest them
with equal faithfulness. But he would do something more. He would place
every object so carefully in his picture that its line harmonized with
the four lines of the frame and with all of the other lines, spots, and
pictorial values in his work.
Now we are beginning to guess how pictorial motions must be composed;
but first let us see what other kinds of motion there are. If we
take another look at the geese in the sky we may find that they have
composed themselves into the form of a “V” or a “Y” floating strangely
beneath the clouds. This illustrates the third type of motion, the
moving pattern.
We distinguish between a moving pattern and a moving spot or line,
because a pattern relates its separate elements to each other. This
relation may or may not change as the pattern moves. Thus the V-shaped
pattern formed by the flying geese may become sharper or flatter, or
one side may be stretched out longer than the other, as the flight
continues. All fixed pictures are patterns which do not change in form
while we look at them, and the pictorial principles therein involved
have been thoroughly discussed in the preceding chapters. But if the
director wants a pattern to move to the right or left, up or down, away
from him or toward him, or to change its character gradually, then a
new problem of composition arises, and the solution of this new problem
is both inviting and perplexing.
It is inviting because there are so many patterns which gain beauty
from motion or change. A fixed circle is not so appealing to the eye,
for example, as a rolling hoop. A wheel standing still is not so
fascinating as one that rotates, like the wheel of a wind mill, or one
that rolls, like the wheel of a carriage. Thus also the pattern formed
by the rectangular shapes of a train standing still does not please
the eye so much as the harmonious change in that same pattern when the
train swings by us and winds away into the distance.
The patterns which may be compared with mathematical figures, such as
circles, squares, triangles, diamond shapes, etc., are not the only
ones. We are simply mentioning them first to make our analysis clear.
Every group of two or more visible things, and nearly every visible
thing in itself, must of necessity be looked upon as a pattern, either
pleasing or displeasing to the eye. Therefore every motion picture that
has been, or can be, thrown upon the screen describes a pattern, fixed,
moving, or changing. If the direction and rate of these motions and
changes can be controlled, there is hope for beauty on the screen; if
they cannot be controlled, there is no help but accident.
A peculiar type of visible motion is that which we have elsewhere
called “moving texture.” Examples in nature are the changing texture of
falling snow, the stately coiling of clouds, and the majestic weaving
of ice floes in a river. In the movies the effect of moving texture is
produced whenever the elements of the subject are so many and so small
that we view them rather as a surface than as a design or pattern.
It may be seen, not only in subjects from nature, but also in such
things as a mob of people or a closely packed herd of cattle viewed
from a high position. Mr. Griffith has a good eye and taste for the
composition of moving textures, and has furnished interesting examples
in nearly all of his larger productions.
Now let us see how far we have gone. We have defined four different
types of pictorial motion, namely, the moving spot, the moving line,
the moving pattern, and the moving texture. They may appear singly or
grouped. For example, in a picture of the old-fashioned water wheel we
have a combination of the moving line of the stream with the moving
pattern of the wheel. And in a picture of a small motor boat, seen from
afar, speeding over a lake the composition contains a moving spot, the
changing pattern of the wake, and the changing texture of the water.
If we add to this picture a long train on the bank, trailing a ribbon
of smoke, an airplane in the sky, and a sailing yacht on the lake, we
have a subject which is difficult indeed to analyze, and infinitely
more difficult to compose into pictorial beauty. Yet those are the very
kinds of motion which a motion picture director must compose in every
scene that he “shoots.”
But we have not yet completed our analysis of the nature of pictorial
motion. It has still another property, which we shall call “changing
tonal value.” Changing tonal value depends upon changes in the amount
and kind of light which falls upon the subject, and upon changes in
the surface of the subject itself. For example, the shadow of a cloud
passing over a landscape gives a slightly different hue to every grove
or meadow, to every rock or road. To watch these values come and go is
one of the delights of the nature lover.
Nature’s supreme example of the beauty of changing values may be seen
in a sunset playing with delicate splendor on sea and sky. And if this
beauty defies the skill of painters it is because they have no means of
representing the subtle changes which run through any particular hue as
the moments pass by.
The beauty of a sunset may long, perhaps forever, elude the
cinematograph, but this machine can produce tonal changes in black and
white at the will of the operator by the familiar trick of “fading in”
and “fading out.” This camera trick is of great service for dramatic
effects, such as the dissolving of one picture into another; but
it has a greater power, which has not always been appreciated and
taken advantage of by directors, the power of producing for the eye a
pictorial rhythm of tonal intensities. This effect is somewhat like the
“crescendo” and “diminuendo” in music.
[Illustration: From _The Covered Wagon_. Distinctive rhythm of moving
lines, interesting changes in pictorial pattern, and harmonious play of
light and shade are skillfully used in this photoplay to intensify its
dramatic meaning. See pages 9, 66 and 140.]
When we consider that changing tonal value may be combined with
changing direction, as well as with changing velocity, of moving spots,
moving lines, moving patterns, and moving textures, we realize more
keenly the problems of the cinema composer. His medium is at once
extremely complex, extremely flexible, and extremely delicate.
But we have not yet revealed all of the strange qualities of the motion
picture. A unique power of the screen, which can never be utilized
by any other graphic art, is that which gives motion to things that
are themselves absolutely at rest and immovable. Even the pyramids of
Egypt can be invested with apparent motion, so that their sharp lines
flow constantly into new patterns. It can be done by simply moving the
camera itself while the film is being exposed. The appeal of apparent
motion in natural setting is familiar to any one who has ever gazed
dreamily from the window of a railroad car or from the deck of a yacht
sailing among islands. Apparent motion on the screen makes a similar
appeal, which can be enhanced by changing distance and point of view
and by artistic combination with real motions in the picture.
Still other fresh means of pleasing the eye may be found in the
altering of natural motions, as by the retarding action of the
slow-motion camera, which can make a horse float in the air like a
real Pegasus; or by the cinematographic acceleration of motion which
can out-rival an Indian conjuror in making a tree rise, blossom, and
bear fruit while you are watching.
Another peculiar type of pictorial motion, which has never before
existed, and does not come into being until it is projected upon the
screen, is the magic motion of the “animated cartoons.” The camera-man
sees no such marvelous motions. He faces only a stack of drawings. The
artist who makes the drawings does not see the motions except in his
own imagination. But the spectator in the theater is delighted to see
the strangely bewitched men and beasts, birds and trees, rocks and
streams, weapons and machines, all behaving in impossible ways that no
maker of fairy tales ever dreamed of. Here is a new field of pictorial
composition, with distant boundaries and fabulous wealth. Those who
exploit it will be able to teach many a valuable lesson to the director
who merely takes photographs of actors in motion.
Nearly all of these motions might be found in a single “shot,” that is,
in a single section of film. But when these sections of film are joined
together to form the finished photoplay they produce still another
kind of motion, a constant shifting from scene to scene. Whether this
succession is to be a series of collisions or a harmonious flow,
depends upon those who cut and join the films.
There is finally the total movement which is the product of all of
these motions working together. A scientist can show you in his
laboratory that when a cord vibrates in one way it gives forth a
particular note, and that when the same cord vibrates in another way it
gives forth a different note. He can also show you that a single cord
can vibrate in several different ways at the same time. The tones and
overtones thus produced constitute the peculiar _timbre_, or quality,
of a musical note. Thus, too, in a motion picture the _ensemble_ of
all the kinds, directions, and velocities of motion constitutes the
particular cinematic quality of that particular picture play. Whether
that resultant quality shall be like a symphony or like the cries of a
mad-house, depends on the knowledge, the skill, and the inspiration of
the cinema composer.
Having named the principal motions in a picture we come now to the
question of how those motions should be composed. When a musical
composer sits down before his piano he knows that he may strike single
notes in succession, giving a simple melody, or several notes at the
same moment, producing a chord, or he may play a melody with one hand
and a different melody with the other, or he may play a melody with
one hand and a succession of chords with the other, or he may use both
hands in playing two successions of chords. Before he is through with
his composition he will probably have done all of those things.
It is much the same with the cinema composer. Before he has finished
even a single scene he will probably have produced all of the different
types of motions in varying directions, with varying velocities, and
varying intensities. How may he know whether his work is good or bad?
What are the proofs of beauty in the composition of pictorial motion?
A practical proof is dramatic utility. The motions of a photoplay
are in the service of the story. They should perform that work well,
without waste of time and energy. An æsthetic proof is their power to
stimulate our fancy and to sway our feeling. Pictorial motions should
play for us, until by the illusion of art we can play with them.
Another proof is reposefulness. For at the very moment when we are
stimulated by art we desire to rest in satisfied contemplation. How
pictorial motions may produce beauty on the screen by being at work, at
play, and at rest will be told in the following chapters.