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Film Perception
By Jason A. Harrington
Introduction
This paper is based on a theme of duality and contrast. I move from a
general discussion of film in society, to a specific examination of film’s
most basic elements. In the first part I discuss how I understand film
as an art form. I define the artistic in cinema by examining the relationship
between the content and the medium, or perhaps more clearly said, between
the story and the language. I contrast the artistic mode with sensationalism
and entertainment. These two aspects of film, artistic and inartistic,
I compare to the spiritual concept of sacred and profane. I also use the
concept of the sacred and profane as a way of separating the creative
process of the filmmaker from the creative process of the viewer. I argue
that the artistic is a process of transformation and that the artist presents
a text with many possible meanings. This text must then be transformed
through the creative process of the viewer. Lastly, based on the idea
that artistic communication depends on an understanding of both message
and medium, I explore the most basic and fundamental physical aspects
of the cinematic medium. The three essential elements as I present them
are time, light, and sound. All three can be defined in terms of duality
and contrast.
Threshold of the Sacred and Profane
In his book The Sacred and Profane, Mircea Eliade defines and describes
the many manifestations of the threshold and spiritual axis point. Whether
this point take on the form of the doorway to the temple or the sacred
pole of the Australian Arunta tribe, it is always a way by which humans
position themselves between what is holy and base, chaotic and ordered,
sacred and profane. Film is based on elements that are defined by opposition
and duality. We must look to understand the role film plays in society
in accordance with this essential nature. From this perspective, we can
begin to examine film as art, verses film as sedative and stimulant. We
must examine the role of the filmmaker and her affect on the viewer. We
must also ask what part the viewer has in the creative aspect of film.
We can do this by looking at the film screen as an axis mundi and as a
threshold always dividing one world from another and often separating
the sacred from the profane [fig. 1].
Art is a process of transformation. More importantly it is a transcendence
of what is natural.
"For instance, if in art one wishes to create, as the Greeks did,
an idealized human being, one has to be dissatisfied with what nature
offers. For, if satisfied, one could never inject into nature something
which surpasses her. Similarly, if satisfied with the nightingale’s
and lark’s song, one could never compose sonatas and symphonies;
such a combination of sounds would seem untrue; the true, the natural,
being exhaustively expressed by the birds. The naturalistic world-conception
demands that those who wish to create something content themselves with
imitations of the natural. For it is only when we envisage a world other
than the natural one that we can see a transcending of nature as anything
but dishonesty and sham."
-Rudolf Steiner, The Arts and Their Mission
In so far as film awakens thought and opens possibilities for meaning,
it has begun to move out of the deadening world of sensation and entertainment
and into the realm of art.
"For the human mind is capable of being excited without the application
of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception
of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not further
know, that one being is elevated above another, in proportion as he possesses
this capability. It has therefore appeared to me, that to endeavor to
produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which,
at any period, a writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at
all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes,
unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt
the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary
exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor."
Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads
An artistic film has two creative sides. On the first side lie the artists
of the film, those who construct the artistic text. On the other side
lies the creative process of the audience. Without these two sides we
can not have an artistic film. The artistic text must be an open text;
meaning, part of the creative process must be open to the audience. The
creative moment does not close upon the film's conclusion, but rather
opens up in a continued process of thought and creative meaning in the
lives of the viewers. The artist sets forth a possibility.
“… a participant in an act of artistic communication obtains
information, not only from the message, but from the language in which
art converses with him. He resembles a person who simultaneously studies
the language in which a book has been written and the content of that
book. Therefore in the act of artistic communication language is never
an unnoticeable, automatized, predictable system.”
Jurij Lotman, Semiotics of Cinema
The filmmaker can play two roles. She can mask the medium that she works
in, or reveal its nature. Traditionally the cinema has masked its own
true nature. Cinema has become more and more a medium of propaganda and
sensationalized rhetoric. Seldom is the audience asked to become self-
aware or reflective. Entertainment of all kinds has become a form of social
persuasion (whether intentional on the part of the maker or not). The
vast majority of today’s entertainment depends on a relinquishing
of critical discourse and an acceptance of the ideological structure of
the material presented. This is the antithesis of the open and artistic
text.
Thus, in the world of film, we see that the realm of the artistic (sacred)
and the area of inartistic (unopened and profane) are separated by a huge
gulf. I see the film screen as a metaphor. This screen separates the filmmaker
from the viewer and her intentions from their effect. I call this the
marking place of the sacred and profane because we so often fail to see
the spiritual role that art plays. As filmmakers we also fail to see and
take responsibility for the destructive power of our medium.
Rather than dwell on the deadening power of film it is better to try and
thoroughly understand its artistic nature. For Lotman, it is absolutely
essential that there be an awareness of both the “language”
and the content. As an artist one must examine closely the nature of her
or his art form. If we are to remain in the realm of the artistic and
not stray into needless sensationalism, it is necessary to understand
the very core and heart of our medium. Each different medium has a unique
way in which it tells stories or conveys meaning. The artist’s medium
must not remain subservient to the story. The two must co-operate and
enhance one another. This is essential to the creation of the artistic
text.
The best way we can begin to understand this relationship between the
story, and the language we use to tell that story, is to first understand
the language. What are the essential elements comprising the medium of
film? What at the most basic level differentiates film from painting or
sculpture? What is unique about the way we as filmmakers can tell our
stories? What will define film as an artistic medium one hundred years
from now?
The Essence of the Medium
I propose that the three, essential elements, which define the medium
of film, are time, light, and sound. Without each of these we cannot have
film, as we know it. All three primary aspects hold within them their
own unique properties. However, each can be understood as existing according
to the laws of opposition and contrast. Let me begin with the element
of time.
Time
In trying to understand film's relation to time, it is interesting to
see how the history of film theory has been accompanied by a debate on
the usefulness and role of montage. While montage usually refers to the
structuring of different shots in post production, it can also be understood
in a much wider sense. Jurij Lotman’s understanding of montage can
be helpful in defining the relation between film and time. What does it
mean that film is a time-based medium? For Lotman, montage is not only
the positioning of contrasting shots through a use of editing, but also
any “juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements.” Indeed, for Lotman,
montage in this sense is the very definition of a time-based medium. We
can not perceive time without montage. Hence film time can, in this sense,
be understood in terms of variation, change, and contrast, just as Lotman
defined Montage.
Looking closely at our experience of time in film can support Lotman’s
definition of a time-based medium. Time in a general sense is both a reflection
of our human consciousness and need to organize the aspects of our experience,
as well as something that can only occur or be recognized under specific
conditions. In film these conditions are clear. The opening and closing
of the shutter while exposing film is the first technical aspect necessary
for the perception of time. Hereby single frames, separated by darkness,
are created. In order to perceive these changing images, as when they
were first taken, the projector must once again separated the frames of
light with darkness through the use of a shutter. Unnoticed when viewing
a film is this interplay of dark and light. This is the second physical
aspect necessary for the perception of time in film.
If a filmmaker were to shoot a white page, which encompassed the whole
of the frame, the viewer might not even realize that film-time was passing
until the page was turned. Suddenly, at the moment of the page turn, we
realize that, while we were seeing white we were really witnessing passing
time of an image of a book. This realization accompanies the shadow cast
by the turning page. This is the third physical aspect of time perception.
Thus we see the three levels at which film uses contrast (changing dark/light
relationships) to create a sense of film time; first the camera creates
individual frames, second, the projector separates these moving frames
with a shudder, and third, the frames themselves must have an interplay
of dark and light within them. This dualistic nature, and the contrast
that allows for perception to occur, is also present in the two other
primary characteristics if film: light and sound.
Understanding how the impression of time is created is vital for the filmmaker.
It is the essence of the medium. From here it would be easy to explore
how time is perceived beyond film.
Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll
be no more time.
Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly and
exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t
be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.
Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?
Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing; it’s
an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.
-F. Dostoievsky, The Possessed
There arises an important question regarding the significance of time
in film. Is time vital to the film because film has the ability to capture
“real moments” from time, or is time intrinsic to film regardless
of the question of realism? Andrey Tarkovsky sees film as a way of sculpting
pieces of fact captured in time. I disagree. The fact that film records
or re-displays “reality”, or something akin to what the filmmaker
saw is not what defines it as a time-based medium. Film is time-based
because it re-presents those elements, which in life lead us to an experience
of time. Andrey Tarkovsky describes film as printing time in a factual
form. “Time, printed in its factual forms and manifestations: such
is the supreme idea of cinema as an art, leading us to think about its
colossal future. On that idea I build my working hypotheses…”
(pg.63) The interpretation of film as something which captures fact, which
is another way of saying something which is real or true, has long been
in question. We must either separate animation in its many forms from
the discussion of film or throw out this notion of capturing factual forms
and reality as essential to the art of film. Animation clarifies the important
issue regarding “factual time.” It becomes clear, through forms
such as animation, that film is a system of signs. These visual and auditory
signs can range from “realistic” to “abstract” (in
semiotic terms from high plasticity to low plasticity). Were they stand
on this scale of plasticity is only indirectly related to films function
as time-based medium.
Tarkovsky’s words do ring true however, when he describes the importance
of our experience of time when viewing film.
“All over the world there are, indeed, entertainment firms and organizations
which exploit cinema and television and spectacles of many other kinds.
Our standing point, however, should not be there, but in the essential
principles of cinema, which have to do with the human need to master and
know the world. I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema
for is time: for time lost or spent or not yet had. He goes there for
living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and
concentrates a person’ s experience- and not only enhances it but
makes it longer, significantly longer.” (P.63)
Once I made a short scratch film, which is perhaps the simplest type of
film on can make. With only a few lines I represented the sun rising over
the horizon into the sky. Birds fly by and the sun sinks again. In thirty
seconds I represent the passage of a day. These scratches are very simple
signs, which serve to create not only a visual experience, but also a
unique sense of time. We understand the few scratches on celluloid not
just as the sun, the earth and birds, but even as the passage of a day.
The medium of film is highly versatile, yet we are only beginning to explore
the world available beyond traditional narrative realism. Humans are meaning
makers. We must begin to trust in the power of the language of the cinema,
move beyond the myth that the photo captures reality, and trust in the
power of the time-based medium. Illusions are more beautiful when they
require the viewer to complete them with their imagination.
Light
It is clear that without the controlled use of light we can not have film.
What is interesting though is how the very same qualities of dualism and
contrast necessary for the perception of time are also necessary for the
perception of light and color. Clearly with light comes darkness, but
darkness requires no substance for its manifestation. For example if we
look into outer space where there is no material (matter) there is darkness.
Where there is material, we perceive light. Light can not be perceived
without material. So in film, once again we observe the interaction of
dissimilar (heterogeneous) elements, i.e. light and material. This is
important because of the role these two, very different elements play
in the cinematic operation.
First, let us compare film with painting and sculpture. In painting we
observe the material which creates the image directly. The texture of
the pigment is often critical to understanding the work. In sculpture
the role of material is even more obvious. The material used is essential
to the expression. Sculpture is forming material. In film we have quite
a different relation to material. Beside all the technical equipment necessary
for making a film, film can be seen as a simplifying of all material for
the purpose of observing changing light. At the moment of the film’s
projection we do not observe the camera, projector or the screen. We observe
the light. Whether the light manifests itself in recognizable images,
or simple blocks of color, is not important here. What is important, is
the relationship of material to light. The material present in the cinematic
moment (which really happens when the film is projected before an audience)
serves the purpose of revealing patterns of light. The screen is wide,
flat and white so that it reflects the light, fills the area of vision,
and remains unnoticeable as a material element.
Thus we can understand light as an essential element of film. Shape and
form are clearly important aspects of the cinema, but these do not lie
within the core of the medium. Light and material define shape and form.
Film images often represent physical shapes and forms, but need not do
so. Aspects of depth and distance are illusory, not essential. The perception
of light, color and movement (change) are immediate, direct and actual.
Shape and form can be seen as the essential elements of sculpture. Here
it could be argued that the whole aim of filmmaking is to use the photo
(light) in such a way as to portray space. This is based on the notion
that the whole aim of the cinema is to capture moments from reality and
re-present them.
Sound
The silent film is a misnomer. (See endnote)
The cinema has always been inclined towards an acoustic accompaniment
of one kind or another. Sound is essential to film, not because it makes
the experience of film seem more real, but because both the moving image
and sound are time-based experiences, which together can create a whole
new level of awareness. The sound-scape and the moving image have the
ability to match their position in time. They are also capable of co-operation,
each expressing a different position in time.
Here it is helpful to draw from the work of Susanne Langer who writes
on the subject of film time. Langer, in her book Feeling and Form points
to the way in which the visual image always presents itself in the present
tense. For example, if we see a man drinking coffee, even if we know that
it is a flashback and has already occurred in the story of the film, the
viewer experiences it as “Here is a man drinking coffee.” The
film image always presents itself in the present tense while in written
and spoken language we can present the past and future: “There was
a man drinking coffee.” This is one aspect of the interrelationship
of sound-time and visual-time. The potential for a dynamic exchange between
sound and image is made clear as we come to understand the different ways
we experience sound-time and image-time.
Music can allude to space and form through volume or lyrical association,
but it is clearly a medium outside space and form. Music is a medium that
progresses linearly across time. Through repetition it triggers memory
and association. At the origin of the musical tone we once again discover
the principles of dualism in the vibrating substance. Vibration itself
clarifies this in its own definition as a movement between opposite sides.
Hence, not only do we have lyrical movements in time (perceived through
variation of tones), but the single tone as an active movement of opposition.
At the heart of music and sound is rhythm which defines all existence
just as the pulse of out blood and the motion of our breath define our
own lives.
Conclusion
It is vital that we begin to understand that artwork can only live inside
people, as direct experience or memory. The artwork itself, be it celluloid,
canvas or page is dead. The artwork lives as it is created and again at
the moment of perception. It is this moment of perception that is so critical.
It is the moment of translation, of the passage of meaning, a moment of
awakening or deadening. We must understand this moment of perception,
not only in terms of the vehicle or medium, but also in terms of the internal
process of human understanding. For it is not the sign, but the meaning
which is taken from it that matters in the end. This process of “taking
meaning” occurs on either a conscious or unconscious level. Of course
not all perception can occur at the highest level of consciousness. But
the power of film, its danger and potential as an art form lies in this
very question of consciousness.
Our consciousness has changed quickly over the last hundred years. Where
once the audience shrank back from the image of an approaching train,
now surround sound, thundering base, a huge screen (I-max), thousands
of images flashing by in seconds hardly make us flinch. The advance of
the cinema has primarily been maintenance, metaphorically speaking, of
the illusion of the train about to hit us. So while the audiences become
more desensitized and the cinematic experience more deadening, the potential
for the imaginative world of cinema slips away.
Endnote 1: For those
familiar with the wealth of “silent” films both historical and
contemporary, this suggestion that sound is essential to film might seem
offensive. However, it is my firm belief that not adding sound to the
actual film is a way of opening another sound activated by the space in
which the film is viewed and by the perceptual process of the viewer.
Therefore I am in no way denying the validity of so called silent films
as films. I am questioning the notion of silence. Film, I maintain is
never without sound. Please see my essay, Taxonomy of Silence.
Bibliography:
Henri Bortoft, The Wholeness of Nature, Lindisfarne Press, Hudson, NY,
1996
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, Harcourt Brace & Co., San
Diego, 1959.
Rudolf Steiner, The Arts and their Mission, Anthroposophic Press, Spring
Valley, NY, 1964
Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, University of Texas Press, Austin,
1986
Ernest Lindgren, The Art of the Film, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., New
York, NY, 1963
Jurij Lotman, Semiotics of the Cinema, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
MI, 1976
Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form, 1953
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