How Cinema Works
Thoughts On: The Functioning of Cinema
A structuralised breakdown of cinema and its function.
If one is to speak about cinema, about its construction and reception, I believe they will inevitably speak in terms of four attributes of the art: drama, mode, form and genre. I have arrived at these four attributes not through an arbitrary collection of terms, but in an attempt to categorise the processes of a film's unfolding. The question underlying these four terms is then: How does space and time move in a film?
There are three fundamental assertions that must be made as to frame an answer to this question: 1) movies have to be made, 2) movies have to be screened and, 3) movies have to be seen. This means that, for cinema to exist, there has to be a group of filmmakers to create a film, a means through which the film has to be shown (a screen of sorts) and an audience to view the finished product. Without these three components, cinema cannot exist; try to deduct one from the equation and a to-be film ceases to be cinema.
Now we have the parameters of a film's existence, a film's existence being a body or entity that we shall call a cinematic space. Because a cinematic space is a construct of a filmmaker(s), audience and screen, we have to question how time and space move within it through these entities.
On the fundamental level of story, cinematic spacetime moves via conflict: drama. Drama is the prerequisite for the existence of cinema; drama is action, drama is what makes space and time initially move in a cinematic space. To understand drama as such, it must be framed as meaning both conflict and action itself. Drama is how we know art exists. It is only because some force moves against another that there can emerge an idea, substance, affection and meaning. Even in the most abstract of paintings, one can identify drama:
There is almost unending drama in this, a Pollock painting. Here we have colour, shape, line, depth, shade, layers and more. Each line and drizzle of paint put upon this canvas interacts with what it lies upon and with all that resides near it. It is then possible to contemplate this painting, to try and see its life, to bring it to life, to identity emotion and mood within it, because there is this movement, this action, this conflict, this drama - without this, we couldn't call this artefact art.
Even in this Fontana sculpture/painting - slits in a red canvas - there is drama. Here we have a conflict between what is and what isn't a surface. There is also a conceptual conflict presented: What does it mean to create art through a canvas instead of upon it? Yet there is further drama in the mere form of the holes. Quality and depth in drama is not an inherent factor, but the presence of drama is what makes this art. And if one can understand this with abstract art, then one can easily conceive of this in cinema.
If drama is the most fundamental aspect of art, of a cinematic space, then how is the movement and presence that drama allows to emerge into existence shaped? It is here that we must question the presence of the artist and audience in the process of a film's creation and come to modes.
Mode means method. For us, it means intention; how one intends and wants to shape and use drama. In cinema, some of the most obvious methods or approaches to cultivating a cinematic space concern the treatment of the reality that drama is bound to (drama being imitative of reality). It is difficult to conceptualise of how we treat the reality of drama in a film when we do not realise that we already know. What, then, are the most different kinds of film that can be made? Could we not suggest that narrative cinema is most different from documentary - so different that, though both are kinds of film, we rarely associate them?
The difference between documentary and narrative cinema is precisely their treatment of the reality bound to drama. Narrative cinema contrives a vision of reality; documentary attempts to capture reality itself. Narrative and documentary are not the only two modes of cinema; one could make a case for avant-garde or experimental cinema as well as animated cinema being fundamental modes or approaches to creating film. After all, the means through which a film is made and watched differs incredibly depending upon it being a live-action narrative film, a documentary, an animated film or an experimental film.
There are other ways in which filmmakers and audience members can approach film. However, we shall return to this topic at a later time. For now, it is important to define mode as, most fundamentally, the initial manipulation of drama at its very base via a developed philosophy or system of thought around reality/drama; this is the most broad and accurate definition.
We move on from here to form. If mode implies what is intended to appear on screen, form defines what actually appears on screen. Form must then be thought of as the rules of a cinematic space. Where these rules come from is multitudinous. Alas, they so often descend from specific schools of thought around mode. All cinema has drama, many kinds of cinema are narrative-based, but not all narrative films have a similar form. One of the basic ways of recognising this is the nationality of a film. Speaking in very general terms, it is very easy to distinguish a European film from a Hollywood (American) film, a French film from a British film, an Indian film from a Japanese film. The reason for this is that each of these regions cultivate cinematic industries and cultures that, in turn, cultivate rules and philosophies of practice. The form of an Indian film is then descendent of India itself; and because India is very different - though not nearly irrevocably so - from, for example, America, so are the forms of their respective cinemas. Indian films then treat the narrative film very different from Americans with general rules outlined as to satisfy regional audiences, filmmakers and means of exhibition.
One can see this best when they contrast regional African cinemas with, again, American cinema. In West African countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, the majority of film production is extremely low budget, the films are so often shot in a few days and then sold as VCDs and DVDs to be seen on television. This dictates to a very extreme degree what appears on screen and how it looks - equally so, so does the fact that huge Hollywood studios (Disney or Marvel, for example) are so developed that they can spend over $100 million on a film. Because Hollywood can afford to, they have contrived a set of rules for their cinematic spaces a world apart from independent, much smaller cinemas across the world. One of the major rule-setters in modern Hollywood cinema is CGI. Whilst we all may want to make a movie about aliens, the form of our film will be dictated by our access to CGI; thus, it is not likely we're going to get that 15 minute long-shot of a spaceship dog fight.
There are a myriad of details that influence form, but many are self-evident: economy, culture, budget, the philosophy of the auteur, censorship, technology, etc. We find the formal stipulations of a film behind every single one of its shots and set-ups. Thus, this is a deeply important aspect of a cinematic space's facade that is most intrinsically connected to those that make it: the audience, filmmakers and the screen.
Finally, we come to the final major influence of how space and time operate in cinema: genre. Genre is a huge topic, too difficult to describe in full. It is, however, profoundly affective in a cinematic space because it so often lies at the forefront of popular, narrative cinema. Genre can then so easily come to overwhelm form, mode and especially a filmmaker if they've not the skill or care to wield genre instead of being wielded. This is because genre is style; it is the flair, accent and articulation attached to story. Genre can so easily be the soul teacher of a filmmaker and/or audience and can become possessive over all of cinema - it is all too easy to find this to be true in so many contexts.
To take a step back, genre can be thought of as similar to fashion and clothes. Who we are, as humans, is built and understood over years of existing and acting in the world; years of mistakes, of effort, of stumbling, guessing, growing, learning and more. Because we are social beings, we, to some degree or another, wear who we are. We wear our inner self as we walk, talk and, generally, present ourselves. Clothes and fashion are one of the key ways in which we represent who we are on the inside, outside. Alas, all too easily, clothes can fail to express the deeper truth: the years that our self has developed and changed to get to this one moment in time. Clothes can be deceptive in this respect, they can even be used as a shield and means of lying. Such is also true of genre. The truth of any story lies in the years of its specific development, from the time it took to formulate as an idea inside someone's head, to the time it took to get on a screen, to be story-boarded, understood by actors, filmed, edited and then exhibited. There is even deeper truth in stories that lies in the history of the artist it belongs to, the history of their industry, culture, in the history of the genre, form or mode that the art belongs to, or the history of all drama, all action and being itself - which stretches back to the beginnings of time. Genre is the clothes on the back of this history and hidden truth. Audiences can then so easily be mystified by it and see this abstract facade alone. Filmmakers can even think of their own art as the genre it falls into and thus generate a copy of other genre films as opposed to cultivate a film from the level of drama, up to mode, up to form and then up to genre (if the final step is even necessary - which it often isn't). Genre, structurally and anatomically speaking, can then be quite a dangerous or overwhelming presence in story. Alas, it is genre that dictates the stylings of form and mode.
To speak specifically of genre can be exhausting, but, to be brief, genre so often requires certain kinds of characters, certain plots, a certain mood, certain themes, etc. Elements such as mood and tone are aesthetic and so attributes of form. Theme, character and plot on the other hand are so often formulated by a mode or approach to film. Alas, genre can manipulate these items. If allowed to possess a film, genre will wholly contrive them.
To clarify our general picture of how cinema works, we shall use this diagram:
Here we have the cinematic space as the black triangle in the centre. This is within the domain of the larger triangle, each corner of which is under the control of certain symbols. At the bottom left is the audience, at the top is the filmmaker, and at the bottom right is the screen. The colouration used here is inspired by Taoist thought and the famous designation of dark and light, of positive and negative. However, this is not the time to discuss the specifics of the colour distribution as we'd have to first understand what is within the cinematic space to better understand this. To provide minimal insight, however, white is tantamount to achieved potential and black unachieved potential; white is whilst black is becoming.
To look within the cinematic space we find four symbols 0, (, | | and S. 0 represents the fundamental, whole singularity of a cinematic space: drama. ( is the initial bending and moulding of the space via logic, it is mode. | | are the rules, direction and boundaries given to a space; it is the form. S is style, is is genre. To conclude, this then embodies everything we have so far discussed and more:
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Nairobi Half Life - 1+1=0.5
Next post:
Narrative Centres
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
A structuralised breakdown of cinema and its function.
If one is to speak about cinema, about its construction and reception, I believe they will inevitably speak in terms of four attributes of the art: drama, mode, form and genre. I have arrived at these four attributes not through an arbitrary collection of terms, but in an attempt to categorise the processes of a film's unfolding. The question underlying these four terms is then: How does space and time move in a film?
There are three fundamental assertions that must be made as to frame an answer to this question: 1) movies have to be made, 2) movies have to be screened and, 3) movies have to be seen. This means that, for cinema to exist, there has to be a group of filmmakers to create a film, a means through which the film has to be shown (a screen of sorts) and an audience to view the finished product. Without these three components, cinema cannot exist; try to deduct one from the equation and a to-be film ceases to be cinema.
Now we have the parameters of a film's existence, a film's existence being a body or entity that we shall call a cinematic space. Because a cinematic space is a construct of a filmmaker(s), audience and screen, we have to question how time and space move within it through these entities.
On the fundamental level of story, cinematic spacetime moves via conflict: drama. Drama is the prerequisite for the existence of cinema; drama is action, drama is what makes space and time initially move in a cinematic space. To understand drama as such, it must be framed as meaning both conflict and action itself. Drama is how we know art exists. It is only because some force moves against another that there can emerge an idea, substance, affection and meaning. Even in the most abstract of paintings, one can identify drama:
There is almost unending drama in this, a Pollock painting. Here we have colour, shape, line, depth, shade, layers and more. Each line and drizzle of paint put upon this canvas interacts with what it lies upon and with all that resides near it. It is then possible to contemplate this painting, to try and see its life, to bring it to life, to identity emotion and mood within it, because there is this movement, this action, this conflict, this drama - without this, we couldn't call this artefact art.
Even in this Fontana sculpture/painting - slits in a red canvas - there is drama. Here we have a conflict between what is and what isn't a surface. There is also a conceptual conflict presented: What does it mean to create art through a canvas instead of upon it? Yet there is further drama in the mere form of the holes. Quality and depth in drama is not an inherent factor, but the presence of drama is what makes this art. And if one can understand this with abstract art, then one can easily conceive of this in cinema.
If drama is the most fundamental aspect of art, of a cinematic space, then how is the movement and presence that drama allows to emerge into existence shaped? It is here that we must question the presence of the artist and audience in the process of a film's creation and come to modes.
Mode means method. For us, it means intention; how one intends and wants to shape and use drama. In cinema, some of the most obvious methods or approaches to cultivating a cinematic space concern the treatment of the reality that drama is bound to (drama being imitative of reality). It is difficult to conceptualise of how we treat the reality of drama in a film when we do not realise that we already know. What, then, are the most different kinds of film that can be made? Could we not suggest that narrative cinema is most different from documentary - so different that, though both are kinds of film, we rarely associate them?
The difference between documentary and narrative cinema is precisely their treatment of the reality bound to drama. Narrative cinema contrives a vision of reality; documentary attempts to capture reality itself. Narrative and documentary are not the only two modes of cinema; one could make a case for avant-garde or experimental cinema as well as animated cinema being fundamental modes or approaches to creating film. After all, the means through which a film is made and watched differs incredibly depending upon it being a live-action narrative film, a documentary, an animated film or an experimental film.
There are other ways in which filmmakers and audience members can approach film. However, we shall return to this topic at a later time. For now, it is important to define mode as, most fundamentally, the initial manipulation of drama at its very base via a developed philosophy or system of thought around reality/drama; this is the most broad and accurate definition.
We move on from here to form. If mode implies what is intended to appear on screen, form defines what actually appears on screen. Form must then be thought of as the rules of a cinematic space. Where these rules come from is multitudinous. Alas, they so often descend from specific schools of thought around mode. All cinema has drama, many kinds of cinema are narrative-based, but not all narrative films have a similar form. One of the basic ways of recognising this is the nationality of a film. Speaking in very general terms, it is very easy to distinguish a European film from a Hollywood (American) film, a French film from a British film, an Indian film from a Japanese film. The reason for this is that each of these regions cultivate cinematic industries and cultures that, in turn, cultivate rules and philosophies of practice. The form of an Indian film is then descendent of India itself; and because India is very different - though not nearly irrevocably so - from, for example, America, so are the forms of their respective cinemas. Indian films then treat the narrative film very different from Americans with general rules outlined as to satisfy regional audiences, filmmakers and means of exhibition.
One can see this best when they contrast regional African cinemas with, again, American cinema. In West African countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, the majority of film production is extremely low budget, the films are so often shot in a few days and then sold as VCDs and DVDs to be seen on television. This dictates to a very extreme degree what appears on screen and how it looks - equally so, so does the fact that huge Hollywood studios (Disney or Marvel, for example) are so developed that they can spend over $100 million on a film. Because Hollywood can afford to, they have contrived a set of rules for their cinematic spaces a world apart from independent, much smaller cinemas across the world. One of the major rule-setters in modern Hollywood cinema is CGI. Whilst we all may want to make a movie about aliens, the form of our film will be dictated by our access to CGI; thus, it is not likely we're going to get that 15 minute long-shot of a spaceship dog fight.
There are a myriad of details that influence form, but many are self-evident: economy, culture, budget, the philosophy of the auteur, censorship, technology, etc. We find the formal stipulations of a film behind every single one of its shots and set-ups. Thus, this is a deeply important aspect of a cinematic space's facade that is most intrinsically connected to those that make it: the audience, filmmakers and the screen.
Finally, we come to the final major influence of how space and time operate in cinema: genre. Genre is a huge topic, too difficult to describe in full. It is, however, profoundly affective in a cinematic space because it so often lies at the forefront of popular, narrative cinema. Genre can then so easily come to overwhelm form, mode and especially a filmmaker if they've not the skill or care to wield genre instead of being wielded. This is because genre is style; it is the flair, accent and articulation attached to story. Genre can so easily be the soul teacher of a filmmaker and/or audience and can become possessive over all of cinema - it is all too easy to find this to be true in so many contexts.
To take a step back, genre can be thought of as similar to fashion and clothes. Who we are, as humans, is built and understood over years of existing and acting in the world; years of mistakes, of effort, of stumbling, guessing, growing, learning and more. Because we are social beings, we, to some degree or another, wear who we are. We wear our inner self as we walk, talk and, generally, present ourselves. Clothes and fashion are one of the key ways in which we represent who we are on the inside, outside. Alas, all too easily, clothes can fail to express the deeper truth: the years that our self has developed and changed to get to this one moment in time. Clothes can be deceptive in this respect, they can even be used as a shield and means of lying. Such is also true of genre. The truth of any story lies in the years of its specific development, from the time it took to formulate as an idea inside someone's head, to the time it took to get on a screen, to be story-boarded, understood by actors, filmed, edited and then exhibited. There is even deeper truth in stories that lies in the history of the artist it belongs to, the history of their industry, culture, in the history of the genre, form or mode that the art belongs to, or the history of all drama, all action and being itself - which stretches back to the beginnings of time. Genre is the clothes on the back of this history and hidden truth. Audiences can then so easily be mystified by it and see this abstract facade alone. Filmmakers can even think of their own art as the genre it falls into and thus generate a copy of other genre films as opposed to cultivate a film from the level of drama, up to mode, up to form and then up to genre (if the final step is even necessary - which it often isn't). Genre, structurally and anatomically speaking, can then be quite a dangerous or overwhelming presence in story. Alas, it is genre that dictates the stylings of form and mode.
To speak specifically of genre can be exhausting, but, to be brief, genre so often requires certain kinds of characters, certain plots, a certain mood, certain themes, etc. Elements such as mood and tone are aesthetic and so attributes of form. Theme, character and plot on the other hand are so often formulated by a mode or approach to film. Alas, genre can manipulate these items. If allowed to possess a film, genre will wholly contrive them.
To clarify our general picture of how cinema works, we shall use this diagram:
Here we have the cinematic space as the black triangle in the centre. This is within the domain of the larger triangle, each corner of which is under the control of certain symbols. At the bottom left is the audience, at the top is the filmmaker, and at the bottom right is the screen. The colouration used here is inspired by Taoist thought and the famous designation of dark and light, of positive and negative. However, this is not the time to discuss the specifics of the colour distribution as we'd have to first understand what is within the cinematic space to better understand this. To provide minimal insight, however, white is tantamount to achieved potential and black unachieved potential; white is whilst black is becoming.
To look within the cinematic space we find four symbols 0, (, | | and S. 0 represents the fundamental, whole singularity of a cinematic space: drama. ( is the initial bending and moulding of the space via logic, it is mode. | | are the rules, direction and boundaries given to a space; it is the form. S is style, is is genre. To conclude, this then embodies everything we have so far discussed and more:
Previous post:
Nairobi Half Life - 1+1=0.5
Next post:
Narrative Centres
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
