Abstract
In this article Charles Rees offers his personal insights about how image and sound can be re-‘read’ in such a way as to transcend current narrative constraints. He offers examples of films which have influenced and impressed him, and extrapolates on ways in which cinema might develop in the future.
My four views stretch over a long period.
Each individual sees differently.
The Camera Image sees differently from humans.
Fourth View: The Director's Voice
The
last view is in my mind’s eye. One day, I imagine, the image in time will be just that. I mean the image itself will
be in motion. It shall no longer be achieved by an illusion of movement,
the projection of a series of static images in rapid succession. We shall
have captured time. However, until then we still have to deal with the
flickering frame’s adverse effect on our visual apprehension. The
flickering puts us into a mild hypnotic trance.
Compare
the way you look at anything in your room with the way you look at the flickering image. Flickering screens
make us see differently. Mesmerized, our sensibility shifts. We become
more susceptible emotionally and less sensitive rationally and spiritually.
Our viewing is made systematically unbalanced.
This was not the case in the seventeenth century when Dutch painters, such as Johannes Vermeer, gazed at the image in
time at their camera obscuras. The painters saw nature’s image in its
essential state on large ground-glass screens. They were not encumbered by
the effect of mechanical and chemical means of capturing it: the whirring
cameras and photographic or digital reproduction. The painters fixed the
image by paint. The image in their camera obscura was extraordinarily calm
– calmer than looking at the subject with their own eyes. It
encouraged contemplation. We, on the other hand, have had to make do with
an image that makes us enervated and more emotional.
