Moving Images, Understanding Media

142 Moving Images: Making Movies, Understanding Media

the phone in the foreground and a television in the background both clearly

in focus. For this shot and others in the fi lm, Gordon Willis achieved this

eff ect through a complicated system of a split diopter mounted on a precisely

calibrated bar.

Moving the Camera

Naturally, even in the fi rst decades of cinema, not all of the issues of photography

revolved around exposure and focus. While the frame of the cinema was

eventually set at a standard 1.33:1 aspect ratio and photography was in black

and white, there were other matters to consider, particularly movement.

Filmmakers have exploited the expressive and dramatic possibilities of

camera movement from early in fi lm history. Dollies were created by fi lm

crews, and inventive solutions were continually devised to move the camera

around. Th rough movement, the camera could place the spectator in the

middle of the action, reveal certain elements of the scene, and off er a changing

perspective to the sequence. A common source of camera displacement at

that time employed a familiar component of the fi rst projected fi lms: train

tracks. Dollies mounted on tracks were used to move cameras during the

silent era of the cinema, and they are still in use by camera crews today.

One of the most important attributes of fi lmmakers has always been

innovation and hands-on improvisation with materials. On set, devising

inventive solutions to diffi cult or exceptional situations has always been a

hallmark of fi lm production. Whether involving setting lights, moving the

camera, or placing microphones, creative and unique problem solving is

essential to successful fi lmmaking. Here is director Allan Dwan explaining

the fi rst use of a dolly in 1915:

Well, we got a farm scraper and we scraped the street fl at, got all the

bumps out. And then we soft ened the tires so they wouldn’t joggle,

Figure 4-24 Tracking shot

from Andrei Tarkovsky’s The

Sacrifi ce with Sven Nykvist at

the camera. (Courtesy Lars-Olof

Löthwall)

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