The Static Shot

Train Arriving at the Station (1896)

The first 'film' of moving images was a static shot. One single shot made the ‘film’. There were many such first films around the world. One of the most memorable images is of the single shot film was called “Train arriving at the station’. The camera was placed at the end of a railway station looking at the entire platform and the railway track where a train arrives and stops. A few passengers get down from the train with their bags and walk away. The shot holds on till most of the people go out of the ‘frame’. End of the film.

More than hundred years have passed since the inception of moving images, movies, film or cinema whatever avatar of the moving images you may like to call them. Cameras have evolved in so many ways and so have evolved the whole craft of film making and the static camera has moved long ago on various moving platforms, on trolleys, dollies ,cranes and many other vehicles to follow the actors or to capture  a piece of action or just circle around the earth. The camera can reach anywhere on a moving gadget which can be operated with remote control to follow an action anywhere on this earth and the near universe through satellites. And we can look at life in whichever way we like and whichever manner we like. But the static shot has remained where it was. Static. Where it is locked on a static platform, looking at a given view in front of it, dispassionately. Looking at a piece of action, silent or talkie, with actors or without actors, looking at a landscape or the sky, just looking. Static shots  often bring a sense of relief after a hectic session of the camera moving in different ways following a piece of action or just reflecting the restless state of the director’s mind with some exceptions of being used by creative directors to build a lyrical sequence to reveal something hidden somewhere. More often than not the camera movements are arbitrary and are used just because they are making ‘movies’! Once Satyajit Ray when asked by a journalist why he had so many camera movements in his film Charulata said in jest because he had just acquired a new trolley!

Many great films and film makers come to one’s mind when one thinks of the austere static shot. One thinks of the Hindi film Mughal E Aazam arguably the best Hindi film ever made in ‘Bollywood’. The film is a celebration the director’s faith in his content; so much so that he hardly felt the need to move his camera except to capture action or a dance movement. The presence of great actors like Dilip Kumar and Madhubala in front of the camera was enough to capture the attention of the audience. In a particular love scene, a particular shot holds on for almost three minutes while the lead actors barely exchange three dialogues and in which Dilip Kumar blinks just twice. It needs faith and conviction in one’s work for a director to render a scene in that manner. More often than not directors have restless camera movements in their films because of the severe anxiety that the audience will get bored if there is no movement in front of their eyes. Hence the camera movement.

                                 

The great Japanese film maker Yasujirō Ozu and the French master of cinema Robert Bresson were great exponents of the 'quiet cinema’ who celebrated the static shot to its sublime utility. In fact, Ozu was famous for his low level static shots and virtually made all his films with static camera positions. An undeterred conviction in one’s rendering of a given reality. This is not to profess that to use a camera movement is a sacrilege but just to bring the attention to the fact that the camera faithfully records a given reality in front of it. The comprehension of the audience will depend on how convincing the content is that is put forth by the 'auteurs' of the film and not by how dazzling the craft of the film is. Of course, this proposition is not applicable to films made essentially to distract the audience from a given reality, creating a make-believe world goading them to believe that they have experienced something new, while not providing the means to understand that experience.

Great exponents of cinema use the camera to see what is there in front of their mind image and not falsify a given reality even if its purpose is to entertain. A static shot can be the mirror of the director’s mind and reveal how one looks at life. As the Zen Master Tenno once told his students “When you look, just look; if you wonder about it, you won’t get the point.”

                                                       

Vishnu Mathur,

October 14. 2013.

Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (1952) Film by Ozu