Decoupage is done on paper, planned out before production. It’s crazy to think that a whole film can be contained on sheets of paper including exact length of shots. Although we know from personal experience that decoupage can easily evolve on set.

Bunnel talks of decoupage as the ‘cinematic embryo’ on film. By this he means it’s the element that brings film to life. As Robin said you may have a good script and good actors but without decoupage you are left with theatre, not film. Its intriuging that avant-garde filmmakers in France have proved that opposite can be true. That a film with no performers, based entirely on objects and made with simple photographic techniques, can turn out to be a good film.

An isolated shot means hardly anything. What makes a shot special is its spatial and temporal relationship with other shots that build the scene. This film ‘rhythm’ and decoupage are seen as one in the same.

Its interesting that Bunuel attempts to establish an approximate notion of cinematic art through a simple formula.

Cinematic Art  = lens + decoupage + photography + shot

He describes the lens as an indiscrimate eye without predujice but comanded by man, the filmmaker. Resulting in ‘the puriest expression of our time’.

Luis Bunuel