Week 4’s reading and lecture revolved around Gilles Deleuze ‘Frame and shot‘ (2005) reading, where he talks about the frame as “containing the world”. Daniel Binns started off the lecture by saying that the idea of framing is to contain “the chaos of reality” – to contain the whole world within the borders of the camera. To show the world as it is. Daniel Binns drew inspiration from what the Lumiere Brothers were able to do and master using “framing” in the early days of cinema – with an example of one of the most iconic scene/framing in cinema.

With this framing, the Lumiere Brothers wowed the audience, having to figure out whether the oncoming train was going to come out of the screen, and trying to see where the train came from. In this simple, yet complicated framing, pioneered the importance of framing and containing the world.

When we frame, when we create, write; we control [not only the frame, but also time and movement]

According to Deleuze, “The frame is a language that can be read and interpreted, but one that we can also write with – the frame has always been geometrical or physical” (p. 13). Framing isn’t just boxing or containing what is in and of the world – it also essentially a way to write film. You don’t just show what’s in the frame – you write, communicate, control, and you create with frame. The colours, mise-en-scene, each shot and scene, composition, everything that’s within the frame is used to create and write film.

However, Deleuze also says that framing isn’t just what can be seen within the frame. It is also what cannot be seen – “The out of field refers to what is neither seen nor understood, but is nevertheless perfectly present’ (p. 16)” Essentially, when you frame what can be seen, you also unconsciously position what is beyond the frame itself – the outside world. Daniel Binns used Dziga Vertov’s ‘The Man with a Movie Camera‘ (1928) as one of the examples of creating and writing film that’s beyond walls of the frame. Behind the frame of the movie, lies the context and political struggle that’s embedded within the film. As Vertov shows the life of the people in the city. the audience also gets a contextual sense of the way life is during that period of time.

Framing also plays a vital role in capturing movement. “More movement…’the shot is the movement image. In so far as it relates movement to a whole which changes” (p. 22). When you frame a still image, you essentially frame movement that is frozen in time.