DIRECT CONTROL x DELEUZE – A U M O N I Q U E

“Certain great movements are like a director’s signature, which characterise the whole of a film, or even the whole of an oeuvre, but resonate with the relative movement of a particular signed imaged, or a particular detail in the image.” – Gilles Deleuze

The idea of containing a vision is materialised through the frame. From creativity to cinematic realism, the system of the relative space within the frame has always been supported by closed systems; coursing through an imaginary space where instead of objects and details simply existing, they reverberate through links and functions. As Deleuze notes, frames signify qualitatively different aspects, where things “subsist” or “insist” on in-field space and out-of-field space as if connected through “a more radical Elsewhere, outside the homogenous space and time.”

This Elsewhere is the interest I have in the concept and matters of the frame. If a frame is a geometric boundary, four walls of reflection, an aspect ratio or a mental image; what is within this closed system? For one, we can note a few obvious systems: mise en scène, characters, colour, movement, setting – but, how do these components work concurrently to create a virtual and dynamic frame?

The below images are shots from film sequences we viewed in class. I chose these images for a particular purpose to denote the limits and elements within the frame. Considering the extension of the images below, each shot has a succession of images that have both passed and will yet to follow. Contained through the stills, these closed systems become frozen by what Deleuze explains, “the limitation and neutralisation of the first“, where “framing [quite frankly] becomes the art of choosing parts of all kinds to become a set“. In other words, the art of choosing is the art of framing, and while these closed systems dictate what data – or limits – are unfortunately available, the nature of these parts is where the vision arises.