Content area
Abstract
At the end of the 1950s, simultaneously in Canada, France and the United States, filmmakers attempt to record on the go the speech and the gestures of man in action. This change in the way of filming is closely linked with a technical evolution. Light, mobile and easy to handle equipment becomes indispensable. It is also necessary to synchronise the capture of sound and image. Without aiming to amalgamate all the practices of this period in one homogenous film movement, it is possible to regroup them under the notion of synchronistic light cinema. This is why this study regroups selected films not according to aesthetic criteria, but based on a similarity of the production apparatus, focusing on films produced within the NFB, using light and synchronised equipment.
From its inception, this project aims to redefine the cinematographic technique as a non instrumental relationship (Heidegger, 1996). This is why the study of the development of synchronistic light techniques includes the evolution of the material, of practices, and of ideas about the cinematographic medium. This concerns the visual material (cameras, lenses, film, etc.) and sound (microphones, cables, synchronisation, sound recorders), the links that develop between the material and the filmmakers, as well as the evolution of film production conditions at the NFB. Finally, this study is interested in various understandings of the cinematographic medium that coexist at the NFB and which first influence the development of synchronistic light techniques and which then appear in the various aesthetics of the films made using a light and synchronistic apparatus.
This thesis asks the question of how synchronistic light techniques were developed at the National Film Board. Which historical configuration helped configure the technical innovations, the evolution of practices and the understanding of the cinematographic medium?
The first part of this thesis explores the context of appearance of these practices in film history, examining various origins of the aspiration to create synchronistic light material. Part two shows how this aspiration led to the evolution of the film medium by examining three of its characteristics (material, practices and ideology) and exploring the ways chosen by the filmmakers to make the conditions of production more flexible. The thesis continues with an inventory of the available cinematographic material and the main light synchronistic technological innovations. As in all technological evolution, the development of light synchronistic techniques was not linear.
Part three further explores the link between the filmmaker's aims and realisations and the possibilities/limits of the equipment used. The filmmakers precipitate the evolution of these techniques. In turn, the material—relatively mobile and flexible—allows them to film everywhere; the camera carried on the shoulder allows the cameraman to get near the people filmed, while light sound recorders capture the speech of the protagonists in direct sound. Part four presents the film Pour la suite du Monde (Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière and Pierre Perrault, 1962) to illustrate the aesthetic stakes of the synchronistic light evolution of the filming equipment. The relationship of heterogeneous film elements participates in the deterritorialisation of the cinematographic medium, which allows a questioning stance.
