WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.899 When you sit down in a dark theater or fire up 00:00:03.899 --> 00:00:06.500 your television at the end of the day, you basically 00:00:06.500 --> 00:00:08.820 take the most foundational rule of the medium 00:00:08.820 --> 00:00:11.619 completely for granted. Right. You fully expect 00:00:11.619 --> 00:00:14.000 the pictures to move. Exactly. I mean, it is 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:16.179 the baseline contract of cinema. You give them 00:00:16.179 --> 00:00:18.660 your time and they give you the optical illusion 00:00:18.660 --> 00:00:21.339 of continuous motion. Yeah. But what if they 00:00:21.339 --> 00:00:24.280 don't? What if a filmmaker intentionally you 00:00:24.280 --> 00:00:27.059 know, just strips away the motion entirely. Right. 00:00:27.260 --> 00:00:30.420 Relying solely on still photos and sound. And 00:00:30.420 --> 00:00:32.240 somehow they still manage to leave you on the 00:00:32.240 --> 00:00:34.350 edge of your seat. Think about what your daily 00:00:34.350 --> 00:00:36.250 media diet looks like right now. I mean, you 00:00:36.250 --> 00:00:38.530 are likely scrolling through high -framerate 00:00:38.530 --> 00:00:41.170 TikToks, autoplaying YouTube videos. Oh, absorbing 00:00:41.170 --> 00:00:42.890 flashing advertisements on the street, yeah. 00:00:43.049 --> 00:00:45.890 Exactly. We are just swimming in this sea of 00:00:45.890 --> 00:00:48.630 hypermotion from the second we wake up. So when 00:00:48.630 --> 00:00:51.090 a filmmaker hits the brakes and forces you to 00:00:51.090 --> 00:00:54.170 stare at a frozen image, it feels almost transgressive. 00:00:54.289 --> 00:00:57.310 It really does. It's jarring. It is. Yet examining 00:00:57.310 --> 00:00:59.609 how a director can command your attention using 00:00:59.609 --> 00:01:02.740 only static photographs, well, It reveals the 00:01:02.740 --> 00:01:05.159 underlying hidden mechanics of storytelling itself. 00:01:05.900 --> 00:01:09.079 It exposes the absolute core of why we care about 00:01:09.079 --> 00:01:11.700 what happens on a screen. OK, let's unpack this, 00:01:11.959 --> 00:01:13.900 because we are looking at a really fascinating 00:01:13.900 --> 00:01:17.140 Wikipedia article today about a cinematic paradox 00:01:17.140 --> 00:01:20.670 known as the still image film. or sometimes it's 00:01:20.670 --> 00:01:23.409 called the picture movie. And to even wrap our 00:01:23.409 --> 00:01:25.730 heads around how this works, we really need to 00:01:25.730 --> 00:01:28.909 clarify what this actually is because we are 00:01:28.909 --> 00:01:30.650 not just talking about a corporate PowerPoint 00:01:30.650 --> 00:01:33.769 presentation said to elevator music. Oh, far 00:01:33.769 --> 00:01:35.530 from it. I mean, the defining characteristic 00:01:35.530 --> 00:01:37.689 of a still image film is simply that the visual 00:01:37.689 --> 00:01:40.709 track consists of static photographs rather than, 00:01:40.709 --> 00:01:43.010 you know, consecutive frames rolling at 24 frames 00:01:43.010 --> 00:01:45.049 per second. Right. But the crucial distinction 00:01:45.049 --> 00:01:46.930 is that everything else happening in the theater 00:01:46.930 --> 00:01:49.750 remains entirely aggressively cinematic. Exactly. 00:01:50.129 --> 00:01:52.650 The filmmakers lean incredibly heavily on robust 00:01:52.650 --> 00:01:55.510 sound design. You have sweeping orchestral scores, 00:01:55.909 --> 00:01:58.569 intricate foley work. Where artists are physically 00:01:58.569 --> 00:02:01.010 recreating everyday sound effects in a studio, 00:02:01.230 --> 00:02:03.409 right? Yeah, plus you've got layered ambient 00:02:03.409 --> 00:02:06.549 noise and fully acted spoken dialogue. So they 00:02:06.549 --> 00:02:09.949 are effectively using the audio track to drag 00:02:09.949 --> 00:02:12.870 the static images into a cinematic space. That's 00:02:12.870 --> 00:02:15.250 a great way to put it. And they're using traditional 00:02:15.250 --> 00:02:17.750 film editing techniques to dictate the pacing. 00:02:18.009 --> 00:02:21.449 Right? Like, they might use a slow, agonizing 00:02:21.449 --> 00:02:24.330 dissolve between two photos to show the passage 00:02:24.330 --> 00:02:26.990 of time. Or they might use the camera to physically 00:02:26.990 --> 00:02:30.569 explore a single frozen image. You know, zooming 00:02:30.569 --> 00:02:33.810 in on a specific detail or panning across a wide 00:02:33.810 --> 00:02:36.250 landscape photograph. What's fascinating here 00:02:36.250 --> 00:02:39.129 is how stripping away the moving image forces 00:02:39.129 --> 00:02:41.250 every other element of the production to work 00:02:41.250 --> 00:02:43.590 overtime. Yeah. When the visual is static, the 00:02:43.590 --> 00:02:45.849 sound design and the editing become the sole 00:02:45.849 --> 00:02:48.699 drivers of momentum. and while some directors 00:02:48.699 --> 00:02:51.469 do this as an artistic flex, Looking back at 00:02:51.469 --> 00:02:53.710 the history of the medium, it was frequently 00:02:53.710 --> 00:02:56.430 born out of profound practical necessity. It 00:02:56.430 --> 00:02:58.909 really was. It was sort of the ultimate independent 00:02:58.909 --> 00:03:01.389 filmmaking hack. The flexibility it offers is 00:03:01.389 --> 00:03:03.150 actually staggering when you think about it. 00:03:03.710 --> 00:03:07.330 Take Robert Downey Sr.'s 1966 feature film, Shaved 00:03:07.330 --> 00:03:10.090 Elbows. Oh yeah, that's a perfect example. It's 00:03:10.090 --> 00:03:13.030 constructed almost entirely from still photographs, 00:03:13.530 --> 00:03:15.889 with just a few live action sequences sprinkled 00:03:15.889 --> 00:03:18.569 in to bridge the gaps. And because they were 00:03:18.569 --> 00:03:21.169 shooting in stills, The filmmakers essentially 00:03:21.169 --> 00:03:23.389 untethered themselves from the script. Right, 00:03:23.389 --> 00:03:25.810 because they could improvise their dialogue entirely 00:03:25.810 --> 00:03:28.169 in post -production. Exactly. I mean, imagine 00:03:28.169 --> 00:03:31.870 the freedom of that process. In a standard live 00:03:31.870 --> 00:03:34.789 -action film, you are completely a slave to the 00:03:34.789 --> 00:03:37.090 footage you shot on the day. Oh, totally. If 00:03:37.090 --> 00:03:39.430 an actor flubs a line, or if you get into the 00:03:39.430 --> 00:03:41.009 editing room and decide a different joke could 00:03:41.009 --> 00:03:43.849 land better, you have a massive problem. A huge 00:03:43.849 --> 00:03:46.469 problem. You either have to use a bad take... 00:03:46.539 --> 00:03:49.379 or bring the actor back months later for expensive 00:03:49.379 --> 00:03:52.870 automated dialogue replacement. You have to try 00:03:52.870 --> 00:03:55.090 and perfectly match their new audio to the lip 00:03:55.090 --> 00:03:57.110 movements they originally made on screen. But 00:03:57.110 --> 00:03:59.629 with a still image film, there are literally 00:03:59.629 --> 00:04:02.750 no moving lips to sync to. You can rewrite the 00:04:02.750 --> 00:04:04.949 entire narrative arc in the recording booth if 00:04:04.949 --> 00:04:07.689 you feel like it. It is essentially an incredibly 00:04:07.689 --> 00:04:10.930 high production audio drama that just decided 00:04:10.930 --> 00:04:14.030 to hijack a museum photography exhibit. That's 00:04:14.030 --> 00:04:16.509 exactly what it is. Stripping away the limitation 00:04:16.509 --> 00:04:19.129 of synchronized sound and motion actually decreases 00:04:19.129 --> 00:04:21.589 the filmmakers limitations. It turns a massive 00:04:21.480 --> 00:04:24.019 of budget constraint into an absolute superpower. 00:04:24.259 --> 00:04:27.060 Yeah, and it also completely neutralizes one 00:04:27.060 --> 00:04:29.560 of the biggest logistical nightmares of filmmaking, 00:04:29.899 --> 00:04:32.500 which is physical danger. Oh, the window stunt. 00:04:32.620 --> 00:04:34.660 I was amazed reading about this. That's so good. 00:04:35.040 --> 00:04:37.399 There is a famous sequence in Chaffed Elbows 00:04:37.399 --> 00:04:40.060 where one character appears to throw another 00:04:40.060 --> 00:04:42.740 character out of a high -rise window. If you 00:04:42.740 --> 00:04:45.399 were shooting a live -action indie film in 1966, 00:04:46.420 --> 00:04:49.959 pulling off a high fall stunt requires specialized 00:04:49.959 --> 00:04:52.819 stunt doubles, expensive rigging. Safety mats 00:04:52.819 --> 00:04:55.079 on the ground, a mountain of insurance liability. 00:04:55.459 --> 00:04:57.860 Exactly. How did they afford that on a shoestring 00:04:57.860 --> 00:05:00.100 budget? Well, they didn't have to. Because it's 00:05:00.100 --> 00:05:02.600 a still image film, there is zero risk. They 00:05:02.600 --> 00:05:04.939 literally just posed the actors safely near a 00:05:04.939 --> 00:05:07.379 window, snapped a dramatic photograph of their 00:05:07.379 --> 00:05:09.240 strained faces, and then let the audio do the 00:05:09.240 --> 00:05:11.879 rest. Wow. Yeah, just the sound of shattering 00:05:11.879 --> 00:05:15.319 glass, a fading scream, maybe a distant thud. 00:05:15.610 --> 00:05:18.449 the sound design plants the seed, and the audience's 00:05:18.449 --> 00:05:20.910 imagination physically constructs the stunt in 00:05:20.910 --> 00:05:24.649 their own minds. It is brilliant. But using stills 00:05:24.649 --> 00:05:27.110 as a budget hack for an indie comedy is one thing. 00:05:27.509 --> 00:05:30.170 If we trace this technique back to its real roots, 00:05:30.649 --> 00:05:33.769 it didn't start as a stylistic choice. No, it 00:05:33.769 --> 00:05:36.850 started because still images were the only visual 00:05:36.850 --> 00:05:39.389 evidence that actually existed. Right. If we 00:05:39.389 --> 00:05:41.930 connect this to the bigger picture, the still 00:05:41.930 --> 00:05:45.319 image film really found its first major foothold 00:05:45.319 --> 00:05:47.699 in the documentary format. If you want to make 00:05:47.699 --> 00:05:50.259 a movie exploring historical events that happened 00:05:50.259 --> 00:05:52.459 long before the invention of the motion picture 00:05:52.459 --> 00:05:55.220 camera, you have a fundamental problem. You have 00:05:55.220 --> 00:05:58.259 zero footage. Exactly. The source material references 00:05:58.259 --> 00:06:01.100 a fascinating 1961 letter written to the New 00:06:01.100 --> 00:06:04.120 York Times by a documentary filmmaker named Lewis 00:06:04.120 --> 00:06:06.680 Clyde Stoneman. Oh, right. He wrote in to survey 00:06:06.680 --> 00:06:08.879 the early pioneers of this technique, proving 00:06:08.879 --> 00:06:11.060 that directors had been manipulating static images 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:13.819 for decades. Yeah, he pointed back to the 1930s 00:06:13.819 --> 00:06:15.980 and 40s filmmakers were really trying to bring 00:06:15.980 --> 00:06:18.480 fine art and ancient history to the masses. Like 00:06:18.480 --> 00:06:21.839 Kurt Ortel who made a film in 1938 called Michelangelo 00:06:21.839 --> 00:06:24.000 which was later re -edited into an Oscar -winning 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:26.709 documentary. Right. And you had Belgian directors 00:06:26.709 --> 00:06:29.329 like Henri Stork making lyrical films about the 00:06:29.329 --> 00:06:31.670 painter Paul Delvaux and Paul Heisserts doing 00:06:31.670 --> 00:06:34.389 the same for Peter Paul Rubens in the late 1940s. 00:06:34.550 --> 00:06:36.129 They were basically trying to figure out how 00:06:36.129 --> 00:06:38.189 to make a painting feel like a movie. Exactly. 00:06:38.589 --> 00:06:41.850 And then in 1950, Paul Falkenberg and Louis Jacobs 00:06:41.850 --> 00:06:43.949 pushed it even further with a film called Lincoln 00:06:43.949 --> 00:06:46.050 Speaks at Gettysburg. And they didn't even use 00:06:46.050 --> 00:06:47.970 photographs for that one, did they? No, they 00:06:47.970 --> 00:06:51.870 used entirely 19th century newspaper engravings 00:06:51.870 --> 00:06:54.129 and etchings. Think about the challenge there. 00:06:54.329 --> 00:06:58.110 How do you take a rigid black and white woodcut 00:06:58.110 --> 00:07:01.649 from an 1860s newspaper and make an audience 00:07:01.649 --> 00:07:04.389 feel the emotional weight of the Civil War? It's 00:07:04.389 --> 00:07:07.170 incredibly difficult. But they did it by isolating 00:07:07.170 --> 00:07:10.689 faces in the crowd, slowly panning across the 00:07:10.689 --> 00:07:13.170 endings, while a booming voice delivered the 00:07:13.170 --> 00:07:16.629 Gettysburg address, backed by this swelling patriotic 00:07:16.629 --> 00:07:18.990 music. Yeah, but whenever we talk about panning 00:07:18.990 --> 00:07:21.149 and zooming across old historical photographs, 00:07:21.250 --> 00:07:23.430 there was one specific name that instantly comes 00:07:23.430 --> 00:07:26.620 to mind. Ken Burns. Right. The technique is so 00:07:26.620 --> 00:07:29.519 synonymous with his Civil War and baseball documentaries 00:07:29.519 --> 00:07:32.680 that the Ken Burns effect is literally a default 00:07:32.680 --> 00:07:35.879 pre -programmed setting on almost every piece 00:07:35.879 --> 00:07:37.800 of video editing software in the world today. 00:07:37.980 --> 00:07:40.000 Wait, so Ken Burns didn't invent the Ken Burns 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:41.920 effect? We have guys doing this with etchings 00:07:41.920 --> 00:07:45.720 in 1950. He absolutely did not. And to his immense 00:07:45.720 --> 00:07:48.339 credit, Burns is usually the first person to 00:07:48.339 --> 00:07:51.430 correct people on that. Oh really? Yeah, he heavily 00:07:51.430 --> 00:07:54.350 credits his own mentor, a documentary filmmaker 00:07:54.350 --> 00:07:57.170 and photographer named Jerome Liebling, for teaching 00:07:57.170 --> 00:07:59.810 him the philosophy of incorporating still photographs 00:07:59.810 --> 00:08:02.810 into moving pictures. But Burns also frequently 00:08:02.810 --> 00:08:05.790 points to a very specific legendary Canadian 00:08:05.790 --> 00:08:08.610 documentary as a massive inspiration. City of 00:08:08.610 --> 00:08:11.449 Gold. It's a 1957 documentary from the National 00:08:11.449 --> 00:08:14.250 Film Board of Canada, co -directed by Colin Lowe 00:08:14.250 --> 00:08:16.689 and Wolf Koenig. And this wasn't just some obscure 00:08:16.689 --> 00:08:19.410 experiment, it was a massive critical hit. Yeah, 00:08:19.490 --> 00:08:21.509 it won the Pre -Dude Documentaire at the Cannes 00:08:21.509 --> 00:08:23.670 Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy 00:08:23.670 --> 00:08:26.170 Award. They were documenting the Klondike Gold 00:08:26.170 --> 00:08:28.550 Rush. What Lowe and Koenig pulled off in City 00:08:28.550 --> 00:08:31.389 of Gold was essentially early visual alchemy. 00:08:31.810 --> 00:08:34.450 They used a piece of technology called an animation 00:08:34.450 --> 00:08:36.870 camera. Okay, what does that look like? Well, 00:08:36.870 --> 00:08:39.629 imagine a film camera mounted vertically on a 00:08:39.629 --> 00:08:42.350 track, pointing straight down at a flat desk. 00:08:42.389 --> 00:08:45.320 Like a copy stand you'd see in a library. Precisely. 00:08:45.559 --> 00:08:48.379 They would place an archival glass plate photograph 00:08:48.379 --> 00:08:53.039 of a Klondike prospector flat on that desk. Then 00:08:53.039 --> 00:08:56.440 by physically turning a crank to lower the camera 00:08:56.440 --> 00:08:58.960 a fraction of an inch, taking a single frame 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:01.559 of film, lowering it another fraction and taking 00:09:01.559 --> 00:09:05.019 another frame, they created a perfectly smooth 00:09:05.019 --> 00:09:08.299 phantom zoom. Wow. Yeah, they could push intimately 00:09:08.299 --> 00:09:11.000 close into the frozen, exhausted faces of these 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:13.259 men who had been dead for decades. They took 00:09:13.259 --> 00:09:16.159 completely static moments frozen in time and 00:09:16.159 --> 00:09:18.700 breathed an artificial cinematic life into them. 00:09:18.879 --> 00:09:20.860 Using the mechanical tools of animation to tell 00:09:20.860 --> 00:09:23.820 a gritty non -fiction historical story, it makes 00:09:23.820 --> 00:09:26.200 total logical sense. It really does. If you were 00:09:26.200 --> 00:09:28.700 making a historical documentary, the audience 00:09:28.700 --> 00:09:31.039 implicitly understands why they are looking at 00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:34.340 photographs. But taking this technique and applying 00:09:34.340 --> 00:09:38.389 it to pure fictional narrative, That feels like 00:09:38.389 --> 00:09:41.269 a massive risky leap. Oh, absolutely. I mean, 00:09:41.350 --> 00:09:43.289 if you want to tell a made -up story, why on 00:09:43.289 --> 00:09:45.429 earth would you intentionally freeze the screen 00:09:45.429 --> 00:09:47.990 and challenge your audience's patience like that? 00:09:48.159 --> 00:09:50.779 It is incredibly risky, which is exactly why 00:09:50.779 --> 00:09:53.399 narrative still image films are exceedingly rare. 00:09:53.820 --> 00:09:57.120 They are almost universally categorized as experimental 00:09:57.120 --> 00:10:00.000 or avant -garde cinema, and the vast majority 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:03.139 of them are short films. In fact, tackling a 00:10:03.139 --> 00:10:05.320 narrative still image short is a rite of passage, 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:07.639 often like a mandatory curriculum requirement, 00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:10.399 in many university film programs around the world. 00:10:10.549 --> 00:10:12.610 which I suppose makes a lot of pedagogical sense. 00:10:12.669 --> 00:10:14.929 If you strip away the distraction of complicated 00:10:14.929 --> 00:10:17.649 camera blocking, lighting moving subjects, and 00:10:17.649 --> 00:10:19.950 actor choreography, you force a film student 00:10:19.950 --> 00:10:22.750 to focus entirely on the bedrock of cinema. Exactly. 00:10:22.870 --> 00:10:25.149 Pacing, sound design, and narrative structure. 00:10:25.230 --> 00:10:27.090 It really separates the storytellers from the 00:10:27.090 --> 00:10:29.509 technicians. Even George Lucas cut his teeth 00:10:29.509 --> 00:10:32.289 this way. His very first film, a short called 00:10:32.289 --> 00:10:35.250 Look at Life, was constructed entirely of still 00:10:35.250 --> 00:10:38.250 images. Wow, really? Yeah. Lucas was heavily 00:10:38.250 --> 00:10:40.220 influenced by another Canadian director, Arthur 00:10:40.220 --> 00:10:44.139 Lipset, particularly Lipset's 1961 Oscar -nominated 00:10:44.139 --> 00:10:47.740 short. Very nice, very nice. Fascinating. But 00:10:47.740 --> 00:10:50.279 when film historians debate the absolute medical 00:10:50.279 --> 00:10:53.059 of the narrative still image genre, all roads 00:10:53.059 --> 00:10:56.360 inevitably lead to Paris in 1962. Chris Marker's 00:10:56.360 --> 00:10:59.299 Legite. It is a masterpiece. It's a brilliant, 00:10:59.299 --> 00:11:02.779 haunting French science fiction film about time 00:11:02.779 --> 00:11:05.799 travel, fragmented memory, and a post -apocalyptic 00:11:05.799 --> 00:11:08.419 future following World War III. And it is told 00:11:08.419 --> 00:11:11.360 almost entirely. Through high contrast, black 00:11:11.360 --> 00:11:14.539 and white still photos. If the plot of a time 00:11:14.539 --> 00:11:16.460 traveler being sent back to the past to save 00:11:16.460 --> 00:11:18.700 the future sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's 00:11:18.700 --> 00:11:21.000 because La Jetée was the direct inspiration for 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:23.899 the 1995 Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt blockbuster 00:11:23.899 --> 00:11:26.500 12 Monkeys. Oh, exactly. But what makes La Jetée 00:11:26.500 --> 00:11:29.059 so effective is how the medium perfectly matches 00:11:29.059 --> 00:11:31.779 the message. The film is about a man haunted 00:11:31.779 --> 00:11:34.279 by a single frozen memory from his childhood 00:11:34.279 --> 00:11:37.730 on a pier at an airport. So, telling the story 00:11:37.730 --> 00:11:40.750 through frozen photographs inherently makes the 00:11:40.750 --> 00:11:43.769 audience feel the protagonist's disjointed experience 00:11:43.769 --> 00:11:47.230 of time. It works perfectly, but Legite is only 00:11:47.230 --> 00:11:50.190 28 minutes long. Sustaining that level of tension 00:11:50.190 --> 00:11:52.450 and audience buy -in for a feature -length film 00:11:52.450 --> 00:11:55.509 is almost unheard of. It requires a monumental 00:11:55.509 --> 00:11:58.950 level of audacity. Which brings us to Jonas Cuero's 00:11:58.950 --> 00:12:02.750 2007 Mexican film, Year of the Nail. Courant 00:12:02.750 --> 00:12:05.250 did something so extraordinarily bold it borders 00:12:05.250 --> 00:12:07.529 on insanity. It really does. He didn't write 00:12:07.529 --> 00:12:10.370 a script, hire actors, and carefully stage photographs 00:12:10.370 --> 00:12:12.789 to match the story. Instead, he just carried 00:12:12.789 --> 00:12:15.830 a camera around and took unstaged real -life 00:12:15.830 --> 00:12:18.330 photographs of his actual life over the course 00:12:18.330 --> 00:12:21.149 of an entire year. Yeah, he documented his friends, 00:12:21.309 --> 00:12:23.830 his family, random parties, empty rooms. And 00:12:23.830 --> 00:12:26.490 then he took that massive pile of random photographs 00:12:26.490 --> 00:12:28.929 and pieced them together to construct a totally 00:12:28.929 --> 00:12:31.519 fictional dramatic narrative. He essentially 00:12:31.519 --> 00:12:33.740 reverse engineered a feature film out of his 00:12:33.740 --> 00:12:36.240 own personal photo album. He found the story 00:12:36.240 --> 00:12:38.980 hidden in the margins of the still images. But 00:12:38.980 --> 00:12:41.679 hold on, if Cuaron is just using random photos 00:12:41.679 --> 00:12:44.019 from his life, doesn't that inherently limit 00:12:44.019 --> 00:12:46.299 the story he can tell? Well, you would think 00:12:46.299 --> 00:12:48.779 so. I mean, he is entirely at the mercy of whatever 00:12:48.779 --> 00:12:50.899 happened to be in front of his lens that year. 00:12:51.840 --> 00:12:54.519 How do you script a compelling narrative around 00:12:54.519 --> 00:12:56.960 random vacations and Tuesday afternoons? That 00:12:56.960 --> 00:12:59.279 is exactly where the power of audio comes back 00:12:59.279 --> 00:13:02.179 into play. Cuaron wrote the script after he arranged 00:13:02.179 --> 00:13:05.379 the photos. Ah. He brought in voice actors to 00:13:05.379 --> 00:13:07.700 record dramatic dialogue layered in emotional 00:13:07.700 --> 00:13:10.860 music and laid that audio track over pictures 00:13:10.860 --> 00:13:13.860 of his real life friends. So the audio completely 00:13:13.860 --> 00:13:16.980 changes the context. Exactly. Suddenly, a candid 00:13:16.980 --> 00:13:19.139 photo of a woman looking out a window isn't just 00:13:19.139 --> 00:13:22.200 a snapshot. With a somber cello playing and a 00:13:22.200 --> 00:13:24.559 voiceover about a messy breakup, that candid 00:13:24.559 --> 00:13:27.460 photo becomes a moment of profound cinematic 00:13:27.460 --> 00:13:30.240 heartbreak. He manipulated the context of reality 00:13:30.240 --> 00:13:33.129 using sound. Now, while Year of the Nail is an 00:13:33.129 --> 00:13:35.409 extreme example of an entire feature film doing 00:13:35.409 --> 00:13:37.889 this, mainstream directors have been quietly 00:13:37.889 --> 00:13:39.970 borrowing this technique for individual scenes 00:13:39.970 --> 00:13:42.450 for decades. Oh, absolutely. They don't usually 00:13:42.450 --> 00:13:44.970 do the whole movie, but they will weaponize the 00:13:44.970 --> 00:13:47.669 still image for a specific effect. Right. When 00:13:47.669 --> 00:13:50.250 a mainstream director wants to create a jarring, 00:13:50.509 --> 00:13:52.970 highly stylized, or psychologically subjective 00:13:52.970 --> 00:13:55.370 moment, they will suddenly drop the frame rate 00:13:55.370 --> 00:13:59.149 to zero. Like in gritty 1970s cinema. Yeah, like 00:13:59.149 --> 00:14:01.639 Alan J. Pakula's paranoid thriller, The Parallax 00:14:01.639 --> 00:14:04.220 View, where still images are used in a brainwashing 00:14:04.220 --> 00:14:06.440 sequence. Or even John Cassavetes' Husbands in 00:14:06.440 --> 00:14:10.940 1970 and Superfly in 1972. Exactly. And it's 00:14:10.940 --> 00:14:13.679 used brilliantly in Tom Tykwer's run, Lola run, 00:14:13.759 --> 00:14:16.659 in 1998. During those... Jonas Cuaron actually 00:14:16.659 --> 00:14:19.019 made a fascinating observation about how audiences 00:14:19.019 --> 00:14:21.700 physically and psychologically perceived his 00:14:21.700 --> 00:14:24.600 film. He openly admitted that because we are 00:14:24.600 --> 00:14:27.860 so conditioned to expect motion, many viewers 00:14:27.860 --> 00:14:30.379 are initially completely turned off. Yeah, it 00:14:30.379 --> 00:14:32.580 feels fundamentally wrong to the brain. You sit 00:14:32.580 --> 00:14:34.279 in the theater, the first photo pops up, and 00:14:34.279 --> 00:14:36.419 you think the projector is broken. The brain 00:14:36.419 --> 00:14:39.539 expects the tum four frames per second. It demands 00:14:39.539 --> 00:14:42.179 the illusion. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:14:42.899 --> 00:14:45.340 Cuaron noted that it takes people exactly seven 00:14:45.340 --> 00:14:47.759 minutes to adjust to the style. Seven minutes. 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:50.019 Seven minutes. Assuming the story is actually 00:14:50.019 --> 00:14:52.220 engaging, of course. I actually tried to put 00:14:52.220 --> 00:14:55.220 myself in the audience's shoes for this. Seven 00:14:55.220 --> 00:14:57.840 minutes of staring at photos, waiting for them 00:14:57.840 --> 00:15:00.419 to move, feeling that rising frustration. It's 00:15:00.419 --> 00:15:02.279 a long time to be frustrated in a theater. It 00:15:02.279 --> 00:15:05.039 is. I just marvel at the plasticity of the human 00:15:05.039 --> 00:15:08.899 brain. Your own mind will essentially throw a 00:15:08.899 --> 00:15:11.519 cognitive tantrum for six minutes, demanding 00:15:11.519 --> 00:15:14.279 the moving video it was promised. And then in 00:15:14.279 --> 00:15:16.120 minute seven, it just gives up. It accepts the 00:15:16.120 --> 00:15:18.840 new reality. It adapts because the human brain 00:15:18.840 --> 00:15:20.980 is fundamentally a narrative -seeking machine. 00:15:21.139 --> 00:15:23.700 It wants closure. It wants to know what happens 00:15:23.700 --> 00:15:26.679 next in the story. So rather than stay frustrated, 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:29.519 the brain starts doing the work itself. It starts 00:15:29.519 --> 00:15:32.019 filling in the visual gaps between the photographs, 00:15:32.600 --> 00:15:34.399 stitching the narrative together based on the 00:15:34.399 --> 00:15:38.360 audio cues. So what does this all mean? If a 00:15:38.360 --> 00:15:41.539 film has a cinematic musical score, cinematic 00:15:41.539 --> 00:15:44.590 audio mixing, cinematic visual editing like pans 00:15:44.590 --> 00:15:47.769 and dissolves, and a purely cinematic narrative 00:15:47.769 --> 00:15:51.850 arc, does the physical image on the screen actually 00:15:51.850 --> 00:15:54.429 need to move? This raises an important question 00:15:54.429 --> 00:15:56.409 about definitions, and it can get surprisingly 00:15:56.409 --> 00:15:59.289 heated. Really? Oh yeah. There is a rigid camp 00:15:59.289 --> 00:16:02.370 of film purists and theorists who argue that 00:16:02.370 --> 00:16:04.870 still -image films cannot genuinely be considered 00:16:04.870 --> 00:16:06.730 motion pictures. Because of the lack of motion. 00:16:06.950 --> 00:16:09.669 Exactly. They argue that because they lack that 00:16:09.669 --> 00:16:12.029 fundamental optical illusion of continuous motion, 00:16:12.250 --> 00:16:14.330 they fail the baseline definition of cinema. 00:16:15.070 --> 00:16:17.769 To these purists, structurally speaking, films 00:16:17.769 --> 00:16:20.809 like Le Jeté or Year of the Nail are just highly 00:16:20.809 --> 00:16:23.450 sophisticated slideshows. A slideshow. That feels 00:16:23.450 --> 00:16:26.049 incredibly reductive. It does, doesn't it? Calling 00:16:26.049 --> 00:16:29.470 Le Jeté a slideshow is like calling a novel a 00:16:29.470 --> 00:16:32.350 stack of bound paper. It completely ignores the 00:16:32.350 --> 00:16:35.049 emotional architecture of the thing. Though... 00:16:34.649 --> 00:16:37.129 To be fair, the terminology around this entire 00:16:37.129 --> 00:16:40.090 genre is notoriously messy. Very messy. Our source 00:16:40.090 --> 00:16:42.549 material notes that critics and audiences often 00:16:42.549 --> 00:16:45.350 inaccurately refer to these films using terms 00:16:45.350 --> 00:16:48.490 like photomontage or collage. And those terms 00:16:48.490 --> 00:16:52.350 refer to entirely different static artistic concepts. 00:16:53.250 --> 00:16:55.750 A collage is the physical assembling of different 00:16:55.750 --> 00:16:58.450 materials, like newspaper clippings, photographs, 00:16:58.690 --> 00:17:01.529 fabric, into a single flat piece of art that 00:17:01.529 --> 00:17:03.830 hangs on a wall. Right. You consume a collage 00:17:03.830 --> 00:17:06.730 all at once. Exactly. A still image film is not 00:17:06.730 --> 00:17:09.250 a collage on a screen. It is a sequence occurring 00:17:09.250 --> 00:17:11.609 in time. Time is the secret ingredient here. 00:17:11.710 --> 00:17:14.710 It is. It has duration. And that is why the audio 00:17:14.710 --> 00:17:16.849 track is so incredibly critical to defending 00:17:16.849 --> 00:17:19.789 these as actual films. Because it forces it to 00:17:19.789 --> 00:17:23.200 move forward. Yes. The sound, the dialogue, the 00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:26.220 music, the ticking clocks, it all dictates the 00:17:26.220 --> 00:17:28.400 relentless passage of time. You cannot consume 00:17:28.400 --> 00:17:31.640 it all at once. The audio forces the static image 00:17:31.640 --> 00:17:35.500 into a temporal cinematic space. It makes the 00:17:35.500 --> 00:17:38.119 still photograph part of a timeline. It's an 00:17:38.119 --> 00:17:39.960 incredible journey when you zoom out and look 00:17:39.960 --> 00:17:42.759 at the whole timeline of this technique. We started 00:17:42.759 --> 00:17:46.000 this deep dive looking at filmmakers in the 1940s 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:48.740 and 50s who were panning across 19th century 00:17:48.740 --> 00:17:52.420 newspaper engravings just to basically because 00:17:52.420 --> 00:17:54.319 they had no other option. Yeah, true pioneers. 00:17:54.579 --> 00:17:56.779 We saw how the mechanics of animation cameras 00:17:56.779 --> 00:17:59.720 brought the frozen, haunted stairs of Klondike 00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:02.019 prospectors back to life. And then we watched 00:18:02.019 --> 00:18:04.279 filmmakers like George Lucas, Chris Marker, and 00:18:04.279 --> 00:18:07.500 Jonas Koron push this technique past its logical 00:18:07.500 --> 00:18:10.259 limits into pure narrative fiction. It is a phenomenal 00:18:10.259 --> 00:18:12.579 testament to the idea that constraints breed 00:18:12.579 --> 00:18:15.799 innovation. Having no moving video seems like 00:18:15.799 --> 00:18:18.680 an absolute death sentence for a filmmaker. But 00:18:18.680 --> 00:18:21.549 stripping away that visual cra - forces them 00:18:21.549 --> 00:18:24.109 to elevate their sound design to a masterful 00:18:24.109 --> 00:18:26.450 level, perfectly calibrate their editing pace, 00:18:27.029 --> 00:18:29.509 and ultimately trust the audience's imagination 00:18:29.509 --> 00:18:33.009 to do the heavy lifting. It is the ultimate proof 00:18:33.009 --> 00:18:35.569 that the unwritten contract between the audience 00:18:35.569 --> 00:18:38.009 and the filmmaker isn't actually about moving 00:18:38.009 --> 00:18:40.690 pictures at all. The contract is simply, tell 00:18:40.690 --> 00:18:42.690 me a good story and I will meet you halfway. 00:18:42.990 --> 00:18:44.829 I love that. And I want to leave you with the 00:18:44.829 --> 00:18:47.089 final thought to mull over regarding that seven 00:18:47.089 --> 00:18:49.430 minute rule Quarren mentioned. OK. We know that 00:18:49.430 --> 00:18:51.589 if a story is engaging enough and the sound design 00:18:51.589 --> 00:18:54.009 is clever enough, our brains will essentially 00:18:54.009 --> 00:18:56.890 hallucinate a sense of motion in life into completely 00:18:56.890 --> 00:18:58.990 static photographs after just seven minutes. 00:18:59.329 --> 00:19:02.170 If our minds are that eager to fill in the blanks, 00:19:02.170 --> 00:19:04.170 what does that say about the rest of our lives? 00:19:04.289 --> 00:19:06.650 Yeah. How much of our everyday reality, the people 00:19:06.650 --> 00:19:09.190 we pass on the street, the situations we judge 00:19:09.190 --> 00:19:11.990 at a glance, how much of that is actually just 00:19:11.990 --> 00:19:14.569 static that we are rapidly filling in with our 00:19:14.569 --> 00:19:17.369 own assumptions, our own expectations, and the 00:19:17.369 --> 00:19:20.049 internal soundtracks of our own lives. Wow. You 00:19:20.049 --> 00:19:22.349 walk into the theater expecting the pictures 00:19:22.349 --> 00:19:24.569 to move, but maybe your brain is the one doing 00:19:24.569 --> 00:19:26.769 all the moving. Keep exploring, keep questioning 00:19:26.769 --> 00:19:28.730 what you see, and we'll catch you on the next 00:19:28.730 --> 00:19:29.289 Deep Dive.