Picture Composition, 2nd Edition

16

Movement

Camera movement

When I was 12 years old, I stood in a film studio at Elstree near London watching a camera crane following an actress, Ingrid Bergman, walk down a very large curved staircase set in the centre of the studio. Apart from a location shot filmed in Acton, London, for ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ (1949), this was the only film making I had ever seen. I was intrigued by the crane's movement as it floated parallel to, and in perfect synchronization with, the actress's movement, down the stairs and across a hall. Jack Cardiff was the cinematographer on the film ‘Under Capricorn’ (1949) and he wrote many years later about the problems involved with this production. The director, Alfred Hitchcock, was experimenting with the ...