Cinemagraphs: No es fotografía, no es video

Movimientos mínimos

«El proyector de cine pasa los fotogramas con tal rapidez, que no podemos detectar el cambio de uno a otro. Si observamos la secuencia fotográfica de una película, encontraríamos que se compone de un fotograma, una pequeña línea negra y otro fotograma. Entre estas imágenes sólo se registra una pequeña modificación…» – Belen Carranza Saucillo

Así rezan, mas o menos, casi todas las definiciones que explican al cine como la sucesión casi interminable de fotogramas, o fotografías, una tras otra, 24 veces por segundo. Un movimiento real que es sólo el físico, el de la cinta corriendo sobre un proyector (todavía) y un movimiento imaginario, que es el que nuestro fallido ojo -¡felizmente! crea a través de la persistencia retiniana y que, en conjunto con nuestro cerebro, concreta el movimiento capturado. ¿Pero que pasa si observamos un formato intermedio, que no es fotograma o fotografía, ni tampoco video o cine?.

Los «cinemagraphs» son estos extraños elementos intermedios: unos nuevos juguetes ópticos (como aquellos anteriores al cine) que están construídos sobre el antiguo formato de imagen animado GIF -¿se acuerdan?- los nacidos con la web y que perduran hasta hoy. Los cinemagraphs pueden describirse, básicamente, como fotografías fijas que integran un elemento en sutil movimiento, y que proviene del video digital. Un tipo de imagen/movimiento digno de esta época, donde las cámaras fotografías integran desde hace un par de años la posibilidad de grabar video en HD. Que a su vez, hoy ya puede convertirse en cine.

Acá van dos ejemplos de Cinemagraphs, creados por Jamie Beck & Kevin Burg, un fotográfo y un motion artist, respectivamente, en su tumblr From me to You, quienes han acuñado este término, en algunas de estas obras. Noten de inmediato que los Cinemagraphs no equivalen a un GIF de video -cosa que no es ninguna novedad a estas alturas- sino que es sólo un fragmento de la imagen fija, la que realmente tiene movimiento.

 

«Un film opera por lo que retira; en él, de entrada, se recorta la imagen. Allí el movimiento es obstaculizado, suspendido, dado vuelta, detenido. Más esencial que la presencia, es el recorte [la découpe], no sólo por efecto del montaje, sino ya, y desde un principio, por el del encuadre, y de la depuración dominada de lo visible.» – Alain Baidou, El cine como movimiento falso.

Kert Gartner explica al final de este post, en un video, como crear tus propios Cinemagraphs, con una cámara de video (o fotográfica que grabe video), Adobe Photoshop y After Effects. Gartner parte su video analizando las imágenes de Beck y Burg que inserté arriba de este texto.

Curioseando por ahí, llegué finalmente al notable tumblr creado por Gustav Mantel, abreviado IWDRM: «If we don’t, remember me.» Con una selección exquisita de fragmentos de películas conocidas y de diversa procedencia, Mantel se ha dedicado a crear notables -y un poco perturbadores también- cinemagraphs, restringiendo el movimiento a objetos, gestos corporales, miradas y tantos elementos presentes en la imagen, aislándolos por siempre.

Un movimiento que se distingue de dos formas. Por un lado,  casi violento a veces, irrumpiendo lo que pensamos es un still frame o foto fija (encontré uno de estos cinemagraphs inserto de un bloque muy grande de texto, en un sitio muy estático, y cuando se movió casi morí de infarto) de forma súbita. Por otro, un movimiento continuo sobre la imagen detenida, como la lluvia que cae sobre un replicante.

Una imagen/película que está en pausa y en play al mismo tiempo -como si el espectador fuese un esquizofrénico de la botonera- con una película que no avanza y se da vuelta sobre sí misma, en cualquiera de las dos opciones mencionadas en el párrafo anterior, en un loop eterno en tu monitor.

Los dejo con una selección que me permito hacer del trabajo de Mantel, intercalado con citas (como al mismo autor le gusta hacer en su tumblr) sobre el cine de David Fincher, Stanley Kubrick (en una larga selección al final del post), Bergman, Anderson, Tarantino, Spielberg y Jodorowsky.

 

Narrator

You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?

Norma Bates

[voiceover in police custody, as Norman is thinking] It’s sad, when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son. But I couldn’t allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They’ll put him away now, as I should have years ago. He was always bad, and in the end he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man… as if I could do anything but just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds. They know I can’t move a finger, and I won’t. I’ll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do… suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching… they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, «Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly…»


Christof

We’ve become bored with watching actors give us phony emotions. We are tired of pyrotechnics and special effects. While the world he inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there’s nothing fake about Truman himself. No scripts, no cue cards. It isn’t always Shakespeare, but it’s genuine. It’s a life.

Sister Alma 

Anaesthetise me… throw me away! No, I can’t, I can’t take any more! Leave me alone! It’s shame, it’s all shame! Leave me alone! I’m cold and rotten and indifferent! It’s all just lies and imitation, all of it!

Batty

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.


David Sumner

Ok, you’ve had your fun. I’ll give you one more chance, and if you don’t clear out now, there’ll be real trouble. I mean it.

Jules

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.


Dr. Frederick Chilton

Do not touch the glass. Do not approach the glass. You pass him nothing but soft paper – no pencils or pens. No staples or paperclips in his paper. Use the sliding food carrier, no exceptions. If he attempts to pass you anything, do not accept it. Do you understand me?


Max Fischer

Sic transit gloria. Glory fades. I’m Max Fischer.

Rosemary Cross

Hi.

Max Fischer

Hi.

Mrs. X

It’s Henry isn’t it? Mary tells me you’re a very nice fellow. What do you do?

Henry Spencer

Oh, I’m on vacation.

Mrs. X

What did you do?

Travis Bickle

June twenty-ninth. I gotta get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be 50 pushups each morning, 50 pullups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight.

Nurse Ratched

Aren’t you ashamed?

Billy

No, I’m not.

[Applause from friends]

Nurse Ratched

You know Billy, what worries me is how your mother is going to take this.

Patrick Bateman

That’s a very fine chardonnay you’re drinking. I want you to clean your vagina.

Steve Zissou

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I’m going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it. Anyone who wants to tag along is more than welcome.

David

Mommy? Will you die?

Monica

Well, one day, David, yes, I will.

David

I’ll be alone.

Monica

Don’t worry yourself so.

David

How long will you live?

Monica

For ages. For 50 years.

David

I love you, Mommy. I hope you never die. Never.

Inspector Jacques Clouseau

[having stepped on and broken the violin] Oh well, if you’ve seen one Stradivarius, you’ve seen them all.

Sarah Morton

I pity your mother.

Julie

You pity her? Why?

Sarah Morton

Well, I imagine having a daughter who comes home with a different man every night must be difficult for a mother.

Julie

Well, you imagine wrong. You know what? You’re just a frustrated Englishwoman who writes about dirty things but never does them. You can shove your uptight morals up your ass!

Maria

There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.

Madeleine

Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice.

The Alchemist

You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold.

Alex

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

Nuala

Don’t you want to go where the rainbow ends?

Dr. Bill Harford

Well, now that depends where that is.

Gayle

Well, let’s find out.


HAL

That’s a very nice rendering, Dave. I think you’ve improved a great deal. Can you hold it a bit closer? That’s Dr. Hunter, isn’t it?

General «Buck» Turgidson 

Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.

President Merkin Muffley

You’re talking about mass murder, General, not war!

General «Buck» Turgidson

Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks. 

Jack Torrance 

God, I’d give anything for a drink. I’d give my god-damned soul for just a glass of beer.


Grady daughters

Come play with us, Danny.

Dick Hallorann

Some places are like people: some shine and some don’t.

Jack Torrance

Do you have the slightest idea what a moral and ethical principle is? Do you?


Jack Torrance

[typed] All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. 

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman

I bet you’re the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around. I’ll be watching you.

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman

If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day you are pukes. You are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human, fucking beings. You are nothing but unorganized grabastic pieces of amphibian shit! You will not like me. But the more you hate me the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless. And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps. Do you maggots understand that?

 HAL

Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?

Female computerized voice

Welcome to Voiceprint Identification. When you see the red light go on, would you please state in the following order: your destination, your nationality, and your full name; surname first, Christian name and initial.

Alex

What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultraviolent.

Alex

Ho, ho, ho! Well, if it isn’t fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou!

GALERIA