by Oliver Spicer
Mathematically, a dimension is a measurement required to define a shape or space. The screen can be seen as the space of cinema, the area where visuals are shown and narratives unfold. At first this space may be considered two-dimensional, inheriting the flat * Of course the surface of the screen is not perfectly two dimensional, but its roughness from a distance appears flat. nature of the wall it is projected onto and creating only a horizontal width and a vertical height of the image. However two additional dimensions can be defined: first the separation of background and foreground elements in compositions leads to the creation of depth, next is the vital dimension of time - that is necessary for the creation of moving pictures but often distorted for emotional effect. Four dimensions (Width, Height, Depth, and Time) are therefore created, presenting the possibility of an individual analysis of each to understand how filmmakers utilise space and how audiences interpret them.
Width can be described as the horizontal span of the screen, its significance first illustrated through the widening of the frame over the course of film history - expanding from the boxy Academy Ratio of 1.37:1 This means the screen is 1.37 times as wides as it is tall - not square but not great. to the Widescreen formats commonplace today. Just as studios raced to develop synchronised sound and colour, they also competed for wider frames by innovating with larger film stock, multiple projectors, and anamorphic lenses that squished a wider scene onto a smaller frames. Although this widescreen revolution may have begun as a gimmick, intended to lure viewers away from the growing popularity of television, the fact it lead to a permanent change in frame size proves there must be a substantial reason why cinema required more horizontal real-estate - one rooted in adding to the experience of film and enhancement of narratives.
These benefits can initially be examined through the genres of the first widescreen films: Napoléon ( Abel Gance, 1927) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. was a biographical epic told through the widest ratio ever produced (4:1) by synchronising three projectors; The Big Trail (Raoul Walsh and Louis R. Loeffler, 1930) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. was a Western featuring John Wayne's first major role; and The Robe (Henry Koster, 1953) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. It's in CinemaScope! so it must be good. travelled even further back in history, looking at the persecution of Jesus from the Roman perspective. First, they are all historical in setting, with the extra width allowing total immersion into the novel landscapes of the past by satisfying the peripheral vision audiences are used to in their daily lives. Mise-en-scene elements are also made more prominent through widescreen: actors fill less of the screen allowing for more background elements of the set that ground the story in a time period, which are often the most enjoyable part of a historical film. Furthermore these films are all epics, a genre that pushes every aspect of cinema to the extreme (long running times, a large number of extras, extravagant sets). Width not only becomes another element that is supercharged, but also accentuates the other aspects - allowing large crowds and armies to seem less claustrophobic onscreen and more space for grand establishing shots of the sets. However, these benefits are limited as immersion into landscapes and grandeur only apply to a select few genres, whereas all films must profit from widescreen if it became standard - an emotional meaning must be created through horizontal space that exists through film form, the building blocks of the medium that can apply to any text from thriller to rom-com.
Films and their ratios from Napoelon (Gaumont), The Robe (Twentieth Century Fox), and Casablanca (Warner Brothers).
This meaning is primarily created through how width can be used for composition, with the horizontal placement of a character/object/building instantly conveying information to the audience:
A character is in control of a situation if centrally framed - either confident in the scene or possessing a high level of focus on their goal. Slightly off-centred and the same person seems insecure, worried and off-course. If an object is in the centre, it is usually very significant to the plot, an object of desire - this is often uncordiality translated to people where central framing objectifies them.
Frame your character at the very edge of the frame, possibly even slightly off-screen, and they seem awkward and detached from the real world. Often characters in a trapped situation also seem ‘forced’ into one side of the frame by another. Two characters operating in opposite sides of the frame sometimes shows their conflict, but is also necessary to not disorientate the viewer - as when characters switch sides of the frame they operate in the spatial continuity of the scene is ruined (the 180-degree rule).
Lastly, the horizontal distance between characters also indicates their relationship. A loving couple are pictured side-by-side whilst an emotionally struggling one may appear at polar opposite sides of a frame. Additionally, if a character is distant from another it may indicate fear - whilst if they are close they are standing up for themselves.
However the only instance when this emotionally-driven framing requires a widescreen format is when a character is shown as isolated through the large blank space at either sides of the frame - meaning all of these effects are achievable in Academy Ratio, indeed there are examples from both Classic Hollywood and contemporary cinema that feature beautiful and narratively significant compositions. However Academy compositions often suffer from too much blank horizontal space in long shots and not enough in close ups, making widescreen seem like the superior option. What widescreen offers is more opportunity for interesting horizontal placement and for it to be more noticeable to audiences - illustrating all the benefits of width to cinema.
Height is the vertical measurement of the frame, combining with its twin Width to form the entire image and its ratio. Height is primarily utilised to depict power: A low-angle portrays the importance of character, location, or object by exaggerating its height through perspective. The opposite is true for high-angles - where the character seems vulnerable and weak. These angles do not need to be drastic, with the spectator subconsciously noticing even the smallest angle and associating it with power imbalance. In fact, often when these angles are too extreme their conventional meanings of power are not applicable: an extreme-high-angle looks down at the world, surveying the characters like a chess set to create a logical stance on the situation - whilst an extreme-low-angle is such a distorting angle that it draws attention to the construction of the film.
Blocking (the positioning of characters in relation to each other) also signifies power and relies on height, with more powerful characters being physically higher in the frame by use of a tall throne, a set of stairs, or simply standing up whilst talking to seated characters. Vertical positioning also characterises locations, where the villains lair is traditionally upon a tall mountain and the protagonist lives in a village below to show their power difference. One film that applies this folktale convention to the sci-fi genre is Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. , where the ultra powerful and wealthy live in a colossal space station in the sky - a presentation of social inequality through height. However like relative angles, heights can have alternative meaning - as the villain is isolated from the rest of society through height separation, often used as a backstory for their evil.
Additionally, there are many films where height is instrumental to the films narrative…
In many mountaineering documentaries and their fiction counterparts, height is both a threat and an obstacle to overcome - altitude being characterised as a type of villain that fights back at climbers as they try to conquer it. It is a kind of conflict with nature, one where humans are prevented from venturing to such heights - further illustrated through films that concerns planes or rockets that venture higher than naturally possible.
Furthermore, height also becomes the enemy as it offers a better vantage point - displayed in The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. where the plans of a group of ally soldiers to escape a prisoner of war camp has to be hidden from the armed watch towers that observe every movement. They are forced to dig underground - creating three levels of action that oppose each other: the officers in the towers, the facade of the prisoners trying to act normally on ground level, and the real actions of the prisoners tunnelling beneath the surface.
Height is central to the plot of Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. , where a retired detective’s inability to stomach large drops leaves him incapacitated at many points in the narrative. It also becomes a motif of the film - constantly referenced through locations of the steep San Francisco streets, colossal redwood trees, and the ominous bell tower where the iconic contra-zoom occurs to exaggerate its vertical distance.
Tall shots from Free Solo (National Georgraphic), Vertigo (Paramount), and The Great Escape (United Artists).
Additionally, descriptions of a film narrative are in terms of height: stakes are raised, emotions heighten, the third-act low before the story comes to a peak. This tendency continues when discussing a film’s reception: bad films go down (the flop, the bomb) whilst good films go up (the hit), many classics are ‘held in high-regard’ whilst commercial films are ‘looked down upon’. It is hard to distinguish here between what is due to English idioms and what directly corresponds to height, but the fact that writers often plot narratives as a line that ascends/descends in terms of tension and that films rise and fall in box-office rankings can be seen as proof that it is more than coincidence.
However on the actual screen, Height is not as significant as Width. First the lowest part of the frame is commonly covered by subtitles in the modern international film industry, or blocked out by other audience members at a cinema. This makes it unwise to put any important information at the bottom section of the screen, showing how some vertical space is not fully utilised. Furthermore there is such a thing as a frame too tall, with vertical video being relegated to mobile frames that cause overall uninteresting composition due to their primary function of taking pictures of people and nothing else. So called ‘vertical films’ have been made, with a subsection having interesting framing due to their limitations whilst most only depict the downsides of a tall ratio.
Depth is the dimension protruding into or out of the screen - the splitting of foreground, midground, and background through the perspective of the real world. It was significant even in early film, with pioneers the Lumiere Brothers shooting their short actuality films at an angle nicknamed ‘The Lumiere Diagonal’ to create more interesting compositions. This technique was utilised in some of their first films, such as Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (The Lumiere Brothers, 1896) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. and Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (The Lumiere Brothers, 1895) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. - possibly to illustrate the power of cinema to re-represent reality through creating the illusion of a world behind the screen impossible to replicate with other forms of trickery at the time.
Later as film developed so did the special effects that allowed filmmakers to distort reality and bring the imaginary to life. Depth in the form of distance from the camera played a key role in many of the effects - such as Matte Painting, where a glass pane with an illustration would be placed in front of the camera to create fake foreground/background elements that would be otherwise too costly to produce with a set. The final shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. is a classic example, using the technique to make a warehouse that stretches into infinity, an impossible depth shown on-screen created by utilising the trickery of depth on-set. Forced Perspective utilises this same depth deception, making small subjects appear larger when in the foreground and blending layers of a set together - used in Elf (Jon Favreau, 2003) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. where Will Ferrell appears colossal compared to his elf peers. Rear projection, where a projector would display separately filmed footage behind an actor, is another example - often seen in driving sequences that date a film but have a kind of charm through highlighting how the film is a fake construct brought about by special effects. Even editing effects such as superimposition and cross-dissolves rely on a kind of depth, layering images on top of each other to form a single frame - used in early cinema as a substitute for greenscreens and later contributing to the fever-dream atmosphere that begins Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. by blending its montage together.
After further development, studios wanted to reach out of the screen with 3D technology - matching the desire to expand in dimension from widescreen formats. The lenses in glasses were first blue and red to create the illusion of depth on black and white films - but soon transitioned to perpendicular polarizing filters in front of either eye in order to accommodate for colour film. However unlike widescreen the 3D experience adds very little to a film: the occasional object flying out of the screen does not add to the narrative and often ruins immersion instead of creating it - and thus 3D has declined in popularity over time. In fact the term ‘3D film’ itself is incorrect, assuming that films are perspective-less cave paintings that do not utilise the dimension of depth (and further the fourth dimension of time) to create a full image - making the overall term obsolete.
The Chicago scene from Citizen Kane (RKO).
Depth of field (how much of a frame is in focus) later became a point of control for filmmakers and the basis for Andre Bazin’s Realist debate, where the French film critic celebrated films that used a deep depth of field as it promoted realism and a more complex meaning by giving the spectator the choice of what element in the frame to focus on. The most iconic of all shots is the Chicago scene from Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. , where in the background the young Kane plays in the snow whilst in the foreground his parents quarrel over signing him away to a banker to live a better life - the innocence of childhood is contrasted with the formality of paperwork as each layer of depth highlights a different perspective on the turning point in Kane’s life. A great shot from a film that uses depth in every way from special effects (Matte Painting, Rear Projection, and Forced Perspective) to meaning.
‘Unlike all other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to posses it in infinity. I’d say that film is the sculpting of time’ - Ardrei Tarkovsky
The dimension of time is unique compared to width, height, and depth - it is the measurement of change instead of space but is arguably a greater importance to cinema, with the succession of frames separated by time creating the illusion of a moving picture. However, although time is essential to cinema - continuity of time is often not respected and instead the most distorted and manipulated of the dimensions.
One example of this is that unlike the real world, time can flow backwards in films through utilising flashbacks as a narrative device or reversing the order of frames to inverse movements. One film that takes this principle to the extreme is Happy End (Oldřich Lipský, 1967) View on: IMDb. Wikipedia. , where (apart from dialogue shots) all the action of the scenes are reversed as well as the overall narrative - with the film opening with the protagonist’s head being returned to him before being un-executed by a guillotine. The use of reversing time not only highlights the cause-and-effect chain that is central to all narratives, but also makes characters movements seem unnatural due to gravity and muscles acting in opposite ways - leading to a new perspective on human movement. Christopher Nolan’s Work relies on this disrespecting of the flow of time - from the shuffled narrative of Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. to the reversed motion of Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020) View on: IMDb. Lettrboxd. Wikipedia. .
Slow motion is another technique that is impossible in the real world. It gives impact to every moment, depicting a trained character’s quick thoughts and reaction times or highlighting how a particular event is important. However, slow motion can be seen as natural, with many people recalling that important events in their life have unfold in slowed down time - probably a result of evolution where the fight-or-flight response makes you take in all the information when a threatening event is occurring, which may make time itself appear to halt.
Fast motion does not have the opposition meaning of slow motion, but instead has its own associations. When crowds are shown in fast motion they lose their individuality and instead are shown to behave like a pattern, a swarm of insects or a mass of particles, that highlight the structures of society. A still or regular-motion subject with a fast motion surrounding makes them seem detached from the world, existing in their own realm.
Freeze Frames also fit into the same category by pausing time all together. ‘Based on a true story’ films often use this at the end of their narratives explain the outcome of the characters in real-life - but they also seem to remind the audience that the characters are trapped in time, more like photographs of the past rather than the life embodied in film.
Due to cinema’s close relationship with time there are many more ways in which filmmakers use or misuse time: elliptical editing that cuts out unnecessary parts in the narrative to retain pacing, short shot length for intense action, long takes for a contemplative atmosphere, continuous takes, parallel cutting, temporal frequency, temporal duration…
One final way that time is significant has already been mentioned: film history. Cinema is not only studied as a kind of history but seems to enjoy referencing the past like no other medium, with films hosting homages to their predecessors like a form of inheritance tax. This may be due to film being a modern artform with a past that is easily * I guess only semi-easy. Films are lost and, as Chloe points out in her article this month, records are unclear. I imagine film is still easier to study than if it developed before the printing press and other forms of mass-communication. researched or due to the fact that cinema is an iterative medium where new films must abide by the genre codes and film language of previous incarnations enough to be seen and understood.
From the previous analysis time is the obvious choice, it is central to the cinematic illusion and therefore has numerous connections to film. One objection to this is that it is the most distorted dimension, with interesting uses of time relying on changing its fundamental properties of flowing in one direction and at a fixed pace. There is also a more significant opposition to time, the fact that in cinema time is measured in length due to its past in physical film: a film has a ‘running-length’ due to the number of frames it has, not based on its actual duration. Whenever time is discussed, such as ‘shot-length’, what is really be referred to is the number of frames - it is only translated into seconds to make it more understandable.
Either Width or Length (the measurements of the frame) can then be seen as the most important. But they are inseparable - with each requiring the other to form the overall image and its aspect ratio.
This leaves Depth as the most significant dimension of cinema. Its contributions going into many different aspects of film: from the development of composition and special effects to theoretical debates. The branch into 3D is its only downside, but from another perspective this can be seen as filmmakers trying to distort depth as they do with time - with its loss it popularity proving that the imaginary depth of the screen should be respected. From a poetic perspective film analysis itself seems to be focused on peeling back the layers of a film, excavating a kind of depth to gain further insights into text through context and theory. As spectators we try to peer behind characters, trying to understand their inner emotions and motivations but through the external aspects of film form and performance.
This conclusion is still unsatisfactory - showing how although each dimension can be analysed individually - all four dimensions need to intertwine for cinema to be formed.
by Oliver Spicer, March 2022.