On-screen Cameras: Mirrors of Cinematic Practice - Text 5
There is no doubt that showing a device involves taking into consideration a practical context of operating it, and the gestures connected with it: in the case of a movie camera, this takes us from the iconic hand cranking of silent cinema to the lofty heights of the great cranes by way of cameras carried by the operator. For this reason, the role of the machine in a film and the meanings it can convey are closely connected to the context, and also to the period and geographical region of the film’s production.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, it was rare for a film shoot in a studio to be a theme of a film. Depictions of hand-cranked cameras contemporaneous with their use took place instead, therefore, around the activity of camera operators working on actuality films, as in the film with Chaplin Chaplin mentioned above, or in the case of another comic film, Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928). In this film, in addition to cranking the camera, we see another action, with all its slapstick repercussions: that of folding up the wooden tripod and carrying the camera on one’s shoulder, generally while moving quickly, to go film a major news event.
