On-screen Cameras: Mirrors of Cinematic Practice - Text 7
Turning a film shoot taking place at the same time as the making of the film into one of its themes took hold primarily in the 1960s, whether in Hollywood, which had a pronounced interest in the socio-economic dynamics of working in the big studios; or in Europe, where thinking about the various dimensions of making a film’s images appeared to be the principal concern. In Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (Le mépris, 1963), this discursive and reflexive aspect was illustrated in exemplary fashion by the famous credit sequence, in which the director of photography, Raoul Coutard, is shown operating a Mitchell camera,[1] the same that appears in the film. Sitting on a large dolly on a track, he is shown in profile while he films in a lateral tracking shot a production assistant walking towards us as a double while a sound recordist and other technicians accompany them. At the end, the framing shifts to a low-angle shot, isolating Coutard, who turns the camera towards us so that the lens, surrounded by its hood, is facing us. In this mise en abîme in which two lenses “look at each other,” the film shoot theme materialises out of the signifying image of the camera and the act of filming.
