The Camera Stays Still, But You Don’t

When I started filmmaking, I had almost no crew behind the camera. I had to do everything myself (there hasn’t been much change, but I am grateful to have at least a few people around these days). So, I was setting the camera on a tripod, adjusting the settings, hit record, and left it there, to be able to handle other things: directing the actors and recording sound. Then, over time, I started to like the stillness of the camera. I saw more films in a similar style, took them as references, and tried new versions of my own. And slowly that limitation became my own thing, which I am still shaping in every film I make, and letting it shape me back.

Time Hypnotizes Us

Surely I enjoy those static scenes because of their painting-like aesthetics and compositions. But that is actually a pleasure you can get from paintings or photographs, too. In fact, what makes these scenes different is the extended time. When a scene is long enough, the time passes as it does in the real world, and it feels lived-in. And for this to work, the mise-en-scene, I mean everything we see in a frame, doesn’t have to be completely realistic. It could still be effective even if the world looks different from ours, as long as it’s well-done and believable enough.

You know we can’t easily focus on just one frame over a long duration. Having such a meditative and thoughtful level is not a usual thing in daily life. That’s why we instinctively like fast-paced films to keep up with our average perception pace. On the other hand, a locked frame directs our focus to one part of reality, and sometimes it feels more real than life itself just because we focus on it. As the camera doesn’t move, we forget it is even there. After a while, time hypnotizes us, and we stop resisting the slowness or boredom. We adapt and enter the universe of the film. A moment, or a scene, might not seem worth it on paper or even in real life, but could work on the screen just because this style adds a new dimension to the event: the form becomes the content itself.

Our Role Expands

In this style, we are led to become observers as the audience. But not just passive observers, we also become participants, because time gives us room, and the limitation of the image forces our imagination to think and create what’s happening both on and off-screen. The less a film shows us, the more we bring to it. We fill in the blanks, and we co-create with the film. And if we add sounds to this game, the room for creativity expands. As Bresson notes, “The eye is superficial, but the ear is deep and creative. A train whistle conjures up the image of an entire station in our minds”.

You can encounter this style in the works of some master directors, either partly or wholly. I already mentioned them in my other posts in the curations category. Here, I will share a few of my favorites that I believe are more unknown and worth exploring.

Static Long-Take Films

Milky Way (2007), Benedek Fliegauf: Gives the audience an active observer role and makes us guess about the story behind each autonomous static scene.

I Hear Your Scream (2008), Pablo Lamar: A single-shot funeral portrait. We see very little of it, but it allows us to build an emotional understanding of the situation.

In Ictu Oculi (2009), Greta Alfaro: A conceptual single-shot film where external artistic intervention interacts with nature. We witness the duality of the natural and the artificial (thanks to Guillermo Gomo for introducing this film to me).

Encounters with Landscape (3x) (2012), Salome Lamas: It contains long static scenes that feel organic, but at the same time, they are carefully designed to keep our attention and curiosity alive (thanks to Docnomads for introducing this film to me).

Distant (2013), Yang Zhengfan: This film reminds me of Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings, in which we see human figures set against panoramas. Despite the distance between the viewer and the figures, these scenes still reflect human emotions such as loneliness, despair, hope, and wonder. To me, this film gives a similar experience: We interpret each situation from a distance, but they still reveal human emotions that feel very close (thanks to Jose Fernandes for introducing this film to me).

You can find the list of films mentioned in this post on my Letterboxd page here.