The frame is the basic unit of a movie, defined differently during the shooting, editing, and screening process, and serves as the boundary that separates the real world from the cinematic world. The frame is the formal constraint of a movie, but it is also an important element that fosters the development of creative techniques and enhances the artistry of a movie.
The basic unit of a movie is the frame. The frame, which means border or frame, is defined differently at different stages of a movie’s creation and presentation. During the filming process, a frame is defined as the composition of the scene as seen through the camera. The director and cinematographer think about what and how to place things in the frame, which determines the visual style and mood of the movie. They consider how each small element in the frame will affect the overall storytelling, and this process is considered a crucial step in filmmaking.
In the editing process, a frame is defined as a single still photograph developed on film. The editor stitches together numerous frames to tell a story, focusing on how the transitions between each frame convey rhythm and emotion. Each frame captures a specific moment, and together they form the narrative of the movie. The order of the frames and the way they transition during the editing process are critical to how the audience will experience the movie.
And during the screening process, the frame is defined as the boundary between the darkness of the theater and the screen. In this case, the frame is an important medium for immersing the audience in the world of the movie. In a darkened theater, frames on a brightly lit screen become a doorway that leads the audience out of reality and into the world of the movie. This is an important concept in understanding the nature of cinema, which is that a movie is a world reflected through frames, separated from the real world of the darkened theater by the boundaries of the frame.
Unlike a painting or photograph, which has only one frame, a movie has a large number of frames that are continuously replaced. As a result, no single frame can be separated from its original context of time and action, and rarely does it have a complete meaning on its own. The viewer understands the frames that are constantly changing and reconstructed before his or her eyes by referring to their dramatic and temporal context.
Also, unlike painting or photography, which frame their subjects or compositions, films place their contents in frames of the same size, always with a constant aspect ratio. This fixed frame is due to the mechanical and technical conditions of cinema, which require it to use the standardized format of film or theater projection. This makes vertical composition very difficult in a movie frame. This is why we rarely see vertical frames in movies that can effectively show a street lined with skyscrapers in one shot.
The stubborn formalism of the frame also means that depending on the conditions in which the movie is shown, the original frame can be deformed, severely compromising the director’s intended composition. This is especially true when a theatrical movie, which effectively takes advantage of widescreen, is shown on TV. When a 35mm movie is reduced to 16mm, it means that about one-third of the screen is cut off from the original frame. By cropping the screen in this way, a character on the edge of the original frame may not be visible at all in the transformed screen, or the character may react in surprise or horror to something that is not even visible to the viewer’s eyes.
However, these limitations of the movie frame do not diminish the appeal of cinema, because the constraints of the format can lead to the development of different techniques and make the work more artistic. In this respect, the filmmaker can be compared to a sonnetist who is attracted to the formal requirements of the sonnet and chooses its strict form. A sonnet is a formal poem of 14 lines with 10 syllables per line. The pleasure we get from reading a sonnet is largely derived from the tension between form and content. When technique and subject matter are perfectly fused in this way, our aesthetic pleasure is heightened. The same principle can be applied to the framing of a movie. The constraints of the frame actually provide an opportunity for creativity, which allows the movie to create a unique and impressive visual experience for the audience.
