Ebook: The dynamic frame camera movement inclassical Hollywood

The camera's movement in a film may seem straightforward or merely technical. Yet skillfully deployed pans, tilts, dollies, cranes, and zooms can express the emotions of a character, convey attitude and irony, or even challenge an ideological stance. In The Dynamic Frame, Patrick Keating offers an innovative history of the aesthetics of the camera that examines how camera movement shaped the classical Hollywood style.

In careful readings of dozens of films, including Sunrise, The Grapes of Wrath, Rear Window, Sunset Boulevard, and Touch of Evil, Keating explores how major figures like F. W. Murnau, Orson Welles, and Alfred Hitchcock used camera movement to enrich their stories and deepen their themes. Balancing close analysis with a broader poetics of camera movement, Keating uses archival research to chronicle the technological breakthroughs and the changing division of labor that allowed for new possibilities, as well as the...