In Split Decision, David Thomson, author of the forthcoming The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood, applies some film studies to the recent debates:
In the spin that followed the first presidential debate, many commentators referred to the “split screen” effect, when the cameras would show one candidate’s reaction as the other spoke. [...] A true split screen was employed only by some networks, like ABC and C-Span, whereas others, like PBS, honored what might be called a spatial relationship between the two contestants.A split screen is two or more separate images put together in one image, or one screen. Thus it was a split screen on ABC when similar images of Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry were set side-by-side with a clear dividing line. But on PBS the shots were actually what are called two-shots: a single image in which we see two people at the same time with the space between them. Such a shot may not accommodate the full figures, but as the first debate revealed, an ingenious director with a good camera angle could show one person speaking, with another (in the background, or to one side) listening, reacting and generally behaving like a natural idiot.
It only makes sense to apply “the American shot” to our political debates:
In film studies, and once upon a time in filmmaking, the two-shot was a staple. Indeed, the shot of two or more people, not quite full length, but conversing and interacting, was often called “the American shot” in French film commentary. That is because it used to be a staple of good American movie-making. It can be found everywhere in the films of Howard Hawks, for example, a director whose work includes “Bringing Up Baby,” “His Girl Friday,” “To Have and Have Not,” “The Big Sleep” and “Red River,” among others. I could praise him at length. Let me just say here that he is both “cool” and “neat,” and on both accounts because of his skill with the group shot.I realize that we live in an age when many in the news media, to say nothing of the audience, take it for granted that film and television require nothing but the close-up. And I don’t want to knock the close-up. It is a splendid and lovely thing, even when it shows a linebacker spitting out a few of his own teeth.
But the two-shot and the group shot teach us another lesson: that there are spatial relationships in life. People in conversation look at each other; they listen or try not to. The variety of body language and posture is enormous and beautiful, and there was once a way of making movies that thrived on those bonds. If you care to check this out, I would recommend just about anything by Jean Renoir, Kenji Mizoguchi, Max Oph?ls, Otto Preminger, Orson Welles, Yasujiro Ozu — and all of these guys are O.K., too.
Here’s where he loses me:
I’ll go a step further, if I may. There was once a set of theories on film direction, or mise en scène, that attested to the aesthetics and the ethics of using spatial relationships in movies. You can find this spelled out beautifully in the work of André Bazin.I will simplify the matter here, but Bazin (and others) believed that the cinema (and why not television?) had (or has?) a natural affinity for showing people together and people in places so that we understand both better. The close-up (vital as it may be to storytelling) tends to emphasize the glamour, drama (or melodrama?) of lone people; it has the seed of dictatorship in it. The cinema was based for decades on the notion that all people are equal, alike but different, and it found glory in the group shot that allowed us to look from one person to another, and feel the kinship and the difference.
The close-up has the seed of dictatorship in it. Riiiiiiiggghhht…