Hi Bernie, I think the McLaren-Kubelka concept of between the frames is explainable like this: The brain creates the illusion of smooth motion during the black interval due to a process called the phi phenomenon. This phenomenon was first demonstrated in a psychopercpetual experiment in which subjects in a dark room were presented with a light blinking on the left side of the visual field and 30 milliseconds later another light on the right side. Subjects experienced one light moving from left to right. It is the same process that allows for flickering bulbs around a theatre marquis to appear in motion. A later experiment with a red light on the left and a green light on the right elicited the experience of the moving light changing color halfway in its journey across the visual field, leading to two theories of how the phi phenomenon works: the Leninist brain that withholds information from consciousness until later, or the Stalinist brain that rewrites history after the fact.
In contrast, I think the Deleuze concept of image-movement is dependent on the previous theories of Deleuze such as from Mille Plateaux and also Henri Bergson’s theories of matter and mind. It is quite an opposing theory. Deleuze rejects the notion that motion is an illusion created from stills but rather that an image in described by its continuity, and he delineates different categories of image-movements: expressions of feelings, expressions of behaviors, etc. The examples in the work are focused on certain shots in certain movies and the ways in which time is embodied in the image. It is a theory much more couched in philosophical theory than in perceptual experience. Regarding animation and live action, the phi phenomenon kicks in whenever we see frames flickering in the dark - the brain creates the illusion of motion during the black spaces, just as we create dreams at night when our eyes are closed, in the space between the days. Therefore it is the same effect whether watching live action, fast motion, animation, but it is most pronounced in films where similarities within the frame contrast with chaos from frame to frame. This is visible for example in Gary Beydler’s Pasadena Freeway Stills, the hands jumping around on the outer edge of the frame during the central section, or during a film in which every frame is of a different round object (ashtray, hubcap, clock…) so that roundness is conveyed as a constant regardless of the chaos in the frame. The McLaren Kubelka concept holds for both animation and live action and even all experimental or scientific films, whereas the Deleuze concept applies only to specific shots of classic films. Pip Chodorov > On Aug 22, 2020, at 8:50 AM, Bernard Roddy <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Well, the first volume of Deleuze's work is devoted to "the movement image." > > On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 5:22 PM Michael Betancourt > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > Hi Bernard, > > I have some questions before we get started. > >> >> On Aug 21, 2020, at 5:41 PM, Bernard Roddy <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> >> >> Hello, Michael: >> >> When you make reference to a conception of motion pictures "as being >> produced in the differential between different frames," how is that >> different from the moving image produced by continuously running a movie >> camera while directing it at live action? > > I explained that already. It was what my post was about: how the cinematic > image is conceived as a shot extracted from reality or as something else. > > >> >> When thinking about Deleuze and the "extension of his proposals, such as the >> movement image, to animation," what do you understand "the movement image" >> to consist in? Part of the problem with the way this list works is that >> readers are directed elsewhere rather than addressed in terms accessible >> within a public "discussion." So the reference to a note in Cinema 1that is >> to substantiate Deleuze's remarks on the movement image is, for me, >> counter-productive, unless the idea is shared here in an explanation. >> >> You seem to me to be offering a conception of movement that is not from >> Deleuze when you quote McLaren and Kubelka. One might well wonder what >> "between frames" means, or what a "perceptual construct" is. I would contest >> the idea that Deleuze is talking about something an audience invents, or >> that he would frame things in terms of the difference or resemblance between >> a pair of frames. >>
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