Cinematography in one shot

The article examines the status of the screenshot, a separate static frame, a fragment of the cinematic stream, its relationship to the “whole” of the film, its influence on the spectator’s perception, as well as everyday user practices involving the observation and creation of screenshots. The starting point of the text is an attempt to reconsider the common notion of the screenshot/one-frame as a particle in a subordinate position to the film (and more broadly to the history of cinema). On the basis of texts by Pascal Bonitzer, Sergei Eisenstein, and Roland Barthes, the basic thesis is formulated — the mutual relation between the frame and the film can be constructed differently than the logic of “the frame is a lower-order element nested within the whole film;” on the contrary, the frame and the film in some cases meet as equivalent phenomena or they are superimposed on each other according to the principle of palimpsest.

The article deals with three common forms of using frames and screenshots advertising and illustrative shots, the use of film images in sticker packs for messengers, and albums of images in social networks. The question is raised about the communicative plasticity of separate images, the metamorphoses that occur with them when they are taken out of their original context, and their insertion into new artistic and research practices. As such practices, the text pays special attention to two cases — the screenshot project of French director Frank Beauvais and contemporary audiovisual film criticism (based on the works of Johannes Binotto, Carrie Griffith, Daniel McIlwright).