A Cat Named Mao - Exercise in framing in accordance with Deleuze


A frame is a "closed system", comprising many parts. The sets, characters, props, lighting etc., play a very crucial role in establishing the pivotal character, or the purpose, of the frame. A frame, or the set established to construct and articulate the frame, has a great number of parts - ‘sub-sets’ or parts. They may be composed in various ways, 'Parallels & Diagonals' being a very intricate way to establish a frame to look up to. In cinema, a very important role of a frame is to provide the required information for the audience, to establish a context, individually, or in abstract, or absolute relation to the frames used in the rest of the shots that comprise the scene. Framing is an integral part of 'film linguistics', with the primary job to 'communicate' and 'inform' - it's the use of this tool that can evoke prose, or poetry on screen. These informations may be numerous or limited, and the Angle and framing are crucial to establish them, as constituents features of these informatioms. Framing is an autonomous language of itself, an institution. So is the organization of frames, and shots that the frames construct, in a scene, and the narrative that all the scenes and their arrangement establish. 

In the shot included, the angular traits of the 'windowside' somehow dictate a certain position for the camera to be placed in, so the frame can have a certain abstract visual depth. The bowl of kibbles and the sponge ball, are placed towards the middle of the frame, and are visual elements, that play important role in establishing a minimal context in the shot. Hence the treatment of these elements in the frame, can be worked on, beginning with placing them at a point that demands a stable and continuous attention of the audience towards the both of them. The cat's indecision to choose between the two and ultimately leaving the frame, only to come back when called upon to be fed by hand, inside the same frame 'limitation' as previously established and maintained, lends frame he shot the context. The deterritorialisation of the image out of field space establishment with the movement of the cat. The idea of the image pervades the elements of the frame - as in the image of the cat, "image" not "photograph" is what dictates the idea of the framing. What happens out of the frame piques curiosity because of what is in the frame. The elements of interaction between the offscreen and onscreen. Like the hand coming in to direct the cat. This sets out to be the string that connects the frame to a context, with visual elements involved, such as the ball and the bowl. This also holds true Gilles Deleuze’s concept of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction in a frame. The onscreen and offscreen interactivity turns the frame into something that is not merely visual - it surpasses it's pivotal characteristic, and lends a sense of 'completion' to the ones who perceive. In other words, the context established, as a result of the interactivity of all the elements involved - the cat, the bowl, the ball, the window set, the approaching hand, the tube of cat treats, the appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of the cat, and the elements that dictate that, and the auditory elements - transform the frame from an abstract image with moving features, to a tool to communicate, to convey. 

~ Rishav Mukherjee (Roll no. 2) 

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