17 August

Film makers know that a close up is much more than just a closer view of something. A close up shifts you away from observing a scene towards suddenly feeling present in the scene yourself. Faces are the most powerful close ups, but any close up can have the same effect. Hitchcock was a master at this, one moment you could be looking at a bathroom with a scared woman in it, and you knew a murder was coming. But then he’d shift quickly to a close up of her face, and you *felt* as if you were there in the bathroom with her. I think that feelings are not add-ons to situations, they are those situations, embodied through one viewpoint. When we feel fear, it’s not a separate feeling called fear, that feeling is also how we act and perceive in that situation, it’s the entire situation, including other people present, wrapped up into a unified experience. Which is why film makers use close ups, to express entire situations with nothing more than a look on a face. Or put another way, we don’t think, act and feel, as 3 different things. Thinking, acting and feeling are the same thing.