Cinematography

The discussion aimed at discovering how cinematographic production can be involved in the spatial production process puts the concept of cinematography into the focus. Conceptual analysis of cinematography reveals hints of spatial production. Following these hints is similar to discovering the possibilities and limits of cinematography in the context of spatial production. Each followed hint represents a new perspective opened for cinematography. Today, even it seems that the concept of cinematography has been clarified considerably, there is still a lot to explore.

Cinematography; is commonly defined as a filmmaking art, process, or work which includes meanings that refer to ‘movement images’. This versatile definition brings versatility in the context of cinematographic conceptual contexts. Understanding and comprehending the concept of cinematography is possible by scrutinizing it. The aspects of cinematography can be categorized as it's 'real' equivalents and semantic equivalents. So in this framework; looking for its real equivalents in the tools and techniques of cinematography; looking for its semantic equivalents in the other concepts that can be included in or related to the concept of cinematography seems sensible.

The framing, montage, and editing that cinematography put forward as an original value; can be enough to explain the real existence of cinematography. The framing as an inevitably used instrument of cinematographic production has the potential to transform every image into an expression tool. It invites the audience to think and establishing a dialogue with a frame, in other words with defined boundaries of a singular image. What is important here is not only the physical but also the intellectual fitting ability of framing. Also, the framing should be mentioned not as an individual object of cinematography but as parts of the whole. At this point, not only the included image of the frame but also the gathering of these frames is worthwhile. Tschumi (1994) notes by intersecting space production and cinematographic production under the framing concept that the discontinuous structure of the framing can be similar to the spatial production. The framing, as in the case of Örs (2001), is a discontinuous element in singularity but also involves different potential production possibilities by mixing, overlapping, cutting, etc. each other. Despite the absence of spatial image in the primary sense of framing, it has the ability to form, limit, and define space on its own. This spatial experience; unlike the inclusion of buildings into the frame, can be possible by creating a response in the mind of the viewer. 

And here; the fiction and the montage, which is equivalent to the existential meaning of cinematographic production, reach significance. Montage can be defined as the name given to the technique of cinematography to reveal the fiction that is an issue related to consciousness. The design of the space and the spatial experience as 'moments' together defined as harmony reproduces the duality of fiction and montage in the architectural environment. This reinterpretation is the basis for creating fiction about space. The 'moments' created for the perception and use of the space observed in Le Corbusier's sketch drawings reveal the architect's consciousness of creating fiction. In other words, it can be said that fiction is an expression tool of spatial experience in the architectural narrative of the description. Cinema as art has an intellectual dimension in itself and the potential to transmit it. In other words, cinematographic thinking is a value that provides cinema an authenticity. In this respect, cinematographic thinking constantly rebuilds itself in the process.

According to Özçınar's statements (2010), Deleuze reveals cinematographic thinking in the context of movement and time principles. These two images are seen as the purest concepts that can create the intellectual dimension. Deleuze's conceptual framework for cinema focuses on the fact that time and space are two important characteristics of an image, and only possibility for it to exist is the filming. The significance of this thought is related to proving its intellectual activity being. The most important factor that brings cinematographic production and space production together in a common pond is that they both determine the time and the movement as the field of their own occupation. Movement image; beyond the definition of mechanical motion as Baker says (2015), bringing two images together, is not an illusion of the eye, an addition to each other; but as a moment of movement. And the unit of movement is not consecutive spaces or space particles, or time particles, not time units; it is the image itself. 'Modern' for Le Corbusier, born thanks to movement; space has been transformed into a machine as a form of perception of the world. The cinematography in his spatial production saves from being bound to a point and makes sense to the product by moving the view. The time-image depicted as a new image of the cinema is; unlike movement-image, isolates time from movement. In the organic regime that emerges with movement-image, while it is observed that the time is indirectly presented to the viewer together with the transition of an image to an image, now, time-image cinema presents time directly. However, concerns about representing the events that have taken place at the intersection of movement-image and time- image constitute the major issue of cinematography and architecture. In a sense, movement-image and time-image in a monopoly of cinematography include in-space production process by defining a spatial fiction.

A discussion of the undiscovered possibilities of cinematography can be raised as far as discovered possibilities can be discussed over its spatial reproduction reflections. As Nouvel stated (2011); space and architecture are something that can be comprehended by eyes (by seeing), so it is possible to change everything that can be seen through vision. In here, 'to change' expression is responded in cinematographic space (as a cinematographic product) when cinematography is regarded as the ability to sense-making. In this context, any new or reproduced notion on behalf of cinematography can reveal a new reading for space production.

This paper is produced within the scope of the course ‘Context of Theory- Practice on Architectural Design’, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Adnan AKSU in Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Gazi University.