ABSTRACT
Introduction First patented in 1888, the film camera is, on the one hand, an optical device to capture movement-rather than static, posed images created by the photo-camera; on the other hand, it is a contraption that allows the user to look at the world through a lens. Such a lens can sharpen or blur the field of vision, or it can simulate depth by using two lenses and replicating the eyes’ stereoscopic vision. Thus the film camera plays with our vision, tricking the viewer to surrender to optical illusions, while also recording movement in space.1 In the earliest experiments with zoetropes and thaumatropes it was indeed the human eye, not the camera that tracked the movement of the separate images, filling the gaps, as it were. This combination of optical trick and recording movement still lies at the heart of the cinematic process today-suffice it to look at the use of motion capture in computer-generated images (CGI) and other special effects that make us believe we see a human body (or alien creature) when we actually see a digitally mastered creation.
