Aerial View in Cinema

 

Aerial View as a Cinematic Tool

Panoramic landscapes in cinema are an essential part of filmmaking. They can create a sense of beauty, vastness, depth, grandeur, and magic. 

The panoramic aerial view is a powerful cinematic tool, enabling filmmakers to create a wide range of visual and narrative effects. It can be used to create a sense of space, depth, movement, and drama.

For instance, an aerial shot can emphasize the size and power of a natural landscape, expose social disparities within a large city, or create a sense of threat and danger in a chase scene.

Through the aerial view, filmmakers can manipulate the audience's perception of perspective. They can play with relative size, camera angles, and depth of field to create optical illusions and evoke specific emotions.

For example, an aerial shot of a small figure walking alone in the desert can create a sense of loneliness and helplessness, while an aerial shot of a vast crowd at a demonstration can create a sense of power and solidarity.

The aerial view can also serve as an important narrative tool. It can be used to present the plot from a broader perspective, reveal crucial information inaccessible to the characters, or create dramatic effects of surprise and discovery.

For example, in Alfred Hitchcock's film "Psycho", the aerial view is used to reveal the isolated location of the motel and the danger lurking for the protagonist.

The aerial view is particularly prevalent in certain film genres, such as war films, Westerns, and science fiction films. It allows filmmakers to create spectacular and breathtaking scenes, transporting viewers to imaginary worlds. 

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) and many other science fiction films dealing with space flight incorporate panoramic views of Earth as seen from space, landscapes used to create a sense of immense scale and to emphasize the smallness of humanity within the universe. In the "Star Wars" films, the aerial view is used to create impressive and action-packed space battles.

The development of cinematic technology, especially the invention of drones and digital cameras, has expanded the creative possibilities of the aerial view in cinema. Today, filmmakers can create more complex and sophisticated aerial shots than ever before.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" - Earth seen from a distance 

History of Aerial View in Cinema

The aerial view in cinema is more than just a matter of vision; it's also a matter of sensation. The feeling of flight is central to the aerial view, as is the pleasure derived from observing the Earth from an unusual perspective. The particular pleasure of the cinematic gaze, concerning the aerial view, lies in the oscillation between static visual perception and dynamic perception.

Cameras abroad Balloons Sensation:

The modern aerial view is the result of two technological processes: The automation of vision and the expansion of human visual range. The automation of vision began with the invention of the camera in the mid-19th century. The camera allowed people to capture images of the world from a new perspective, that of a detached observer. The expansion of human visual range began with the invention of the balloon in the late 18th century. The balloon allowed people to see the world from a higher vantage point, providing new insights into space.

The aerial view in cinema is a combination of these two processes. The movie camera allows for the creation of cinematic images of the world from a high perspective, similar to that obtained from an airplane.

Cinema emerged during a time of great focus on conquering the skies and liberating the human gaze from its physical limitations. As early as 1898, the Lumière brothers filmed a short film from a balloon tethered to the ground. The film was shot from a vertical perspective, allowing the viewer to see the landscape in a very different way than they usually would. The film shows movement both inside and outside the gondola. The movement inside the gondola is created by the passengers, and the movement outside is created by the people and vehicles moving on the ground. The film also illustrates how space looks from a vertical perspective. The horizon line disappears, and the world appears flatter and more organized. The film reveals, probably for the first time, the concrete kinetic and static dimensions of the aerial experience in space.

Cinema, thanks to its unprecedented freedom of possibilities and mobility, became the accepted way to convey the aerial experience, along with the inherent instability of perspective. The verticality of the viewpoint is originally a strange kind of visual effect, a unique fusion of macroscopic vision and microscopic observation. Observing the world from above allows for an unprecedented expansion of the field of vision but also makes the world seem smaller and more distant. Early cinema maintained a combination of "I see" with "I fly''. The field was far from being limited to cinematic representation and was connected to the broader question of visual culture.

The history of the aerial view in cinema can be divided into three stages:

The Experimental Stage (1898-1914): During this phase, filmmakers experimented with various aerial filming techniques. They used balloons, airships, and airplanes to capture the world from new and surprising perspectives.

The Developmental Stage (1914-1939): In this stage, aerial filming techniques became more sophisticated. Filmmakers used these techniques to create special effects and tell new stories.

The Cinematic Focus Stage (1939-present): The aerial view has become an integral part of cinema. It is used in a wide variety of films, from documentaries to feature films.

The development of aerial photography in cinema until 1914 led to spectacular and highly significant presentations. Even before the First World War, some photographers began equipping airships, and later airplanes, with movie cameras to explore the feeling of free flight in space. An article from 1911 recounts the filming of an aerial tour in agricultural France, aboard various aircraft. The footage presented was excellent in terms of its image quality components, such as clarity and sharpness. It was also good in terms of its documentary quality, for observation, topography, and touring purposes. A second article from 1912 focuses on the technical aspects of aerial photography. One of the main challenges in aerial photography is the need to use a wide-angle lens to capture the entire picture. It is also important to use a camera with a fast shutter speed to prevent blurring due to the aircraft's movements.

In the first decades of the 20th century, an almost blind faith in the objectivity of mechanical reproduction methods, such as photography and cinema, only emphasized the purposeful tendency that saw in the vast images obtained from the air the natural replacement for cartographic maps. However, these images often proved less "readable" than a conventional map. For example, when examining large structures from a completely vertical view, it is impossible to identify them because they appear as two-dimensional geometric shapes.

In an Airship Over the Battlefields:

In 1918, after the end of the First World War, aerial films began to appear more widely in cinema. One of the most significant projects in this field was the series of short films "In an Airship Over the Battlefields", produced by the French military cinema. The series, filmed between 1918 and 1919, documents the destruction caused in France during the war. The first film in the series depicts the journey of an airship over France, starting in Paris and ending in the front-line areas. The second film depicts the battlefields of the Somme, while the third film depicts the battlefields of Ypres. The fourth and final film depicts the process of France's reconstruction after the war. The films in the series use an aerial perspective to present the destruction caused in France dramatically. The footage shows destroyed houses, ruined churches, and neglected fields. They also show the bodies of soldiers killed in battles. The films were an essential historical document and were also used for propaganda purposes. They emphasized the extent of the destruction caused by the war and the need for the country's reconstruction. The films in the series were shot using special movie cameras developed for aerial photography. The cameras had a wide angle and a fast shutter speed. The filming in the series was technically challenging. The airship was limited in its movements, and the photographers had to deal with strong winds and its vibrations.

This series of short films significantly impacted developing aerial photography in cinema. They showed the potential of aerial photography to create dramatic and accurate images of historical events. They also influenced the development of aerial photography for propaganda purposes, demonstrating how aerial photography could be used to present reality dramatically and manipulatively. From a specifically cinematic perspective, these short films represent an important milestone in developing aerial photography in cinema. They were the first to make extensive use of aerial tracking shots. The aerial tracking shots in them are unique in that they manage to create a sense of free and energetic movement. The shots pass over vast areas, emphasizing the damage caused to the space. The use of aerial tracking shots allowed the camera to create a sense of intimacy with the viewer. The viewer feels as if they are flying with the airship and observing the destruction from a bird's-eye view. The films were also a source of fantasy. Aerial photography allows the viewer to see the world from a new perspective. The viewer can see the world as they do not usually see it, from a viewpoint above and beyond the human world. The films illustrated the potential of aerial photography to create a sense of freedom and transcendence. The shots allowed the viewer to feel as if they could fly above the world and see it from a bird's-eye view. 

"In an Airship Over the Battlefields" (1918-19)

The "In an Airship Over the Battlefields" films also significantly impacted avant-garde cinema. Avant-gardists saw in these films the potential of aerial photography to create new forms of cinematic art. They used aerial tracking shots to create a sense of free and energetic movement. They also used aerial tracking shots to create a sense of intimacy with the viewer.

The City as Aerial View

The cinematic focus on aerial photography solidified in the 1920s, particularly with the "city" as a central theme. Many filmmakers saw the city as a challenging and innovative place for filming, and aerial footage allowed them to see the city from a new angle.

Prominent examples of the use of aerial photography in cinema of that period include the following films:

"Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis" (1927) is a film by Walter Ruttmann that uses aerial views to present the German city from a new angle and includes an avant-garde perspective.

"Skyscrapers" (1929) is a newsreel film by the Gaumont company, presenting aerial photography of the skyscrapers in Chicago.

"Flying Over New York" (1932) and "Beneath the Snow" (1934) are two more newsreel films by the Pathé company, presenting aerial shots of New York.

"Flying Over New York" (1932)