Eric, Pre-Class, Benjamin

In his tract, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin states that, "the audience's identification with the [film]actor is really an identification with the camera." This is an interesting idea, but it seems to me that there is a bit more to it than that.

Firstly, one wishing to examine the relationship of audience to camera must understand exactly what the camera is, for the entity we are referring to here as the camera is not merely a single device; but a representation of the entity of recorded perspective. This perspective is made up of interplay between the captured image, its operator(s), and a myriad of wills.

These wills can be seperated into three different castes: Producers(referring not to the job title but to the people who are creating the film), Format(referring to the distortion of the machines that process and display the film), and Personal(referring to the state of mind, sensorial fitness, and the previous experiences{be they works of art or memories} of the viewer).

In the universe of the film perspective, unlike that of the material universe, physics are not newtonian. That is to say that, though the different wills do act upon others, they react neither equally nor oppisitely. The wills of the Personal, in fact, act only upon themselves. The wills of the Producer react only to restrictions enacted upon them by the Format caste. The Format reacts to the ideas, performances, and skills of the Producers by creating mechanical reproduction. Through this mechanical reproduction, the producers also act upon the wills of the Personal. The format also acts upon the personal limitations such screen size, resolution, and audio quality.