A Technical Set-up Created for a Film: La région centrale (Michael Snow, 1971)
A Technical Set-up Created for a Film: La région centrale (Michael Snow, 1971), by Stephen Broomer
In the spring of 1969, Michael Snow began pre-production on La région centrale, a film that extended, on an epic scale, the survey of camera movement his filmmaking had explored in Wavelength (1967), Standard Time (1967) and <—> (1969). Where those films had dealt with straight lines of movement achieved by pre-existing camera systems and mounts, La région centrale required the invention of a unique system. Snow wanted to make a film that could “see as a planet does,” in which the camera was capable of 360-degree flexibility of movement.[4] In addition to this, he would need a machine that could vary in speed and direction of movement and could be operated by remote control.
Snow approached engineer Pierre Abbeloos about the creation of a three-way remote-controlled mount. Designed for use with a 16 mm Arriflex camera, the device would guide the camera along the path of a sphere. Abbeloos’s device would also allow the camera to rotate in position. Abbeloos initially built a system that would determine the camera movements by using pre-recorded signals on tape; this system, however, was not used in the production of the film. Instead, Snow used a panel that consisted of “a button for rotation, speeds of 1 to 10 (slow to fast), one for vertical movement, one for horizontal movement and zoom.”[5] In the months before the shoot, Snow wrote scores that determined what the camera would do for each 400’ roll of film; his charts plan for 8400’, and the final film, upon its release in 1971, was approximately 6400’.
Through the course of filming, Snow had decided that the machine was itself a beautiful object. Within the year, Snow had created De La (1971), a video and sculpture installation built around the machine, which was transformed from a 16 mm film camera mount into a closed circuit television system. As an installation, the machine was equipped with a video camera that broadcasts images in real time to four monitors stationed around the machine, the audience passing between the machine and the monitors. Eventually, the monitors show the entire space, including the spectator and monitors. It was a declaration of the craftsmanship that had formed La région centrale, a re-enactment of the gesture, but one in which the force that formed the sphere and the playback itself were made visible, active components of the work.
