Frame grab (aka “screencap,” for screen capture) technology is a real boon for those who want to write about film and show as much as they say.  I’ve had the capability now for several years and it’s changed the way I look at movies… or perhaps just brought my point of view back to the way it used to be.

I grew up during a golden age of cinephilia.  I don’t know that this time period has ever been heralded as such but I sure felt the love back then.  This awareness of the glory of the Hollywood machine occurred around the time of the demise of the big studios.  As older stars such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Glenn Ford, James Stewart and Henry Fonda (to name but a few) were being pushed aside into aging shrew and elder statesman roles to make room for the promising young talents, a new generation of film critics (among them, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Rex Reed, Roger Ebert) rose up to keep the memory alive – not to enshrine Old Hollywood but to keep the work in the discussion.  Prominent during this era, too, were cinephiles who, in the age before the instant availability of old movies celebrated the classic style of filmmaking via film books that preserved in photos the continuity of a particular film.  Back in 1974, if you couldn’t see/hadn’t seen James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN (1931), you could at least follow the narrative frame by frame, with dialogue on the side, via Richard J. Anobile’s treatment of the film as part of The Film Classics Library.  “NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME IN BOOK FORM,” the jacket copy read, “OVER 1,000 FRAME BLOW-UPS… EVERY SCENE… EVERY WORD OF DIALOGUE.”  I went steady with that book for a few years, even after I’d seen FRANKENSTEIN via a late night TV broadcast.  There were other volumes, devoted to NINOTCHKA (1939), THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), CASABLANCA (1942) and PSYCHO (1960), and I found them all mesmerizing.  Poring over these books, I learned how a single shot tell a story in and of itself while serving the larger narrative.  I didn’t know it then but a frame grabber was born.

With the advent of home video, it became easier to see old or obscure movies more or less in their entirety.  Books  such as those included in the Film Classics Library were suddenly less in demand, remaindered to bargain bins and dusty old book shops.  I didn’t consider it at the time, engrossed as I was in catching up on films I’d heard of but never seen, but cinephiles had lost something in their enthusiasm to catch up with older movies in any condition.  The home video market was a bit of a crapshoot, with widescreen epics panned and scanned to accommodate the aspect ratio of the average TV set, with once glorious black-and-white films duped down to cottony dullness (or, worse yet, colorized), with Technicolor extravaganzas faded to pinkish monochrome.  It took some of us a while to remember how great movies once looked.  I’m proud to have been a staff writer for Tim Lucas’ Video Watchdog, which stumped for the presentation of movies in their intended framing no matter how many people bitched about “those black bars.”  When the primacy of VHS tapes began to crumble under the onslaught of DVDs, widescreen presentation gained acceptance.  (It didn’t hurt that TVs began to get bigger and bigger.)  And with the cleaner resolution of movies available for home viewing and the restoration of optimal aspect ratios came affordable technologies for preserving frames of film.  This was a real perk for film critics, who no longer had to track down rare film stills or overlit production photos from the major studios that didn’t really reflect the actual look of a given title.  The happiest beneficiaries of this technology were probably the film bloggers, who could call their own shots.  I’ve had a blast grabbing frames for movies and I’ve even developed a specific aesthetic, one that eschews the obvious images…

… for something a little more unusual…

Mind you, the technology can have an adverse effect on your movie watching.  More than a few times over the last couple of years I’ve caught myself stepping out of the film in a particularly striking moment, thinking “Nice grab!”  But by and large I’m happy with the way that screencap software has me examining isolated frames of film again, admiring the composition, loving the way the director and cinematographer have filled the frame to maximize the effect of a particular shot.  I’m really looking at faces again…

And the off center placement of the subject in the frame …

… as an indicator of the character’s loneliness…

… or vulnerability…

… or isolation.

Or the isolation of a fleeting, fluid moment…

… or a particularly perfect establishing shot…

… or the performance of an uncredited bit player…

… or players…

… whose contribution might otherwise be lost  in the cinematic shuffle of 24 frames per second.

These days I’m falling in love again with black-and-white cinematography …

… and the limitless possibilities…

… of bottomless shadows.

Before I had the ability to grab my own frames from movies, I was often frustrated at the limited choices of images even from the most famous of movies. The studio-approved publicity shots that come out ahead of new movies are fine for communicating basic plot points but the miss…

… the poetry, the value of seemingly unimportant moments that may not advance the story…

.. but speak volumes for the spirit of the movie in question.

I used to get annoyed with film sites that did grab their own images but protected them with a proprietary watermark or blocked you from copying them… as if they’d made the movie, composed the frame, captured the moment.  Sure, it takes an artistic eye to recognize a good shot and a steady hand to grab it but if that’s the sum and substance of your artistry, get behind the mule and make a real living for yourself.  I don’t protect the screencaps I make because they don’t belong to me and I want other people to use them, to see the beauty I see, and to spread the wealth.  These moments, these memories are to be shared, not hoarded, not monogrammed as if they’re our property.  The magic of a perfectly preserved moment from a film should evoke generosity and gratitude and make you want to go back and see the movie all over again.

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