A moving camera operates in a dynamic manner that not only captures a scene that is not still, but, engages the audience into the scene. This sense of engagement or role within the film from the audiences’ perspective is all due to the dynamics of the camera and how the “mise en scene” is developed. There is more to a film than the capturing of shot, the moving camera allows for “the gaze” to be elaborate, an in some cases, maybe more intimate with the spectator. This allows for the observer to have power over the object in a different manner, it is not only examining just the object as a whole, but taking apart the object to discover ideas about it. Yes, the object has ownership of “the gaze” as it is whats being examined but with the limitations of what about the object, the observer wants to see. It is possible to make the mise en scenee due to the moving camera because, a setting can be shown to an audience. Take the 1954 film Rear Window, at the commencement of the film there the camera shows the audience an external/outdoor view of some apartments which allows them to decode the setting for the film.
The artist is the one who is in power of creating the subject which in turn affects the observes power over the subject. Although the prior sentence may seem misleading but it basically explains how the “artist” can paint or create something (subject) and arrange (montage) it in a particular way to have the audience (observers) analyze the product. In the film, there are other ways that the moving camera demonstrates the effectiveness of movement. For example, once the scene or setting is shown to the audience, we are then taken into the apartment of the main character, protagonist, journalist who is sleeping. A close up is then made of the character as we examine his face being awoken by the second character, a female that kisses him. It is intimate, of course a kiss in general in intimate, but with the innovation of moving cameras we see the exchangement of words and expressions in a more complex manner.
Thus, the ethics of the artist, subject, and observer are dependent on the positioning and creating of the camera and scene. Having close-ups, then reverse-camera shots demonstrate the level of excitement within a conversation in a film, which an audience could decode as important or not significant. Monaco said it best in the reading Language of Film, “Film has no grammar. There are, however, some vaguely defined rules of usage in cinematic language, and the syntax of film- its systematic arrangement-orders these rules and indicates relationship among them” (Monaco p191). Ethics can only be established by the method an artist decides to develop the “mise en scene” which will then depict the relationships an audience identifies with, giving them the power, to decide how to decode the subject. Taking another reading into consideration for further elaboration is form Sturken and Catwright where they identified that “Just as images are both representations and producers of the ideologies of their time, they are also factors in the power relations between human subjects and between individuals and institutions” (Sturken & Catwright p93). Not to confuse people with the different subjects at hand, but they do interpret how an observer can be effected by the artists’ creation and a moving camera has much to do with what Monaco and Sturken/Catwright have to say about the relationships between power of an observer and the object being identified with.