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title: Photographed Theatre vs Cinema

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<h1>Photographed Theatre vs Cinema</h1>

In the early days of cinema when cinema hadn’t sprouted as a new art form yet and there were no clear rules or methods of cinema—many were using video cameras to capture broadway, theatres, street shows or any significant world event.

Think of one such creation. When you capture a theatre performance, there are actors in it, a narrative story, dialogues and all that. When you view that later, you see characters moving around, acting. It’s much like a motion picture. But does it automatically become cinema? If not, what makes cinema different? 

Béla Balázs, one of the influential film critic argued that— to be film and distinct from photographed theatre, the creative work maintains these rules:

One, the film has variable distances from the spectator for the same scene, which theatre obviously does not. The variable distance of the same scene is used to create composition that ultimately turns into cinema later on.
Two, a film divides up a scene into multiple sections or shots. Again, theatre has no business doing this.
Three, a film changes angles in the same scene, which is also used to create shots.
And four, montage—the art of juxtaposing unrelated shots to create related meaning. 

So, photographic reproduction of theatre, despite looking similar to cinema, is fundamentally different not only in expressions and theme but also in the form. 

— notacinephile

![Béla Balázs](https://i.imgur.com/dAHMEPU.png)
[Source](https://twitter.com/berghahnfilm/status/726864099712352256)



