That Obscure Object of Circular Frame
— Journey From Iris Mask to Fisheye Lens
As a media scholar, I am very familiar with an early stage of cinema where the use of circular mask was prevalent. The following is not a complete taxonomy of the many uses of what can be called the iris shot. But roughly speaking, the iris can have a clear boundary, showing a perfect circle in the rectangular frame, such as this:
Or it can be a cropped circle, basically serving as a heavy handed vignetting effect such as this:
In Abel Gance’s La Roue (1923), the presence of iris mask attained the status of a formal device as the circular shape, such as the “wheel” in the title, resonates throughout the film. Watch the following clip about the train crash, and you will see how the circular shape of the iris mask is seen as almost fighting and breaking loose the rectangular frame!
