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There is another good example of this technique in Pudovkin's The End of St Petersburg, in the sequence where two peasants, fleeing from the famine con- of the country, come to the town to look for a livelihood. One shot shows us in the foreground the huge mass of an equestrian statue of the Tsar, a black metallic silhouette with ditions and rider's Hmbs outstretched, and, far off background, the two peasants, in minute scale, tramping the horse's the empty in the across square. Although the basic method is the same in each, the last two scenes have quite different effects.

In another scene in the same film there is a shot in depth, which shows the office telephone-girl bulking large in the foreground, conducting a loud conversation with a boy-friend. All this has nothing to do with the plot and our attention is concentrated on a quarrel which appears on a much smaller scale in the background between two men. The quarrel is entirely silent except for light 'squabbling' music, but from the previous action we know it vitally concerns the plot. We know it is important and the very fact that it is small-scale increases its effect, for the same reason that meiosis, litotes, or other forms of deliberate under- statement are effective in literature.

From grows the idea o£ lighting, shooting-angle and scale as forming the rudiments of an art of the film. Lighting is discussed more fully in a later chapter. Scale and these examples there shooting-angle are considered further below. SCALE We have seen that a fdm audience size of large objects. The may fail to appreciate the lack of a scale of reference also the other way, so that models on works a tiny scale, if carefully made and lit, and cut in with shots of live action, are accepted as real.