XI

		alike. 18 They therefore do not gaze at the lens, etc. All in all, coverage works with continuity and objectivity as a total package. It is difficult to use the former without the other two.

		V

		In contrast to coverage, stands d coupage. D coupage, in French, suggests turning a piece of material, paper for instance, into a shape that can be identified: a cut out. The paper itself remains blank; it says nothing. It is the resultant shapes alone that connote a fish, a tree, a human being. In film, the technique implies that the director, working alone or with the screenwriter, has previewed the action in direct relation to specific camera positions. That movement is seen from that angle. There is a close-up of the antagonist at this junction. Then we place the camera outside the window to see this. Emphasis is on distinct views in place of random or customary standpoints. Instead of so-called "objective" shots, what we see expresses the subjectivity of the filmic narrator, the intention of the storyteller.19 When preparing a script this way, "the description of each scene, each image, of the future film involves not only its action and dialogue but also the sounds and the music that will accompany them, even the technical means expected to be used at given moments. . . . By providing an exact shot list, [the arrangement] also envisions the duration of the film, its rhythm."20 D coupage could thus be described as dividing the scene into a series of independent shots, rejecting in effect the fundamental premise of coverage (shooting the same action through different angles). But even this definition is not quite right for, when a d coupage originates during the writing of the picture, the scene does not in fact precede its viewing through a camera point of view. The two are imagined, constructed, and designed simultaneously. They are co-present from the very beginning of the project. This scene is included in the script only because a camera sees what is happening from a certain angle. As a Marxian superstructure, the scene's existence is now contingent on the presence of an extrinsic reality: the camera as the absolute base of all operations.

		Although d coupage does not guarantee good filmmaking (mediocre cinema was produced that way), it is an indispensable tool for the serious filmmaker. In opposition to coverage where all options are left open until the editing process, the technique makes it possible to engender a viewpoint from the very inception of the story. D coupage can also be said to