The procedure of separating and extracting certain aspects of a scene by adjusting the focus of a series of frames in succession according to various organizational patterns is developed in Retour d'un repère in a particular way. While the filmic operations are structured in relation to a limited space (a branch over a 19c duck pond), the filmic process rests on a visual transformation of a pantoun, a verse form borrowed from literary rhetorics, which characteristically transforms itself gradually and continuously in a precise manner.