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I vastly overestimated what I'd be able to make it through in a week of reading Film Theory and Criticism but I'd like to talk about what I did manage to get through. On Editing from Film Technique by Vsevolod Pudovkin I didn't take a lot away from this that I felt I could argue or reinterpret - Pudovkin laid out a reasonable statement and supported it with examples throughout the essay. He explains his purpose in this thesis statement, "the construction of a scene from pieces, a sequence from scenes, and reel from sequences, and so forth is called editing", and then goes into more detail about what he means by editing. Pudovkin views the cinema as a nested doll in terms of composition - the entirety of a piece or a script is composed of scenes, scenes are composed of sequences and sequences are composed of shots. These are then used to convey a story by directing the audience as to what is important and detailing events in an understandable manner. This is the most basic method of assembling a film, putting it together from individual pieces and making sure that it proceeds in a manner that makes sense. It's interesting to note that this essay is primarily concerned with silent movies, as this was the technology at the time, and explains some things that are no longer extraordinary relevant to modern cinema, such as the length a film should be in feet and where to place title cards within a film. Pudovkin then goes on to recognize that this is a pretty artless method of creating a film and detail relational editing techniques, which are ways of editing within the film designed to inspire certain reactions in the viewer.
Beyond the Shot from Film Form by Sergei Eisenstein This essay seems to have been included for two important reasons. Firstly, it defines the idea of montage as it relates to film by explaining it in the context of Japanese writing, poetry and theater. Secondly, it makes Eisenstein more relatable to goons by showing that he was a big ole weeaboo. Seriously, this man was obsessed with Japan. He expresses this by detailing his theory of montage - evoking a feeling in a film by juxtaposing multiple shots that lead the viewer to a takeaway that isn't shown on the screen - and showing how this is captured throughout Japanese culture. I don't think that these instances are terribly important, other than in the way that they serve to deepen the reader's understanding of montage by showing what it is and isn't. My understanding of montage before reading this essay was that it was any editing that showed scenes in a sequence but upon reading, a moment in a film is montage when it is intended to elicit a non-intrinsic response stemming from a point of conflict. This is supported when Eisenstein details an argument that he has with Pudovkin where Eisenstein explains that he views montage as the collision of shots and Pudovkin views it as serial elements. Eisenstein allows that montage can contain elements of serialization because he views it as collision and he expresses that collision can be any response to two elements coming into contact, that they can repel each other or force a movement of both in the same direction. The essay concludes with a lament that while Japanese culture at large captures the idea of montage, it is not expressed in their cinema. I'm interested in learning more about early Japanese cinema so I can better contextualize this but I'm hesitant to say too much because I don't have the knowledge to argue in this sphere. Strike directed by Sergei Eisenstein Here are some shots in the film that relate to concepts in the essays from this week: Symbolism - My favorite instance of symbolism in the movie, the police have captured a striker and are showing him a map of the city districts. When the striker refuses to give information to the police, the officer slams his fist upon the map and spills ink across it in a way that looks like blood, alluding to the carnage they've created.  Contrast - Eisenstein sets a scene where the shareholders "discuss" the terms of the strike against one where the strikers are visited by raid police and show the shareholders juicing a lemon while the raid police intimidate the strikers.    Montage - While the striking peasants are slaughtered by the police, the movie is cut with cattle being slaughtered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWiDciPuSW4 I wasn't able to get through as much this week as I would've thought so I'm going to stick to one essay / two films a week going forward. Next week I'm going to read The Dramaturgy of Film Form (linked above) and watch Battleship Potemkin and October. I'm hoping that other people have read these essays and watched the films, I'm looking forward to discussing them and finding out other's impressions.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:24
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whatevz fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Feb 7, 2019 03:02
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pleasecallmechrist posted:On Editing focuses the crafting a film, but what sticks out and what I think will become more relevant in Eisenstein's essays, including his disagreements with Pudovkin, and what I consider a central concern of cinema is the effect on the audience. Pudovkin discusses pacing, tension and much of editing 101, but in all of these consideration for the viewer is paramount, not only in the technical side of manipulating the viewer, which one can see the avant-garde coming from, but what would lead to the next essay which is representation and meaning. His Relational Editing techniques are obviously important, but I wonder if the more blatant use of them (the cow and the slaughter of the proles) would be considered Our refinement towards art seems to have come with an insistence for subtlety though how much of that is/grew out of pandering to the preference of the academics, aka give me hints so I can research and expound on poo poo, I do not know. I digress. I hadn't considered this - the fact that it's not just that something is being made, it's being made for someone to consume. It really helps to explain the why of the montage effect in that it's not just that Eisenstein is eliciting an emotion, it's that he's eliciting it for a specific reason. More often than not, I would say he's using it for propagandist reasons, given the context of his films. He uses montage to emphasize the struggle of the collective and the inhumanity of the bourgeois... which segues into our next essay, The Dramaturgy of Film Form It's important to start this out by defining a few terms that may be unfamiliar to a reader of non-academic or Marxist texts: Dialectic: An argument or discussion between multiple viewpoints with the intention of revealing a common truth through reason Dialectical materialism: The idea that politics and history are the result of conflict of social forces and can be read as a series of contradictions and resolutions Dramaturgy: The theory and practice of dramatic composition Eisenstein posits in this essay that art is the material product of dialectical materialism, the concrete creation that arises from "interaction between two contradictory opposites". He says that ART IS ALWAYS CONFLICT and explains that this is because it's art's "task... to reveal the contradiction of being", because "[art] consists in the conflict between natural being and creative [bias]" and because art is made up of the shot and montage. He explicates on these points by saying firstly that art's social mission is to give the viewer a correct understanding through a setting up of conflict in the viewer's mind. Eisenstein goes on to explain art's nature by discussing how art is the intersection of nature and industry. It is organic form versus rational form and from this conflict arises the art and the creation of its rhythm and tension. This leads into the meat of this essay - the further definition and refinement of the theory of montage. Eisenstein immediately disposes of a view that montage is the mechanical act of assembling a film and the rhythm that arises from this. It is not the composition of successive shots, but the collision between shots that creates impression through juxtaposition. Montage arises from film's base technical nature - film is sequential shots occurring in a singular space on top of each other and it is the degree of difference between these shots that determines how large of an impression is made. Film is unique in that it contains the montage seen in art - the spatial arrangement of contradictory elements - and the montage in music, which is temporal contradiction. This means that film is conflict in motion and space, which is the visual counterpoint. Visual counterpoint views a shot as a cell of montage, not a element, which means that there isn't shot AND montage or title AND shot but rather, the three of these working together and sharing common elements to construct an impression that none can accomplish individually. A title introduces an idea which is formed within a shot and exploded by the conflict within shots into montage. Conflict can take a variety of forms within a film, such as spatial conflict, conflict in tempo, conflict arising from optical distortion and conflict between an event and its temporality among others. Eisenstein goes on to detail compositional possibilities within his films to establish a thesis that "the concept of filmic movement derives from the superimposition of two different stills". These compositional possibilities are: 1. Each moving piece of montage in its own right 2. Artificially produced representation of movement, split into: A. Logical, which is the representation of a possible event such as:  A boy is running  Soldiers fire  The boy is lying, bloodied. We do not see him being shot but understand what has happened because we have seen each shot leading to this. B. Illogical, a fantastical event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sChr6jm7Ntw&t=7s Because Eisenstein shows these statues in this sequence, with this rhythm, the viewer sees the stone lion rise and react to the slaughter on the Odessa steps. These compositional possibilities are primitive, using only layered movement. 3. Emotional combinations, leading to associational montage and the emotional assessment of a situation The example that Eisenstein gives is harp playing hands being layered over the Menshevik peace overtures during October.     He then rejects this specific instance in terms of the film, saying that it was too literary and does nothing to enliven the material. This is contrasted with the slaughter of workers / slaughter of the cows at the end of Strike that we discussed earlier, as Eisenstein says that care must be taken so usage of this montage combination doesn't lead to decaying the movement of the film - which he views as the essential element. 4. Action being removed from time and space This clip demonstrates how independent actions can be associated through editing, despite having no real relation to each other. ----- Next week's essay is The Evolution of the Language of Cinema, which can be found here Recommended viewing is Citizen Kane and The Passion of Joan of Arc Cloks fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Feb 13, 2019 |
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Feb 11, 2019 05:48
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I love this thread and the effort y’all are putting into these posts 
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Feb 12, 2019 12:48
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This might be jumping ahead a bit, but after watching First Reformed, I revisited a short essay by Paul Schrader about camera movement I used as part of an argument/video essay within my coursework last year: https://www.filmcomment.com/article/game-changers-camera-movement/quote:There are two types of camera movement: motivated and unmotivated. Motivated camera movements are direct responses to the action on screen: you move, I follow you. A character walks across the room and the camera tilts, pans, or physically moves by hand or on tracks. Unmotivated camera moves are used for emphasis of one kind or another, be it emotional or supernatural, by the storyteller. You stand still, I approach—that’s unmotivated. There are two types of unmotivated camera movement. One is logical. A character is doing something—brandishing a small object, making a gesture, displaying a look of heightened emotion— and it’s important that we see it, so the camera moves in to get a closer look. The camera is doing what the viewer wants or needs it to do. And if emotion is building in that character, the camera gets closer. Logical. While there's only a brief touch upon pioneering cinema with his mention of the Lumieres, I thought that both after seeing First Reformed and how spectacularly it deals with framing and movement (while also providing a nice bit of consistency with Schrader's comments, given how...eclectic? he's been about what he says vs. what he does a lot of the time) as well as application to early cinema as is being explored in here; both Eisenstein and Welles' movement of the camera is absolutely sublime and provide examples of what Schrader dubs "motivated" and "unmotivated" movement.
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Feb 12, 2019 14:09
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Escobarbarian posted:I love this thread and the effort y’all are putting into these posts Same, great stuff
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Feb 12, 2019 18:05
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Kull the Conqueror posted:If you're at all interested in specifics of documentary (fuckin' nerd), there are some reading options of varying complexity: Was coming here to mention Barnouw and Nichols but Kull said it way better than I ever could. I've never read the Renov book but I've read many of his essays (as well as other people's essays he curated). I had 3(?) classes with Renov back in film school and worked with one of his TAs on a museum documentary installation. He is brilliant and as Kull said he truly changed the way I understand what a documentary can be, to the point I just started calling them non-fiction or essay films as many of my favorites have nothing to do with accurately presenting an unbiased reality. Bookmarked the thread, although just reading through it now is bringing back terror sweats from school, especially as it was 15 years ago and I probably remember a tenth of what I think I even learned back then.
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Feb 13, 2019 01:46
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Took some screenshots for the next essay and couldn't resist sharing one.
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Feb 13, 2019 06:06
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whatevz fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2019 18:14
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pleasecallmechrist posted:Where this approach and indeed the entire Soviet montage would become problematic is that the juxtaposition of images in montage is what actually and inevitably allows produces correlative and conflicting relationships between. Which would mean that Soviet montage could be said to have been born out of the desire to create the points and counterpoints that dialectics demand rather than being a convincing natural presentation of truth, the blatant and heavy-handed quality of parallel montage being the most unnatural. This would also seem to explain why Soviet montage was eventually halted. This makes a lot of sense to me. Given the propagandist nature of Eisenstein's films, it's understandable why he'd be okay with creating unnatural sequences to clearly convey his intent and impart the viewer with a heightened investment by forcing them to define the event being alluded to. The Evolution of the Language of Cinema by André Bazin In this essay, Bazin asks "if the technical revolution created by the sound track was in any sense an aesthetic revolution", or in practical terms, if the addition of sound to cinema changed films in a notable manner. He hypothesizes that in cinema from 1920 to 1940 there were "two broad and opposing trends", directors who put their faith in images and directors who put their faith in reality. Image: For Bazin, image means the entirety of a filmed image that that composes a shot, or "plastic" and the usage of montage within the film. Two types of montage are presented - the first, the "invisible" montage that is the composition of a film more familiar from Pudovkin's essay and secondly, Eisenstein's definition of montage which is concisely defined as not the event itself but the allusion to it. Together, these offered the filmmaker a great ability to convey their interpretation of an event to a spectator. Sound can only be used as supplement to montage. What we have seen of silent film so far has consisted almost entirely of montage but Bazin argues that there were films that did not use montage. Reality: Whereas montage films could only use sound as a supplement, it was an essential evolution for films that made use of reality. What is seen in The Passion of Joan of Arc is not the alluded event in montage but a selective revealing of reality as framed by the shot. In this type of film, the absence of sound hindered the film as it was an essential component of reality that was missing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_KDf4xhU8 Joan of Arc, Bazin argues, is "already virtually a talkng film". By drawing a distinction between these two types of silent film, the argument is made that it was not sound that divided techniques in cinema but the contrasting ideologies of image and reality, montage and mise-en-scène. Following this there is a brief history of film from the 1930s to 1940s that concludes that by 1940, content and form had stabilized in talking films. The essay then moves into a discussion of how sound has changed editing in films. The argument is made that if silent films were "expressionist or "symbolistic", storytelling has become "analytic" and "dramatic". The montage editing seen in Eisenstein's films, such as the lion awakening in Battleship Potemkin has become archaic because of the heightened reality in films introduced by sound. Films have moved away from Image and towards Reality, using an increasingly grounded editing style of shot-reverse-shot. This is challenged by the shot in depth introduced by Citizen Kane.  (more examples can be found here) By converting the screen into a complex staging arrangement, all parts of which are visible at once, the viewer can simultaneously see images that would need to previously be expressed through montage. In the above shot, a young Kane is simultaneously showing playing in the snow while he is being signed away to a ward - shots that would've needed the montage treatment before the development of the shot in depth technique. This is not an elimination of montage but an integration of the technique into the "plastic" of a film. Bazin then notes that this technique changed the relationship of spectators and the spectacle. By compressing montage into the reality of a film, the structure became more realistic. This also led to the viewer becoming a more active participant, as they were now more responsible for choosing what to follow in the film. Additionally, where montage was stringent and unambiguous in its expression, dept of focus reintroduced ambiguity into the structure of the image. Some techniques from montage persisted and the selective incorporation of these montage techniques were able to draw a sharper contrast in relation to the rest of the film, such as the aging sequence in Citizen Kane, which used temporal realism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMkPIW22bq4 Returning to silent film that didn't use montage techniques, Bazin believes that these were the richest silent films because they were the ones that anticipated "the realism of sound as a natural development". However, he believes that sounds film's development is much more indebted to montage and that its essentials were preserved after the move to sound film but "what it turned its back on was metaphor and symbol in exchange for the illusion of objective presentation". The increased reality in sound film allowed for techniques of montage to be preserved when they were increasingly seen as unrealistic by incorporating them into the reality of the film. --- Given that it might be difficult to find some films, I'm going to give the next four weeks and their associated films to help anyone who might not be able to get two new films every Sunday. Towards a Non-Bourgeois Camera Style : Week End & La Chinoise by Godard Some Points in the Semiotics of Cinema : Birth of a Nation Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film : The Scarlet Empress Semiotics and the Cinema: Metz and Wollen : Cleo from 5 to 7 These films should hopefully be available through your library, once Criterion Channel is up and running this should be a little easier. I have no issue with anyone who wants to wait to post about something until they've seen the relevant films. 
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Feb 18, 2019 05:12
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Thanks for the summation. Some interesting points in Bazin's essay, though I question some of his claims. For one, I was under the impression that deep focus had already been possible in the silent era (Greed notably uses it in a few shots) and that its restricted use had more to do with filmmakers preferring the ability to direct the viewer's gaze to a particular element on the screen. So the popularity of deep focus in the wake of Citizen Kane had more to do with ideology than technical breakthroughs.
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Feb 18, 2019 13:27
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pleasecallmechrist posted:I know I'm a little late with this second Eisenstein response, but hopefully it will provoke discussion or interest or distraction. what is "a...natural presentation of truth"?
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Feb 19, 2019 07:24
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whatevz fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Feb 21, 2019 01:23
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Just a quick note - I'm super busy with work right now so I'm not able to keep up with the summaries at the moment. I'll hop back on in a few weeks!
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Feb 26, 2019 04:16
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