#Frankenstein's Army Sergei | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

editingswap-blog · 7 years

Text

Essay about editing

As far back as story telling began, pieces of information have been added, left out, or exaggerated to aid the impact of a story. As mentioned in another of this blog, Trajan’s tower, in Rome is one such example. Even here we can see how the depiction of a battle was designed to show one side more favourably than the other. In the same space, the attacking army are carved as though from a low angle, and their victims are depicted from above, showing a clear distinction between dominance and inferiority. However, added to his, the column “is carved in numerous scenes that spiral around a 126-foot marble pillar in Rome known as Trajan’s Column. It’s a tale that reads like an ancient comic strip.”

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/trajan-column/

Although cinema, and the practices of editing continue to grow and develop, it is important to also remember that film editing has taken place in a wide range of editing stages. From the flammable celluloid that had to be photographed, treated, developed and printed, to the hard drives that contains hours of footage in a space as small as a memory stick. Using Moviolas and Steenbecks, to videotape and digital information, film editing has developed and expanded in the same way that visual effects, lighting and cameras themselves have.

The use of editing in film can be dated back to the time of George Melies, who when filming a bus, found that his camera jammed, and when he fixed it and started filming again, the bus had moved. In its place on the street, there was now a hearse. When he looked back at the film reel, it appeared that the bus had magically turned into a hearse, while everything else had remained relatively the same. This became known as the first ‘jump cut’. Melies went to onto experiment with this effect, and using his skills as a magician, incorporated this new skill into films that he showed during his conjuring performances. In his film “The Haunted House (1908) we see an actor dressed as a ghost appearing as if form nowhere in front of other actors, as well as clothes on wires hovering across the set and then disappearing through the use of the jump cut. It is worthwhile to note that Melies also experimented with stop motion, giving inanimate objects the illusion of life, but taking a shot, then moving them a small distance, then taking another shot and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo2EKNRIQlE

Melies also experimented with placing his sets and actors on intricate rigs so that he could move them closer to the camera, as in all his films as oppose to moving the camera. Edwin Porter however, another film maker of the time, who worked with Thomas Edison, decided to experiment with moving the camera about, and by doing so, he created the idea of temporal overlap. In his film “Life of an American Fireman” (1903) we see a woman being rescues from a burning building, and being carried out through an open window. The shot that follows it from outside, and shows the fireman leaving the room from the window, but the shot is shown several seconds before the last shot ended, effectively showing the same action in full from completely different angles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ym7-QW_GWo

While today, this type of editing could be seen as clunky or slack, it has developed into an editing toll used to exaggerate action, for example in the Mission Impossible 2, (John Woo) (2000) Tom Cruise’s characters passes between a truck and a car on his motorcycle several times, and even though these cuts are made in quick succession, it is clear that the action is repeated. This however gives an added sense of danger and drama to the high-speed chase.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18gHV15iNLE

In “The Great Train Robbery” (1903) porter again used new editing techniques to help give greater impact to the narrative. He would cut scenes before an action was completed, and did not use any dissolves or fades deliberately to add a greater sense of tension and to add pace to the story. In the clip below, at 7:05 mark, we see the train disappear and the next train appearing on the other side of the frame, and although modern day audiences may find this off putting and jarring, the way in which the film is cut, before the first train has left the frame completely, shows how Porter was using the edit to quicken the pace of the film. It is useful to note that in recent years, the audiences of the early 1900’s were used to seeing scenes played out in their entirety to a conclusion, so editing techniques like this were giving a greater sense of pace than they perhaps would today.

In 1908, D. W. Griffiths, who had previously turned his hand to various employments, acted in J. Searle Dawley and Edwin Porters film “Rescued from an Eagles Nest”

He then went on to become one of cinemas most influential directors of its early years, and his editing choices in particular were not only studied by other film makers of the time, but were also key in what has become industry standard of editing today.

In 1915, Griffiths directed “The Birth Of A Nation”, which has been coined as the world’s first ‘blockbuster’. On ‘AMC Filmsite’, Tim Dirks writes “A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece - these all describe ground-breaking producer/director D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The domestic melodrama/epic originally premiered with the title The Clansman in February, 1915 in Los Angeles, California, but three months later was re-titled with the present title at its world premiere in New York, to emphasize the birthing process of the US.” The impact that this film had was widespread. Along with the overt racist tone of the film, and the backlash that followed, Griffiths had made a film, that as Dirks also writes “It had a formative influence on future films and has had a recognized impact on film history and the development of film as art. In addition, at almost three hours in length, it was the longest film to date.” This is due in part to the editing techniques that he had developed while working with Biograph, including “extensive cross-cutting between two scenes to create a montage-effect and generate excitement and suspense” Such techniques include the use of establishing shots, reverse shots, matching eye-lines and cutting on action, all of which have found their way securely into the staples of modern cinema. One such example can be found in his 1909 film “The Lonely Villa” intercuts between three separate scenes as the action escalates. The first, is of a family at home, the second being, a group of robber breaking in, already having distracted the father away from the home, and the third, the tricked father returning home to the rescue. The scenes are cut in such a way that a tempo is created as the action on screen builds to a climax, and the length of each shot shortens, adding creating drama and suspense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEI18n_GcuQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UPOkIpR0A

Griffiths then went on to direct another hugely influential film, “Intolernence” Although the film did badly, and Griffiths lost money making it, the film was received well by Russia. When the VGIK: All Union State of Cinematography, also known as The Moscow Film School was set up, it was done so with the purpose of making films of agitation and propaganda. Together, these films were known as Agitprop films and would be taken on tour across the country on ‘Agitprop trains” One of the schools co-founders, Lev Kuleshov, ran works shops teaching his students about editing, during a drought of fresh celluloid. He and his students would deconstruct the reels of Griffiths “Intolerance” and splice them back together, to create new sequences, with new meanings. The idea that by changing the order of a series of shots could change the narrative, emotions and feel of a film appealed to Kuleshov, and he himself went onto experiment with his own ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCK53Lb4-pI

As outline in the online magazine “Curator” “Kuleshov studied Intolerance obsessively; swapping its parts; changing its order; and re-constituting its meaning and themes (a task made easier by its silence). Like a cinematic Doctor Frankenstein, Kuleshov poked and prodded; re-arranged and re-animated; then did it all again. Breakdown then re-assemble; breakdown then re-assemble. It was this breathless experimentalism that yielded the Kuleshov Effect.”

On the same site, we can hear Alfred Hitchcock, describe, with his own example, of the Kuleshov Effect

So what of Kuleshov the filmmaker? The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), his most famous film, was a financial success and one of the first feature length films in the Soviet Union. It’s a key point in cinema history, but not a great work of art. His best film was Po Zakonu (1926), based on a short story by Jack London; it’s very good, but, again, not great. The students of his cinematics—Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Vertov, and especially Eisenstein—made far more compelling things of his theories and principles than he ever did. Yet his theories are implied in almost every aspect of their work. This makes him a minor filmmaker but a major figure in the history of film.

Soviet Montage, which was born of Kuleshov and his students, explored how shots could be used in contrast to that of the continuity editing of Griffiths. In particular, Sergei Eisenstein became known for such films as “Strike!” (1924) and (Battleship) Potemkin (1925). It was in “Strike!” that he developed the montage of attractions. Russian Archives Online states “in which arbitrarily chosen images, independent from the action, would be presented not in chronological sequence but in whatever way would create the maximum psychological impact.”

It goes on to say “Thus, the filmmaker should aim to establish in the consciousness of the spectators the elements that would lead them to the idea he wants to communicate. He should attempt to place them in the spiritual state or the psychological situation that would give birth to that idea. He theorized that cinema was a synthesis of art and science. These principles guided Eisenstein’s entire career, and had a major impact on filmmakers to this day for its stark contrast to “American-style” narrative montage.” In the online article “Montage Theory: Eisenstein, Vertov and Hitchcock” we can discover that “Eisenstein believed that film montage could create ideas or have an impact beyond the individual images. Two or more images edited together create a “tertium quid” (third thing) that makes the whole greater than the sum of its individual parts.” For example, the Odessa Steps sequence: a shot of crowd rushing down the steps, followed by a line of armed guards at the top. Together they create a sense of military dominance over the crowds and a sense of panic in those trying to escape. Eisenstein then includes shots of people hiding behind large stones, looking fearful. This adds to the drama of the situation. This also however, re-iterates the sense that the armed guards are not their for protection. As the guards start shooting, the scene now becomes one not just of scared civilians afraid of the guards, but one of police brutality, where innocent people are now being shot. By editing in such a way, Eisenstein has created a synthesis, by placing a thesis and an anti thesis side by side.

In this video, at 8:48, John Hess explains in detail how this works. He also explains Eisenstein five theories of Montage: Metric, Rhythmic, Tonal, Over-Tonal and Intellectual Montage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYedfenQ_Mw

It is also important to note, that the ‘pram sequence’ and its editing style, building up tension, drama and suspense using the synthesis theory, has also been used again many times since, notably in “The Untouchables” (Brian De Palma) (1987).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJpRSf4q-hI

“Most movies strive for what John Ford called “invisible editing” – edits that are at the service at the storytelling, and do not call attention to themselves. Even with a shock cut in a horror film, we are focused on the subject of the shot, not the shot itself. Considered as a visual object, “Man With a Movie Camera” deconstructs this process. It assembles itself in plain view. It is about itself, and folds into and out of itself like origami. It was in 1912 that Marcel Duchamp shocked the art world with his painting “Nude Descending a Staircase.” It wasn’t shocked by nudity–the painting was too abstract to show any. They were shocked that he depicted the descent in a series of steps taking place all at the same time. In a way, he had invented the freeze frame.”

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-man-with-a-movie-camera-1929

He also used a shot of a woman climbing the stairs, which he repeated over and over again, to symbolize the never-ending struggle of this woman, and to raise the question of ‘would her struggle ever end?’ This technique also lends to the idea of reiterating a point, to escalate the idea of its importance, its drama or the impact it has on the audience. Again, this is similar to the temporal overlapping edit used by Porter in “Life Of An American Fireman” (1903). However, instead of repeating the action from a different angle, Vertov is quite literally repeating the shot, and is creating a new meaning, and emotional response from the audience each time he does so.

It was in the film noir period of film making, the chronology of a films narrative was altered in such a way that the audience would be able to see scenes that had happened previously, that were not already necessarily explained in the story so far. Instead of shots from a different time period, or repeating of the same shot, whole scenes would be shown out of the main narrative order, and were called ‘flashbacks’.

http://filmnoir-sunsetboulevard.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/characteristics-of-film-noir.html

In this scene, from “High Wall” (Curtis Bernheardt) (1947) we see our protagonist experience a flashback as he begins to strangle his son’s mother. Dissolves and shots of fairground rides are dissolved into one another causing a surreal sense of half remembered imagery from a previous point in time. The use of the dissolve, often used to show the passing of time, is used here to create a dream like quality, which adds to our characters, and our own, sense of confusion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUHlhSccDbQ

In this clip, we see Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in a more recent film Michel Gondry’s 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine of A Spotless mind. Like many films of more recent decades, this films explores the ideas of completely deconstructing the natural chronology of the story and pieces it back together in such a way that the audience is left confused and disorientated. However, Gondry chose to do this with a film that deals with issues such as memory loss, and the subconscious, and in doing so, he enhances the emotions of the characters and forces them onto the audience. He also cuts various scenes together that are from vastly different times, but it seems as though the actors are just moving from one area of the set to another, By moving props and set dressing around from different scenes, and by editing between different periods of time, this edits used enhance more than they distract. In this scene, we see Carrey and Winslet move from a living room in the rain to a childhood memory of Carrey’s’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPUTGMcivfQ

Alfred Hitchcock, known as ‘The master of suspense’ explains in this video three theories on editing, including the ‘impressionistically’ way in which he and his wife Alma cut 78 pieces of film together into a forty five second montage that became Psychos’ (1960) ‘shower scene’ He then goes on to talk about the ‘orchestration’ editing technique, where you use particular shots, at a particular tempo, to build apprehension and shock in the minds of an audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJQE7Kv-9JU

The first edit of Star Wars was infamously a disaster. Scenes dragged and bored the viewer with lengthy dialogue that was filled with technobabble. This was partly because Star Wars has a lot of backstory (they eventually had to make three prequels to explain it all). Lucas fired his original editor, and replaced him with a team of editors that breezed through the exposition-heavy dialogue. Instead of lingering on complexities, everything in Star Wars moves forward with energy and gusto. There’s no hanging around, and characters leap (sometimes literally) from scene to scene. The editing in Star Wars also highlights George Lucas’ visual style. In editing, you often match similar objects when you’re ending one scene and beginning another (think of the jump cut from a bone to a spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey). George Lucas prefers to juxtapose imagery and ideas (e.g., white versus black, good versus evil). The first ever Star Wars wipe transition (where one shot moves over another shot, replacing the image as it goes) changes the setting from the dark backdrop of space to the light desertscape of Tatooine.

—

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2014/10-things-star-wars-can-teach-you-about-filmmaking/#ixzz42HVXlz3d

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NAhAEQUk8M

1 note · View note