Agenda for 4/9

• Quiz #1• Man with a Movie Camera discussion• Montage Editing lecture• Break• “Odessa Steps” and analysis• “Film and Ideology” discussion• What is Genre?

Man with a Movie Camera• What did you draw in your picture?

• Is there a story in this film?

• What does the film tell you about life in the Soviet Union in the 1920s?

• Why does Vertov show us his filmmaking process at various points in the film?

• Why watch experimental film? What are the strategies for drawing meaning from it?

Formal Approaches to Movie Meaning-Making

• How do you use film to:– Tell a story (in a way that a novel or a play can’t)?

– Convey the complex inner thoughts and intentions of the people on screen?

– Make viewers in the audience feel strong emotions, or think new ideas, or see the world in a different way?

Classical Hollywood Narrative: Continuity and Clarity

Cinematographic Distortion: French Impressionism

Distortion of Mise-en-scene: German Expressionism

Sharp Juxtapositions in Editing:Soviet Montage

Continuity Editing• Associated with D.W. Griffith

• The convention of classical Hollywood filmmaking. – Meant to be essentially invisible

to the viewer.

• Cause and Effect Editing: – A→B→C

• Parallel Editing or Cross-Cutting: – A + B = C

Aspects of Continuity Editing• Shot-to-Shot Matches– Eyeline match– Match-on-action– Graphic match

• Spatial Consistency– “Master scenes”– Establishing shot– 180-degree rule

• Temporal Consistency– Linear progression of time

and event

Montage (or disjunctive) Editing

• Associated with Sergei Eisenstein and Soviet Cinema of the 20s.

• Meant to call attention to the editing itself:– Andre Bazin: “The creation of a sense of meaning not

proper to the images themselves but derived exclusively from their juxtaposition” (LaM 349)

• A + B = Z (where “Z” is something offscreen that we, the viewer, have to imagine or think or feel)

Editing: Kuleshov Effect

Some Aspects of Montage Editing• Tempo: Use of different shot lengths (very fast cuts, for example) to create a

feeling (like tension)

• Vectors: Using contrasting angles and movements to convey a feeling (like confusion)

• Repetition: Using the same or very similar shots multiple times in a sequence

• Fragmentation: Breaking a simple action into several different shots

• Dramatic Juxtaposition: Mixing related by not directly connected images (as in a “reaction shot”)

• Visual Metaphor: Adding unrelated images to a sequence to create a metaphoric association

Montage Editing In Man with a Movie Camera

• Graphic Matches to Draw Unusual Connections– i.e., woman washing face / someone washing the city street– Man mining coal / industrial stack producing smoke

• Fast Tempo:– Average shot length of movies made in 1929: 11.2 seconds. – Average shot length of Man with a Movie Camera: 2.3 seconds

• Use of Still Images

• Crowd Movements

• http://www.theasc.com/blog/2014/01/13/the-spinning-top-and-the-parvo-man-with-a-movie-camera/

“Odessa Steps” Sequence

• From Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925)

• Watch for:– Sharp juxtapositions between shots– Mix of “crowd” and “individual” shots– Tempo of shots– Directionality and angles of movement

Film and Ideology• What’s ideology?

• How do films transmit ideology? How do you determine a film’s ideology?– “The same commercial instinct that inspires filmmakers to use

seamless continuity also compels them to favor stories that reinforce viewers’ shared belief systems . . . Because so much of this occurs on an unconscious, emotional level, the casual viewer may be blind to [a film’s] implied political, cultural, and ideological messages” (LaM 10)

• What is Sherlock Jr.’s ideology? What is Man with a Movie Camera’s?

Next Week: Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

• Read chapter 4 (on narratives) and pages 450-455

• First blog post due at the end of next week (Friday 4/18).

• I’ll talk about the shot list/essay assignment due at the end of Week 4 (Friday, 4/25)