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Your Looking at Movies textbook has a nice quote about Vertov and his film on page 428.
Vertov shows us how to frame reality and movement: through the human eye and the camera eye, or through windows and shutters. But to confound us, he also shows us--through such devices as the freeze-frame, split screen, stop-action, slow motion, and fast motion--how the cinematographer and editor can transform the movements of life into something that is unpredictable. He not only proves that the camera has a life of its own, but also reminds us of the editor, who is putting all of this footage together. Reality may be in the control of the artist, his camera, and its tricks, but it also finds definition within the editor's presentation and, ultimately, the viewer's perception.
In your first well-developed paragraph, please discuss this quote in relation to a five minute piece of Man With a Movie Camera. Be sure to describe shots cinematically, as if I've never seen the film before. Discuss elements of editing, such as the juxtaposition of shots, rhythm, montage, etc.
In your second well-developed paragraph, discuss this quote in relation to a film of your choice. Try to be as specific as possible in your descriptions and speak cinematically when you discuss the film.
About forty-two minutes into the movie, Vertov has some shots in the street. There are cars and people moving around, and it keeps editing in the same shot of someone honking the horn in their car. It then shows the cameraman setting up between trolley lanes as he begins to film. After that, we see a split-screen of the trolleys. The trolley on top is moving to the right and the trolley on the bottom is coming towards the camera. There’s also a horse in front of the one on top. The juxtaposition between the normal movement of cars and people and the horn honking gives the meaning that it is a hectic place. We would not have the same meaning if we only saw the horn, or we only saw the street. The horn shot starts popping up quicker and quicker as the scene goes on. The trolley split-screen is very ‘confounding,’ showing how the editing is able to have a huge impact on how we see the world. It then goes back to the factory, with shots of people cleaning themselves after it. The combination gave me the impression that they were cleaning up because work is over. After they clean up, it shows a ship moving, a bridge, and the a crowded beach. The scene at the beach keeps going between close-up shots of individual people and an overhead shot of the large crowd. It shows the few people we individually see to be resting or having a good time, and combining that with the crowd makes us think that everyone else is having a good time too. After showing the crowd, Vertov does some illusions, having people seem to appear out of thin air in a shot. One shot has a group doing yoga or something on the beach. The group seems to appear out of nowhere. After that, there is a guy that appears on his mat. Then there are swimmers. Then there is a carousel. After his illusion shots, he does a stop motion section, building some sort of structure out of some sticks of wood. Then there is a guy posting pages on a bulletin board. It then gives close-ups of some of the pages on the board, with shots after it of people doing whatever events were on it. It gives us the impression that the people got the information on the board, and went to do it. We wouldn’t have this meaning without the bulletin board or the pamphlets. He has slow-motion shots of people doing some sports. It contrasts them with the audience, which is played in normal time. It makes the sport-doers the center of attention, and gives us the impression that everyone is watching them.
ReplyDeleteIn “Snatch,” by Guy Ritchie, there is a cool scene that uses editing and the camera to put in additional meaning. Here is a link to the scene if you want to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sp87keARMc . The first shot has a split screen between the two people on the phone in normal time, showing us they’re talking to each other. Then, there is a really quick succession of shots, showing the travel to London - a taxi closing, the guy drinking some whiskey-esque stuff, the airplane flying, passport getting stamped, and finally a taxi light indicating it’s available. This quick montage shows how quickly and urgently Avi got there (his relative just lost a big diamond worth a bunch of money). The quick shots get more immersive every time I see it. It feels like a big rush, like a roller coaster. It’s really cool.
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ReplyDeleteKeller
ReplyDeleteAs a film student, I view "Man With a Movie Camera" as more of an experiment than a film with narrative. The focal point of this entire film is the camera- we see it being assembled and it is the only element of the film that is constant and is a part of the film until the very end. We first see the camera being set up in the very beginning of the film while the audience is shuffling into the theater, then throughout the film we it is arguable whether we fully identify with the camera as we do in films partly because of Vertov's avant garde editing techniques and placement of shots. Since this film is primarily based off of the idea of discontinuity it's hard to experience verisimilitude and feel as if we're in the film. Instead, we feel as if we're watching the camera experience the film and the different people in it. For example, about halfway through the movie we see a couple that is dressed as if they're coming or going directly to their wedding get into a horse-drawn carriage. The next shot we see is of an older woman waking up in bed, Soviet Montage Theory tells us that we should see these two shots as not next to each other but on top of each other and that they should convey a separate meaning since they’re placed next to each other, however these shots do not relate to each other and it throws the viewer off at first because we are so used to watching films and creating meaning between shots.
In “Run Lola Run”, a classic German film known for it’s various innovations in film editing to convey meaning, Tom Tyker conveys Lola’s constant state of mind with how the film is edited. In an iconic scene of this film when Lola receives a call from her boyfriend, Manni, telling her of how he could potentially die in a mere hour, the pace and rhythm of shots is slowed down and sped up almost as a heartbeat so the audience can both feel and see the state of mind Lola is in. An example of the creative editing in this scene, is when Lola is slowed down with the question of how she can help Manni. The camera spins around Lola and asks as her many ideas circling her mind, but this turning of the camera is not a continuous turn, instead it is interrupted every few inches around her and starts off a little farther than where it began. The editing of the kinesis of the camera pulls a new meaning at us-that of her many ideas and shooting them down-and also foreshadows the alternate endings presented in this film. The viewer's perception of this is vital to understanding the narrative of this film as a whole. The viewer is taken back by a normally very fluid movement being interrupted so jarringly and it leaves a lasting impact on the viewer which allows them to compare this single shot to the rest of the movie and decipher it with the movie as it progresses.
The film A Man With A Movie Camera is spelled right out for the viewer as soon as they turn on the television. It explicitly states through the use of intertitles that there is no storyline, no plot points, no intertitles after the direction, no actors, and no dialogue. This is to illustrate the conceptual sense of producing a film. Dziga Vertov, an experimental Russian director, utilizes many common filmmaking techniques in producing this film, such as fast and slow motion, Dutch angles, double exposure, tracking shots, jump cuts, split screens, freeze frames, and extreme close ups. At the thirty minute mark, the angle is eye level, and men begin to jump quickly into a car, which speeds out of the frame, giving a rushed sense. A woman is speaking on the phone, the car drives “over” where the camera is, making it seem as if the events are connected using parallel editing. and the car again moves out of the frame. The woman is back, still urgently (we can only assume, if the audience so assumes that the two actions are connected), and a man jumps into the back of a truck, the angle is level, and gets behind a tripod, the car driving out of the frame as well. The fact that the actions with the car always end up with the car driving out of the frame can lead the viewer to assume that this means that there is going to be some sort of big change. The phone gets put back on the hook, and a jarring cut brings the audience back to both cars, which speed out of the frame yet again, but this time only the car with the men in it gets fully out of the frame, the car with the camera man does not, showing a lack of contrition. A man with injuries gets tended to, and a car with a hospital sign on it speeds by, the camera staying with it, and a jump cut back to the man, many people adjusting his bandages and wounds.
ReplyDeleteThe film Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, utilizes many of the same things as Vertov in his piece, A Man With A Movie Camera, such as the pertinent use of jump cuts, parallel editing, and slight stop motion. Since Hitchcock is considered an auteur, he is in control of many if not most of the things that go into movie production, especially with Psycho being on the verge of a film noir film. The infamous shower murder scene, in which Marion is about to get murdered by Norman’s “mother”, and there are a series of many intentionally jarring jump cuts that contribute to the overall feel of jumpiness in the scene. This is similar to what Vertov does in Man With A Movie Camera except the jump cuts in Psycho provide to the plot and relate to what is going on, while Vertov’s use is solely to contribute to lack of content.
Within the first 5 minutes of "Man with the Movie Camera", we can already see evidence for the use of editing to "transform the movements of life into something that is unpredictable" (Looking at Movies, p.428). The film begins with a montage of an empty theatre. It begins with a photographer setting up a tripod, then it cuts to the outside of the theatre, and then back. It progresses through shots of empty seats, and back to the director. He reels footage as the curtains are opening and a hand pulls the assumed ropes that are opening the curtain and seats. This introductions lets the audience know that simutaneously a director is setting up to film whatever the theatre is operating and that the show is about to begin. The juxtaposition of seats coming down and the surge of people crowding the theatre demonstrate that the people are arriving around the same moment as the setup. The soon compilation of musical instruments provides us information that a musical piece is to be performed and that the performers are ready to begin. The director sets up the aperture simultaneously in the next frame, again, to show simultaneity. Then, the musicians roar away at a fast pace in, what i believe to be, representing the power of the piece in absence of audio. To conclude the sequence, we are given numerous shots that seem spatially distant of people sleeping in unison. This may be a way to compensate the early use of lighting. We may assume as an audience that it is either late night or early morning when the performance is happening.
ReplyDeleteIn one of my favorite horror films, "1408", there a scene in which the hotel is frozen on the inside (link to clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ohSDJhbeEM). It's a bit subtle, but there is a sequence of jump cuts that convey the immediacy of the main character's dialogue. These jump cuts bring our attention to the cuts and reminding us that there is someone who edited these shots together, but it's not so distracting to the main point of the scene, where the character briskly descends into madness.
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ReplyDeleteVertov's Man With a Movie Camera is by design a real experiment in an art form's early stages. The camera is still being used in a very primitive ways, with the opening sequence consisting always of a still shot, with at most one subject (or focal point) and possibly an action as well. These shots in the theatre and out on the streets in the first five minutes of the film are obviously the beginnings of cinematic language, and juxtaposition is key for understanding how the different subjects relate to each other and act towards one another. The seats coming down, followed by crowds pouring in, and then the cameraman once again; its sequences like this that portray how Vertov is creating the simplest form of a now complex and intricate language, though at its roots, filmmakers still follow basic formats like this in order to express relationships in narratives as well as add additional meaning to actions.
ReplyDeleteWhen presented with Vertov's quote, a movie that comes to the forefront in my mind is Christopher Nolan's masterpiece "Memento". The tale of a man with no short term memory searching for his wife's killer is told in the opposite of chronological order, and relies heavily upon editing to create both pacing and the viewer's definition of the story world. By utilizing jump cuts from sequence to sequence, editors present the film with each sequence ending how the prior began. This disorients viewers of the film and makes us feel and experience the intensity and confusion present inside Leonard's head while he tries to piece together jumbled fact after jumbled fact. The editor of Memento truly does transform the ordinary actions into something layered and cerebral with jump cutes and the narrative structure.