Eisenstein

Eisenstein described montage as the "combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in content - into intellectual contexts and series" (129). Thinking of each shot as a cell, or a part of a bigger picture, really shows how film has really progressed into a serious art form whereas before shots were much longer. These compilations of shots not only define the space but also add a visual depth and further understanding of the characters and the story. Potemkin really utilizes picture montages because for example, in the action scenes, the shots were increasingly shorter and really developed character expressionism. Eisenstein talks about the “quality of intervals that determines the pressure of the tension and also talks about the inaudibility of certain intervals, which is definitely very apparent in Potemkin for adding to the mood of that particular sequence of film.

Eisenstein

Although I really liked all his comparisons about Japanese characters, haiku, and kabuki theater, Eisenstein's point didn't seem to make itself until partway through the essay. Suddenly I understood his unique theories about the idea of montage: that a combination of different shots played quickly one after another can have more of an impact than traditional cinema methods.

This is something that I noticed during the movie but had no understanding of until after I read the article. The quick cut in the shots from the woman with the bloody face and the lions after the Potemkin's cannon's fire. Without seeing all the action the viewer is able to make assumptions about what happens. The hectic nature of this editing did a great job creating a frantic mood of chaos in the scene.

Eistenstein: Cinematography and montage

I was a fan of the way Eisenstein dissected montage. His initial discussion of Japanese theater and cinematography was an interesting direction to take. I particularly liked the idea of Japanese art as depicting parts of a whole and the later analysis of montage fragments: "the more differentiated they are the more abstract they become, provoking no more than a certain association" (12). I generally prefer these separate shots and emotional associations to a murder depicted as a whole scene; though I'd like to discuss in class what he meant by "materializing the idea, the impression, of murder through a free accumulation of association matter" (12).

I found this article to be very interesting. The concept of the montage through hieroglyphics was something new with the idea of drawing “two hieroglyphs of the simplest series to be regarded not as their sum, but as their product.” The viewpoint of conflict in contrast with the cell of montage was something new to me. Conflict with the shot and frame as well as conflict between matter and viewpoint, spatial nature, event and temporal nature and optical experience. Relating some of the concepts to Potemkin, the two shots we are presented do show a production of dynamizaation in space. It is interesting to see the two shots separately, without seeing the movement in between. The images shown in the article definitely help to understand the authors points. This made the article more understandable and easier to relate to .

Eisenstein

I found this article still a little difficult to understand, yet easier to comprehend than what we have previously read. The main point of Eisenstein's article was his explanation of the montage. I thought it was really interesting how he used Japanese culture and applied some of these aspects to the concept of cinematography. For example, he explains, "It is exactly what we do in cinema, combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in content, into intellectual concepts and series (129). He later continues to explain his opinion on the concept saying that it's unrolling an idea with the help of single shots and it comes together by combining independent shots. If I'm interpreting this correctly, I was able to see this exemplified in Potemkin. There were a lot of single shots that would separated by other scenes/shots, then repeated again in a single frame. I especially began to notice this with the camera shots of the ocean on either side of the boat as it approached the shore as well as in the fourth part when the ship though enemies were approaching. There were several shots straight on of the cannon. The camera would go back to the other boat then repeat the same shot of the cannon. If I'm interpreting this correctly, I would find it interesting to go back to the other films and see where this takes place and if it has the same effect.

Eisenstein

Usually I read the assigned article before the Monday night class so I can look for things that are discussed while watching the film, but that was not the case this week. While watching Battleship Potemkin I noticed how the shots together seemed choppy, and the amount of them there were. Later, in reading the article, I understood that the movie did not have the normal flow of shots because Eisenstein looked at montage differently than classic Hollywood cinema did. The article discusses his idea of montage as shots 'in conflict.' One quote that I felt was appropriate for how the movie looked to my eye was "if montage is to be compared with something, then a phalanx of montage pieces, of shots, should be compared to the series of explosions of an internal combustion engine, driving forward its automoblie or tractor..." (134).

The article includes screenshots from the "Stairs of Odessa" scene, and this is a perfect example of how the rapid succession of varied shots creates the sense of pandemonium in the audience member as the people on the screen are feeling. There are all types of shots that are utilized: close-ups of faces, body parts, long shots, medium shots, tracking shots, all jumbled together to create a feeling of chaos. Eisenstein's montage technique is utilized throughout the whole movie, which is probably the reason that I noticed it while I was watching the movie, not knowing it was actually something he purposely set out to do because that was his idea of how montage should be.

Article

I found this article slightly easier to understand than the past few weeks. Conceptually at the beginning I had sort of a difficult time understanding his pre-film analogies. As the article moved on though, I liked his emphasis on the cuts themselves between two images are almost as important as the image itself. He referenced a scene in the movie we will view tonight, Potemtikin, and said that a clean face and a bloody face were the frame transition. The viewer could see, and presume what happened just by the cut and not actually even have to see the action. So in a sense that is Cinematography. The way the images are arrayed with each other to make the scene cohesive or not so. Einstein did a good job of using frame examples to explain his points and like a few others have mentioned I liked his analysis of Kabuki theater to help explain his points.

Eisenstein

Montage is "combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in content - into intellectual contexts and series" (129). It's new to me to consider montage as something beyond a difficult process made fun by taking days worth of events and rushing through them to the sound of 80s music. Clearly, it's much more vital and substantial than the basic concept I already held. What I was thinking of is a montage, not montage in general. If Andrew's right, and Eisenstein created/named the concept, it definitely comes through in this reading. I found that while some things were beyond my reach, I have a fairly legitimate understanding of what Eisenstein describes. The illustrations and explanations themselves were thorough and comprehensive enough for me to understand the concept of singular images and aspects being put together in varying ways to create a larger sensical scene or picture. The part that helped me grasp this reading the most was the comparison between the Western concept of drawing to the Japanese. You can try to squeeze all the information you want into one frame, but the picture could be better when separated and reassembled, giving you a more comprehensive understanding of what is put in front of you. The use of montage for dramatic effect is what puts a viewer directly in a scene. The director can emphasize what he needs to in the fashion he so desires in order the evoke the emotions he so chooses.

Segei Eisenstein

I thought this article was fascinating, especially (like the post before me) the discussion of the Japanese approach to art and hieroglyphs. His comparison of western and Japanese art is interesting in that he discusses how Western art focuses on portraying an entire object such as a cherry tree branch. In contrast, the Japanese teach art by focusing on parts of the whole, such as the pupil cuts.

Another thing I noticed is that Sergei Eisenstein LOVES metaphors. I felt as if a large portion of his article was reiterating metaphors he had already established. The majority of it could have been summed up on page 132 in which he essentially defines montage (a practice if I'm not mistaken he created). It begins by stating that "Absolute realism is by no means the correct form of perception," it is just one of many ways of conceiving action. Another way is through montage, which is similar to brick laying. Several bricks alone mean nothing, but when put together they make a wall. Metaphorically, this means that random shots alone mean nothing, but when edited properly they can create a sense of time and place, and establish a scenes plot.

Bellour Reading

Like everyone else, I had a very difficult time with this reading. I felt that the way he wrote this was actually more conducive to a lecture based discussion rather than a paper. He focuses solely on a 12 shot segment within the film "The Big Sleep," and makes the unfortunate error of discussing it as if the reader is sitting watching the scene with a remote to pause it at ever instance he wants to discuss. As a result the reader becomes lost in the unfamiliar. While I have seen the film more than once, I still have no idea which scene he is actually talking about. One side note that he makes however, I did find interesting because I noticed it upon watching it as well. Bellour notes that "Hawks [the director], we might note, is one of the Hollywood Directors who has most profoundly reoriented the Hollywood tradition of the woman-object". While watching the film I had noticed that it utilized a significant amount of front a back lighting to not only highlight women's faces, but also make their hair glow. Not only this, but their characters were also highly sexualized, which had seemed unusual to me considering this is not a modern film.

Eisenstein articles

I thought Eisenstein's comparision of writing (in Japanese hieroglyphs) to montage (in filmmaking) was genius. Of course we all know that putting two words together creates a third and different meaning, and so it makes sense that the same happens when two images are put together, but I had simply never thought of it that way before. I also had never thought of the distinction he goes on to make in the second article, saying that while words on a page are perceived as one being next to the other, images on a screen are perceived one on top of the other.

I liked the idea of viewing many things that we would call formal elements as "cinematographic conflicts within the frame," for example the conflict of "pieces of darkness and pieces of lightness" where we might just say "lighting," although some of these conflicts mentioned in the second article were less clear to me.

In general found the second article more difficult than the first, but I still felt like I got something out of it. Overall I enjoyed Eisenstein's accessible writing style and use of easy to understand comparisons complete with illustrations to make his points. The only thing I found truly frustrating about this article was the way the pages got progressively more cut off at the bottoms.

The Obvious and the Code

I hate to be repetitious, but I also did not clearly follow what the article was saying. I think that the author attempted to explain simple concepts in terms much more complicated than necessary. Overall, for me the language he utilizes made the article hard to comprehend. More specifically, I didn't quite understand the difference between specific and non-specific codes. All I retained is that there are certain camera angles and maneuvers that allow a simple scene, such as the car scene in The Big Sleep, to intentionally become something more than it looks. I think I couldn't fully understand because the author doesn't seem to explain each code. If anyone can clarify this please do! I definitely need further explanation in order to see how this one specific scene, with these specific shots, can relate to other movies and explain the broader picture of how this pertains to cinema.

The Obvious and the Code

As many before me have said. Bellour's writing was utterly confusing. He refers to the car scenes calling them shot 1-12, and describes them. To the reader though, it is impossible to keep up with him unless there is a visual supplement illustrating exactly which shot he is talking about. We saw the movie just yesterday and it was still extremely hard for me to follow. So in that sense, I had to read this article multiple times and still do not feel like I have a lot to show for it. What I was able to grasp though is that these shots, that take place in a small area (the car) are used as a "code" to develop narration, whether the characters in the scene are talking or not. The shots seemed to follow some sort of pattern and the repetition of these shots help with the continuity of the narrative as well as add a certain style of photography to the film. These are things that as a viewer, we take in what we see and don't really think too much of it. But the shots do help develop and unconscious understanding of the space, the characters within the space, and the relationship between the two characters.

The Obvious and the Code

By taking one example scene from "The Big Sleep", where Marlowe and Vivian sit in the car and they tell each other "I guess I love you.", Bellour analyzes the editing and different segment of that very scene to a great extent. Quite franky, his very detailed analysis as well as use of technical terms, makes this text very hard to read and understand. Not only did it seem incoherent and confusing, but I also agree to the Bloggers before me: It takes the author too long to bring across the information he wants to give. Reading his summary in the conclusion is really the only part of the text that helps elucidating what Bellour tries to convey to the reader.

Here, he essentially says that repetition within the scenes resolves problems of symmetry and disymmetry, which creates continuity. (Bellour 75)
After watching the film, I agree that these methods do create continuity, but also by limiting the locations where the action takes place to few places which are always introduced by a close-up on name signs etc. Still, I would argue that even with adopting these film language, the film lacks a certain coherence making it rather hard to follow.

Bellour

I thought Bellours article had some interesting concepts that I have never heard of before. Honestly, it was hard for me to understand some of them and relate them to “ The Big Sleep.” When the article was more specific and referencing the “six codes,” I felt like that was something I could understand more because it was concrete. For example the shots, whether they be static or moving, and the camera angle. Whether characters express themselves in dialogue or not. However, many of the others parts of the article I have never been familiar with and found it confusing to follow. I am interested in seeing exactly what Bellour is saying and how this relates to “The Big Sleep.”

"The Obvious and the Code"

There wasnt too much that I consider to be obvious about this reading; but before reading this article, I wouldn’t have thought much about the 12 shot sequence that was shown in The Big Sleep.  To be completely honest, I feel that Raymond Bellour takes 5 pages to describe something that could be written in one page… thus making it a bit difficult to follow. Raymond Bellour discusses how these shots alternated between two characters and one character and between each of the two characters in the specific sequence. Beyond camera shots, sound vs. silence is discussed and described in terms of the 12 shot sequence. These were points that I was able to understand and connect with my experience of viewing the film sequence. I found helpful that toward the end he breaks it down in saying that we must note a) the number of shots, b) The variation, c) the tendency toward repetition, d) balance that reveals relationships between shot to shot and symmetry to dissymmetry. I feel that in breaking it down from A-D, Bellour was able to effectively convey the point of his entire article and the summary made it much easier to understand his writing and take away from it, his observations.

The Obvious and the Code

At the risk of being repetitive, I find this reading by Raymond Bellour a tad difficult to follow. Having viewed the movie tonight, I know which part of the movie he is talking about, but many of the words and phrases he uses in describing the different shots make the article confusing. Simply on the first page he talks about code, segment, and filmic chain. Now I may not be as advanced in Film Studies/film analysis as others in the class, but I do not know the meaning of those words as they relate to film.

I hope that we can explore this article in class by going through the article along with the series of shots it describes. I will come prepared with my notebook to take notes, and hopefully by the end of class I will know what "The interst of this segment lies in its relative poverty" means in relation to The Big Sleep.

Confusion with reading

At first when I read this article, I felt like I was missing something--some huge piece that would be the keystone for understanding the entire thing. Well from what I can understand we are missing something, it is very hard to comprehend what Bellour is talking about because he spends most of the article referencing screen grabs that we do not have access too. He is making a technical point about the structure of a scene, it is just to understand his technical point he brings in examples which we do not have the benefit of seeing. It would be one thing if I had viewed the movie beforehand, and I guess I will update this post after viewing it, but it is difficult to have time to complete the readings after the movie and before class on Tuesday. Even if I had viewed The Big Sleep beforehand it would still be nice to have the specific frame grabs available with the article.

When he talks about the the distribution of the characters relative to the shots and the overlaying of one code with another. These are all things that need to be viewed to fully understand. Maybe this was just an oversight to forget to attach the images to the article.

The Obvious and the Code

All I can say is that I'm looking forward to discussing this article in class and making some sense of it. I've never seen "The Big Sleep" before and I wish I could honestly say that I'll be keeping the article in mind while we watch it tonight, but I barely remember what I read. I think this was either something we needed to read following our viewing or the piece needed to do a better job grounding "code concept" in a more easily accessible framework. Screengrabs really would have made this easier. I don't feel like I really need to waste more words talking about not understanding something as I think we're all just repeating ourselves.

Bellour- The Obvious and the Code

I'm glad I'm not the first person to post on this particular reading because now I don't feel so bad about feeling totally confused by what I read. It seems I'm missing a few things when reading this article. 1) A solid frame of reference for what Bellour is talking about, 2) a sufficient vocabulary in terms of what these words mean in film analysis 3) frame grabs and a (recent) viewing of the film. Of course, I could have waited until after viewing The Big Sleep to read this article and write this post, but my schedule probably will not allow for that this week.

It feels ridiculous to say this, but I honestly felt like I had no idea what Bellour is talking about. Sure, I had a grasp of the things he pointed out, but whatever meaning his description was supposed to elucidate went right over my head. I didn't know I could feel so clueless when reading about film. I felt as though there's a pretty big gap between my knowledge of film and the things Bellour discusses in this article. One concern that I now have is that when I try to write my viewing notes, I'm going to fall short of the mark. I could quote troublesome parts of this article, but I think Emily's post covers that pretty well. I'm not even sure what this code concept is. That's a pretty big problem if that's what this article is about. It doesn't feel good to write about confusion and a significant lack of understanding. I hope once I see the film and attend Tuesday's lecture I'll start to get a better idea of what's going on here.

Film Noir

I have seen a number of movies that can be classified as film noir. What I didn't know is that there are movies I have seen that I hadn't classified as film noir, but that may actually be the case. What that says to me is that the idea of film noir is that it evokes the tone and mise en scene of a movie and it does not refer to a specific genre or genre conventions. There are certain practices and techniques that a filmmaker can use to create the film noir tone. It's dark, pessimistic, uneasy, and bleak, as well as numerous other "negative" adjectives. To compare "film noir" to "Western" may really be like comparing apples to oranges. You can more or less predict the course of a Western because, as a genre film, it's meant to follow certain patterns. With film noir, that's not the case, you cannot predict the plot simply based on its classification as film noir.

One similarity between film noir and genre films, however, is that you know it when you see it. It's all in the lighting, the camera angles, the narrative form, the dark tone, and the sense of coming doom for the main characters. These two articles were the best I've read yet and that's because I have a great appreciation for film noir. Something about the very deep and dark feelings and the confusion in the films resonate with me. It was interesting to read about the influences of film noir. Some of these are things I could have guessed, others, like German Expressionism, are only things I've heard about in passing. I'm starting to get a better idea of film elements and how filmmakers, not just the directors necessarily, create tones, moods, and scenes.