Transcript Film Studies

Introduction to Film Studies
Montage
Montage
• Montage – a French term for ‘editing’, ‘putting
together’ or ‘assembling’ shots
• Editing (English word) – to put together and
coordinate shots
• Frame = a single (still) image, the smallest
component of a motion picture
• fps = a camera lets films run through it at a rate of
24 frames per second and projector lets exposed
positive films at the same rate
• Shot = made of a series of frames and it is
continuous (without a cut)
Montage
• Film stock –
frame –
continuous run
of frames – a
shot
Montage
• The editor editor discards unwanted footage
e.g. The editor of The Net (1995) dealt with 300
reels (3,000 minutes or 50 hours) and culled them
to 12 reels (120 minutes or 2 hours)
• The editor also cuts superfluous frames such as
those showing the clapboard from the beginnings
and endings of shots.
• Then the editor joins the desired shots, the end of
the one to the beginning of another.
• David Lean
Montage
• A shot is joined to another in various ways
• A Fade-out gradually darkens the end of a shot to
black
• A Fade-in gradually lighten a shot from black
• A dissolve briefly superimposes the end of shot A
and the beginning of shot B, while shot A
gradually gives away to shot B
• Citizen Kane
• In a wipe shot B replaces shot A by means of shot
B moving across the screen
• Seven Samurai
Montage
• The cut is the most common
way of joining two shots by
means of splicing together
them by cement or tape
• Early moviola (editing
machine) now obsolete and
replaced by video transfer
on a tape or disc
• Editing 6.20
• Instantaneous change from
a shot to another without
interruption (c.f. other
editing techniques)
Dimensions of Film Editing
• The film editor consider four aspects of editing
1. Graphic relations between shots
2. Rhythmical relations between shots
3. Spatial relations between shots
4. Temporal relations between shots
Graphic Relations
• Editing permits the interaction, through similarity
and difference, of the pictorial qualities of shots
(lighting, setting, costume, behaviour, framing,
photography, and camera movement)
Graphic Relations in Editing
• Graphic match – shots are edited together through
graphic similarities
• Michael Moore’s Roger and Me (The same
location, similar derelict houses, the same light of
the day, shot in the same camera movement)
Graphic Relations
in Editing
• Cutting on action or matching on action – the
editor cuts from one shot to another in the way that
the action in the second shot matches the one in
the first.
• A variation of the graphic match editing technique
• G.W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm ,2.50
Graphic Relations in Editing
• More dynamic graphic matches
• In Kurosawa Akira’s Seven Samurai, when an
alarm sounds, samurais running to take their
position edited in match on action
Graphic Relations in Editing
• In a transitional scene
of Aliens, a dissolve
creates a graphic
match between
Ripley’s sleeping
face and the curve of
the Earth.
Graphic Relations in Editing
• The graphic match in Aliens may have been
inspired by a bold editing in 2001: A Space
Odyssey, in which the shaped the ‘star child’
embryo is juxtaposed the shape of the Earth.
Graphic Relations in Editing
• Adjacent shots do not have to be continuous
graphically
• Mild discontinuity may appear in widescreen
composition in shot-reverse-shot (shots showing
characters facing each other)
• Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas
Graphic Relations in Editing
• Over the
shoulder, shot
and reverse shot
in Woody
Allen’s
Manhattan
Graphic Relations in Editing
• More noticeable discontinuity
• The shot of Menzies looking out of a window on
frame left is dissolved to that of Susan Vargas
looking at another window towards right
• Orson Welles, A Touch of Evil
• Graphic conflicts between colour qualities
• In Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas, the hero finds his
estranged wife working in a peepshow. Wender
shows the conversation by cutting from the
customer’s side to the performer’s side and back to
the customer’s and so forth. Their separation
emphasized by harsh colour contrasts.
Birds
Each shot centre’s on the action (the flaming trail and
Melanie’s face), but movements thrust in different
directions. Contrasts between stillness and movement
Rhythmic Relations
in Editing
Acceleration
•A group of people talking: 1,000 frames, 41 seconds
•Melanie looking out the window 309 fr. 13 sec.
•Exterior shot of a gas station: 55 fr. 2 1/3 sec
•Melanie joined by Mitch and the Captain: 35 fr. 1 ½
sec.
•The shot length subordinated to the internal rhythm of
the dialogue and the movement in the images.
Rhythmic Relations
in Editing
• Melanie’s horrified reaction to the racing flames
• 70 frames (Flaming car) – 20 frames – 18 frames –
16 frames – 14 frames – 12 frames – 10 frames – 8
frames – punctuate the scene by the two shots with
the identical length - 34 frames (Cars at station
explode) - 33 frames (Melanie covers her face) – a
long shot of the city over 600 frames (pause or
reverberation)
Rhythmic
Relations
in Editing
Goodfellas
• Rhythmic factors include beat, accent and tempo
and rhythms in editing are supported by mise-enscène and sound.
• The tempo of cutting is getting quicker and
quicker as the day is getting more hectic in the
helicopter sequence of Goodfellas.
• Jump cuts, rock music with strong beats, clock
Rhythmic Relations
in Editing
• Colour footage of present-day Auschwitz in long
take accompanied by languid lyrical melody on
string and black-and-white historical newsreel
footage is in relatively short take accompanied by
string pizzicato or ironically comic tune.
• Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog 2 and 25
Continuity Editing
• Graphic qualities must be kept continuous from
shot to shot – once composition is fixed, it must
be maintained; the overall lighting tonality remain
constant
• The rhythm of editing has its own rules: long
shots are left on the screen longer than medium
shots, and medium shots are left on longer than
close-ups
• The aim of continuity editing is to create a
smooth flow from shot to shot
• The 180° system or rule
• “Axis of action’, the ‘centre line’ or the 180° line
• Only the shots taken from the camera placed in the
180° area on either side of the axis of action (the
white area) must be edited together.
Continuity Editing
• Once the axis of action is established, the camera
stays on the same side. Annie Hall
• The ensure some common space from shot to shot.
• The 180° system ensures constant screen direction.
• Once upon a Time in the West
Continuity
Editing
• Eye-line Match - in one shot a person is shown
seeing off screen in one direction and in the next
what he/she is seeing is shown
• In Roman Polanski’s The Pianist Szpillman
moves in a new hideout. He looks off screen right
at the window and in the next shot the street
below is shown. He hears the jangle of keys and
next his benefactor is standing with the keys.
Continuity Editing
• At the end of Sergio Leone’s Once upon a Time in
America, David (Robert De Niro) visits a
graveyard where his best friends from his
childhood are buried.
• POV (point-of-view) shots of David shows all the
names of the dead. Once upon a Time in America
Continuity Editing
• Match on action or cutting on action – the first
shot is cut to another shot in the way the action
started in the former continues in the latter and
matches the action in the latter.
• In Stephen Soderbergh’s Traffic, a man jumps in
shot A and lands on the ground in shot B.
Continuity Editing
• In Bringing up Baby, the shot in which Katherine
Hepburn strikes a match is cut to the shot in
which she is lighting a cigarette.
• The action is continuous and matching.
Continuity Editing
• The 180° rule and the eye-line match are carefully
observed and give the viewer consistent sense of
direction in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.
Jeffrey is a photographer on wheelchair and kills
his time by looking into the apartments across
from his.