I think all this contemporary random, jammed-together montage is part of Eisenstein’’s legacy, not an affront to it. In other words, Eisenstein was just as crude and “lazy” as J.J. Abrams. In each case, the shots are forced into each other’s company rather than properly introduced and coaxed to join hands.
I think another great Russian, Andrei Tarkovsky, showed the true path of really effective cinematic expression in his chapter on film editing in the book Sculpting in Time. Put that together with Ho’wood commie Edward Dmytryk’s practical RULES http://www.chicagomediaworks.com/2instructworks/3editing_doc/3editing_docdymytryk.html
and you have a recipe for montage that finds its way into our systems organically— as organically as any technology can.
But these problems weren’t so extreme before non-linear editing, DVD, the ipod and the exponentially increasing influence of advertising seduced directors and editors away from their craft.
It’s a really simple, practical problem: Today’s mainstream filmmakers have scotched all they learned in film school (or from watching master filmmakers, or even solid craftsmen) in favor of methods dictated by the folks who sign their checks. You might say this was always so, but in, say, 1965, even a studio hack working for television had a basic understanding of single camera coverage, cutting on action, etc.
Random examples of the kind of mis en scene cinema (outside of the the rareified festival circuit) is rapidly losing/has possibly lost:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMYLjlpP0NY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_NRQ0tEx-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX9-9ae0ymI
and, hey, Christopher Nolan/Paul Greengrass/Peter Berg et al, if you want real terror, real disjunction, real “convulsive lyricism” (to borrow a term from Jonathan Rosenbaum), you gotta earn it:
Mathias, music videos are advertising. They sell records. It’s just a form of advertising that allows directors a bit more creative leeway (though the censors still loom). In each case, though, the time pressure tends to act upon the flow of images more aggressively from the outside.
When I was coming out of SVA, I briefly interned in the music video department at Def Jam. VHS copies of fine cuts would come back from MTV with time code and a list of edits the censors demanded. The in-house producer would scroll through the tape in his office while shuffling papers, talking on the phone, checking his pager (this was 1994, haha). He would quickly tell the AVID editor (or editor’s assistant? or an intern?) how to make the changes, what shots could be jammed in over the offending ones.
I remember watching this process and thinking, “So that’s why most music videos are so spastic.”
But that was fine for videos. That kind of ragged assembly is appropriate and fun for short format music advertising. Some of it even qualifies as art. But back in ‘94 I never imagined that this style of throwing images together would swarm television drama and then Ho’wood movies. That year we had two classically-told 100 milliion dollar hits, Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump. Neither is a masterpiece, but what power they do carry owes a lot to their respect for the frame and the cut.
When Natural Born Killers came out that same year, pushing the Eisensteinian clusterfuck style Oliver Stone had revved up in JFK to a certain nerve-wracking limit, we were warned.
Staging, editing and what is "cinematic" almost 3 years ago
I think all this contemporary random, jammed-together montage is part of Eisenstein’’s legacy, not an affront to it. In other words, Eisenstein was just as crude and “lazy” as J.J. Abrams. In each case, the shots are forced into each other’s company rather than properly introduced and coaxed to join hands.
I think another great Russian, Andrei Tarkovsky, showed the true path of really effective cinematic expression in his chapter on film editing in the book Sculpting in Time. Put that together with Ho’wood commie Edward Dmytryk’s practical RULES http://www.chicagomediaworks.com/2instructworks/3editing_doc/3editing_docdymytryk.html
and you have a recipe for montage that finds its way into our systems organically— as organically as any technology can.
But these problems weren’t so extreme before non-linear editing, DVD, the ipod and the exponentially increasing influence of advertising seduced directors and editors away from their craft.
It’s a really simple, practical problem: Today’s mainstream filmmakers have scotched all they learned in film school (or from watching master filmmakers, or even solid craftsmen) in favor of methods dictated by the folks who sign their checks. You might say this was always so, but in, say, 1965, even a studio hack working for television had a basic understanding of single camera coverage, cutting on action, etc.
Go to Comment
Staging, editing and what is "cinematic" almost 3 years ago
Random examples of the kind of mis en scene cinema (outside of the the rareified festival circuit) is rapidly losing/has possibly lost:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMYLjlpP0NY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_NRQ0tEx-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX9-9ae0ymI
and, hey, Christopher Nolan/Paul Greengrass/Peter Berg et al, if you want real terror, real disjunction, real “convulsive lyricism” (to borrow a term from Jonathan Rosenbaum), you gotta earn it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy2Cv43OKgw
Go to Comment
Staging, editing and what is "cinematic" almost 3 years ago
Mathias, music videos are advertising. They sell records. It’s just a form of advertising that allows directors a bit more creative leeway (though the censors still loom). In each case, though, the time pressure tends to act upon the flow of images more aggressively from the outside.
When I was coming out of SVA, I briefly interned in the music video department at Def Jam. VHS copies of fine cuts would come back from MTV with time code and a list of edits the censors demanded. The in-house producer would scroll through the tape in his office while shuffling papers, talking on the phone, checking his pager (this was 1994, haha). He would quickly tell the AVID editor (or editor’s assistant? or an intern?) how to make the changes, what shots could be jammed in over the offending ones.
I remember watching this process and thinking, “So that’s why most music videos are so spastic.”
But that was fine for videos. That kind of ragged assembly is appropriate and fun for short format music advertising. Some of it even qualifies as art. But back in ‘94 I never imagined that this style of throwing images together would swarm television drama and then Ho’wood movies. That year we had two classically-told 100 milliion dollar hits, Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump. Neither is a masterpiece, but what power they do carry owes a lot to their respect for the frame and the cut.
When Natural Born Killers came out that same year, pushing the Eisensteinian clusterfuck style Oliver Stone had revved up in JFK to a certain nerve-wracking limit, we were warned.Go to Comment