Advanced Editing Notes

III. Soviet Montage and The Formalist Tradition

• Pudovkin created the idea of 'constructive editing'
• It is the idea of having a reason behind every shot that is shown
• a new meaning should be created, the meaning was most important, the shot was just a tool
• Pudovkin believed that close ups were too intrusive and alone had no meaning
• When he used close ups he would put them in a montage in order to drive across a particular meaning
• close ups were a way to help assemble important parts of a film
• Pudovkin, Hitchcock, and Kuleshov all agreed with the idea of breaking a film into fragments that would be assembled to create a meaning or a narrative
• The meanings that derive from a characters reaction to an object are called juxtapositions
• it is up to the audience to understand what the shots symbolize
• man+soup=hunger
• man smiling at woman and child=kind gentlemen
• man smiling in same way, towards woman in a bikini = pervert or something of the sort
• today it is used in film as more than two completely separate objects; a desperate man in a scene may see a large sum of unprotected money
• 1. Close up of mans face with eye line match
• 2. Close up of money
• 3. Close up of mans reaction
• 4. Mans action follows
• Eisenstein believed that life was about constant change, and film is about capturing important moments
• he believed that shots should be incomplete in order to allow other shots to complete meanings or ideas
• this technique is used in propaganda
• In the Odessa Steps scene there is a focus on mother and child
• The first mother reacts directly to what happens to her child, this is all done in close ups and the meaning is very clear; the mothers distress
• Key events are the boy calling for his mother, and his hands and body being trampled
• The second mother has a baby in a carriage, and the wheels on the carriage directly symbolize the mothers life
• When the mother is shot it is obvious that she is going to die leaving the baby alone
• as the wheels rock back and forth, the mother struggles between life and death
• Once the mother dies, the carriage falls down the stairs

IV Andre Bazin and the tradition of Realism

•   Bazin was a french editor; he believed that a film should portray the directors ideas, known as their stylistic choice
• this clashes with the idea of giving the audience what they want in films today
•  Realism involves long shots, using wide screens, deep focus, panning, craning or tilting-- otherwise moving the camera physically with minimal editing
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