For those of you who are curious (and bored)

This is the stuff I've been working on lately for my "Theatre at the crossroads of narrative" seminar. We're analysing film right now and these are some of my rough notes... enjoy! (But you probably won't!)

SERGEI EISENSTEIN – FILM FORM

Eisenstein’s definitions:

Montage:
- Is NOT an idea composed of successive shots stuck together but an idea that derives from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another (the dramatic principle).
- A montage is composed of shots or montage cells (a molecule).
- What characterises the cell and the montage is collision, conflict between two neighbouring fragments. This collision of two factors is what gives rise to an idea.
- The gradual succession continues in a process of comparing each new image wit
h its common designation and unleashes a process that in terms of its form, is identical to a process of logical deduction.

…In a temporal sense:
- Each sequential element is arrayed, not next to the one it follows, but on top of it. The idea (sensation) of movement arises in the process of superimposing on the retained impression of the object’s first position the object’s newly visible second position. The incongruity in contour between the first picture that has been imprinted on the mind and the subsequently perceived second picture – the conflict between the two – gives birth to the sensation of movement, the idea that movement has taken place. The degree of incongruity determines the intensity of impression, determines the tension that, in combination with what follows, will become the real element of authentic rhythm.

…In a spatial sense:
- The dynamic effect of a picture consists of`
o Linear element
o Anecdotal element (logical position of foot, leads to a corresponding position for the body)
o Elements between linear and anecdotal (Italian futurism – man with 6 legs)
o Ideographic element (anatomical spatial disproportion)
o Colour element

Conflict within an abstract idea:
- is formulated in the dialectic of the title
- is formed spatially in the conflict within the shot
- explodes with the growing intensity of the conflict montage between shots.


Conflict within a shot: Potential montage that, in its growing intensity, breaks through its four-sided cage and pushes its conflict out into montage impulses between the montage fragments.

Forms of conflict:
o Of graphic directions (lines)
o Of shot levels (between one another)
o Of volumes
o Of masses (of volumes filled with varying intensities of light)
o Of spaces
o Ones that are waiting only for a single intensifying impulses to break up into antagonistic pairs of fragments
o Between matter and shot (by spatial distortion)
o Between an object and its spatial nature (by optical distortion)
o Between an event and its temporal nature (by slowing down or speeding up)
o Between the acoustic and the optical in sound cinema
o Between the frame of the shot and the object


(The position of the cinema represents the materialisation of the conflict between the organising logic of the director and the inert logic of the phenomenon in collision, producing the dialectic of the camera angle.)


- Two basic tendencies in contemporary cinema:
o The dying method of spatial organisation of the phenomenon in front of the lens;
o ‘Capturing’ with the camera, using it to organise. Cutting out a fragment of reality by means of the lens.

Dynamics:

The projection of the dialectical system of objects into the brain, into abstract creation, into thought, produces dialectical modes of thought, dialectical materialism – Philosophy. Similarly, the projection of the same system of objects -in concrete creation -in form- produces art. The basis of this philosophy is the dynamic conception of objects: being as a constant evolution from the interaction between two contradictory opposites.
- The logic of organic form versus the logic of rational form produces in collision the dialectic of the art form. The interaction between the two produces and determines the dynamic.
- The spatial form of this dynamic is the expression of the phases in its tension – rhythm. This human expression is a conflict between conditioned and unconditioned reflex.


Film syntax:

1. Each moving piece of montage in its own right…. No yet composition.
2. Artificially produced representations of movement
a. Logical (woman with pince-nez)
b. Alogical (marble lion leaps)
3. The case of emotional combinations not merely of the visible elements of the pieces but principally of the chains of psychological association. Associational montage, as a means of sharpening (heightening) a situation emotionally.
4. The emancipation of closed action from its conditioning by time and space. (The differentiation in montage pieces is determined by the fact that each piece has in itself no reality at all. But each piece is itself in a position to evoke a certain association. The accumulation of associations then achieves the same effect as that provoked in the audience by purely psychological means by a theatrical play that is unfolding in reality.)