Looking back on film’s past many argue that its roots lie in photography, however, the cinema of today has roots deeply entwined around montage. “The meaning is not in the image, it is in the shadow of the image projected by montage onto the field of consciousness of the spectator” (Bazin 26). This mentality is vital to the modern filmmaker. Montage taught the world that while the image is important it is the image’s effect on the audience, which holds the power of cinema. Film centers on visual communication with the audience. Despite the integration of sound, film remains to be a visual art form. “Sound could only play a subordinate and supplementary role: a counterpoint to the visual image” (Bazin 26). The visuals presented to the audience …show more content…
“As regards montage, derived initially as we all know from the masterpieces of Griffith, we have the statement of Malraux in his Psychologie du cinema that it was montage that gave birth to film as an art, setting it apart from mere animated photography, in short, creating a language” (Bazin 24). This tool was, at the time, the best and most sophisticated available to the director, so that was the tool most often used. This routine use resulted in a deep understanding of what film montage could produce successfully. “Through the contents of the image and the resources of montage, the cinema has at its disposal a whole arsenal of means whereby to impose its interpretation of an event on the spectator. By the end of the silent film we can consider this arsenal to have been full” (Bazin 26). While this tool was able to produce great works it proved to be limiting. Montage was a film form, which produced great films of a specific variety. However, film still had a long way to go before it reached …show more content…
For the message to be portrayed it must be supported by the film form chosen by the director to convey the story. “Shooting in depth is not just a more economical, a simpler, and at the same time a more subtle way of getting the most out of a scene. In addition to affecting the structure of film language, it also affects the relationships of the minds of the spectators to the image, and in consequence it influences the interpretation of the spectacle” (Bazin 35). The audience must receive the story and react to it in the way in which the director wishes otherwise the film will not be effective. “The image—its plastic composition and the way it is set in time, because it is founded on a much higher degree of realism—has at its disposal more means of manipulating reality and of modifying it from within”( Bazin 39-40). The film director must keep the audience in mind. A successful piece of cinema communicates the story to the audience in the most cohesive way possible. It is crucial that the film form and the content agree with one another to create a successful piece of film. “Like accelerated montage and montage of attractions these super impositions, which the talking film had not used for ten years, rediscovered a possible use related to temporal realism in a film without montage” (Bazin
A rapid succession of images or scenes that exhibits different aspects of the same idea or situation, this is the definition of montage as provided by Encarta Encyclopedia ’98. The idea of a “montage of attractions” was first used by Eisenstein and Pudovkin in the 1920s for the purpose of invoking specific emotions in the viewers. The movie The Night of the Hunter starring Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish makes use of this film technique.
In the film V for Vendetta the director James Mcteigue uses a range of different film techniques in order to gain the audience's attention and to make the movie more interesting. The four film techniques I’m going to focus on in this essay are editing, music, camera angles and the lighting. I am going to do this by analysing the ‘Domino Montage’ scene.
Mise en scene is a French theatrical term meaning “placing on stage,” or more accurately, the arrangement of all visual elements of a theatrical production within a given playing area or stage. The exact area of a playing area or stage is contained by the proscenium arch, which encloses the stage in a picture frame of sorts. However, the acting area is more ambiguous and acts with more fluidity by reaching out into the auditorium and audience. Whatever the margins of the stage may be, mise en scene is a three dimensional continuation of the space an audience occupies consisting of depth, width, and height. No matter how hard one tries to create a separate dimension from the audience, it is in vain as the audience always relates itself to the staging area. Mise en scene in movies is slightly more complicated than that of an actual theater, as it is a compilation of the visual principles of live theater in the form of a painting, hence the term “motion picture.” A filmmaker arranges objects and people within a given three-dimensional area as a stage director would. However, once it is photographed, the three-dimensional planes arranged by the director are flattened to a two-dimensional image of the real thing. This eliminates the third dimension from the film while it is still occupied by the audience, giving a movie the semblance of an audience in an art gallery. This being so, mis en scene in movies is therefore analogous to the art of painting in that an image of formal patterns and shapes is presented on a flat surface and is enclosed within a frame with the addition of that image having the ability to move freely within its confines. A thorough mise en scene evaluation can be an analysis of the way things are place on stage in...
The way that a movie is pieced together by the director/producers has a huge impact on the viewer’s experience. Stylistic elements are used to help engage the viewer; however, without these techniques the viewer will most likely loose interest. In this essay I will be taking a look at a scene within the movie Casablanca directed by Michael Curtiz in 1942. Casablanca is a classic film that is reviewed to be one of the greatest movies of all time. This could be due to the notable quotes used throughout the movie, or its ability to follow a historic, comical, and romantic storyline throughout the course of the film. It caters to several different viewers, making this movie favorable to many. This scene in Casablanca uses specific editing techniques
Gallagher, T. 2002. Senses of Cinema – Max Ophuls: A New Art – But Who Notices?. [online] Available at: http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/ophuls/ [Accessed: 8 Apr 2014].
Filmmaker and theorist, Lev Kuleshov, is known today as the grandfather of Soviet Montage theory. His works include The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), Death Ray (1925), The Great Consoler (1933) and We from the Urals (1943). Kuleshov’s life work has had a profound influence on the filmmakers around him and filmmakers today. One of his greatest triumphs was cofounding the Moskow Film School, the world’s first film school. In a time when filmmaking was still in its infancy, Kuleshov was perhaps the first to theorize about the power of this new story telling medium. These theories and experiments would pave the way for future Russian film giants like Pudovkin and Eisenstein (who briefly studied under him).
...successful collaboration of sound, colour, camera positioning and lighting are instrumental in portraying these themes. The techniques used heighten the suspense, drama and mood of each scene and enhance the film in order to convey to the spectator the intended messages.
Filmmaking, the art of the motion picture, is a comparatively new art form that combines a moving image in conjunction with sound, primarily to tell a story. Due to the medium of capturing the image is evolving, so is the art in its entirety. Modern technology is allowing a more cheaper, streamlined form of production, thus rendering older methods unnecessary. Celluloid filmmaking is the old method of capturing film on a negative film strip and developing it later in its most natural state, whereas digital film is capturing synthetic and manipulatable pixels on a computer-like device. Digital filmmaking should be a primary film medium but not completely eradicate the dying celluloid film culture.
With the discovery of techniques such as continuous editing, multiple camera angles, montage editing, and more, silent filmmaking developed from simple minute-long films to some of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring films that have ever been created—in only a few decades. In Visions of Light, someone alluded that if the invention of sound had come along a mere ten years later, visual storytelling would be years ahead of what it is today. This statement rings true. When looking at the immense amount of progress that was made during the silent era of films, one must consider where the art of film has been, where it is, and where it is
Montage is from the beginning of the twenties characterized as a process of synthesis, building something new and in terms of the physical planes also something quite simple. Most montage’s films were created as a dialectical process, where initially from a two meanings of consecutive shots form a third meaning.
As an audience we are manipulated from the moment a film begins. In this essay I wish to explore how The Conversation’s use of sound design has directly controlled our perceptions and emotional responses as well as how it can change the meaning of the image. I would also like to discover how the soundtrack guides the audience’s attention with the use of diegetic and nondiegetic sounds.
Soviet cinematographer Sergei Eisenstein argues that the basis of cinema is dialectical montage. In his article “A Dialectical Approach to Film Form”, Eisenstein explains dialectics as “a constant evolution from the interaction of two contradictory opposites” (45). These opposites synthesize and form a new thesis, which then may also be contradicted. Eisenstein employs dialectical montage in his films due to its ability to invoke change, an important goal in a revolutionary society. His film Battleship Potemkin is designed to display this theory and create a psychological change within his audience, corresponding to his revolutionist ideals.
Sound is what brings movies to life, but, not many viewers really notice. A film can be shot with mediocre quality, but, can be intriguing if it has the most effective foley, sound effects, underscore, etc. Sound in movies band together and unfold the meaning of the scenes. When actors are speaking, the dialogue can bring emotion to the audience, or, it can be used as the ambient sound. Music is one of the main things to have when filmmaking. The use of Claudia Gorbman’s Seven Principles of Composition, Mixing and Editing in Classical Film gives audiences a perspective of sound, and, how it can have an impact on them.
Sound is important in film and how it is used to drive a narrative progression. I will analyse how and why in this essay. Covering the history of sound in films and the essential component it plays in the film industry.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.