Today I attended my second Lectorial for Media 1, this week I was much less on edge as I had no been locked out of my Lecture of Literary Realism, that was a nightmare. Our Guest speaker for this week was an alumni of RMIT; Jeremy Bowtell who had previously part taken in the Media course an undistinguished amount of years ago. Bowtell presented his powerpoint on editing and the history of editing in film’s past, predominantly relating it to the notion that editing was based upon ‘holes’ or ‘gaps’ within a films audio/visual sphere, and connected that to the idea that it was also about fixing mistakes made during the production period.
By associating these concepts to historical eras and teachings, such as that of Eisenstein (Sergei) who invented the very earliest forms of montage and suggested that films must be tendentious, influencing the audience to follow a certain path of emotional story. We were then greeted with a silent film titles Man with the Movie Camera (1929), A Moscow film, originally perceived as merely an observational film with no real “plot” though in modern terms, the editing which is visualised almost proliferates a story of it’s own. Bowtell aimed to convey to us, the audience, that there is a narrative element engrained into editing which is used to not only constrain time but to make a visual experience connect more personally to the viewer.
Co-relating to the ideas brought forward in the silent films screening, we were introduced to Canadian-born, American film director Edward Dmytryk who elucidated a simple four step pattern on how to go about editing film. (The four steps are listed below in the notes section of this post). After some discussion on Dmytryk’s outlook on the editing realm; we were then accompanied by the theories of American editor and sound designer: Walter Murch, who had a set of three rules which would aid in the decision of whether to cut in a certain frame of film.
Bowtell ended the session with a scene form Martin Scorcese’s Casino (1995) with flawless editing, though the filming was quite far off our level, it was till inspiring to see the connections that can be made between audience an film within the realm of editing.
(Below I have listed the first half of notes form this Lectorial)
Stay tuned for my next blog post exploring what Media really is!
Jeremy Bowtell: THE EDIT:
Editing is…
- About holes, spaces between, ‘gaps
- Juxtaposition, may use in your own work, you’re contrasting parts: combining parts to create new meaning.
- Sometimes a process of fixing, other times breaking, working on a film set, joke goes around, fix it in post, fix it in editing, approach to editing, fix it up later on, taking out parts which aren’t good, reducing contect to make it more precise.
- Evident across a range of different platforms and media
- How the process of montage has evolved through cinema
Einstein: Film theory
- Einstein (serge) suggests that films must be a tendentious (argumentative) selection and juxtaposition, influencing the audience in the ‘desired direction’.
Man with the Movie Camera silent (1929):
- film maker going around various Russian cities, him just observing things.
- Is not profound, film with no story, of course through experimental form, story is a far more symbolistic thing
- A story is formed through editing, montage, narrative element through editing
- Aesthetic ideas, fast cutting, reverse, modern ideas.
Edward Dmytryk: How to approach editing
- Never make a cut without positive reason
- Cut long rather than short if unsure which frame to cut on
- The fresh is preferable to the stable
- Substance first / then form
Walter Murch:
- Emotion – Does the cut reflect what the editor reflect the audience should be feeling at the moment
- Story – Does the cut advance the stor?y
- Rhythm – Does the cut occur at the moment that is rhythmically interesting and ‘right’?
- Eye trace
- 2D place
- 3D space
- (last 3, diegesis, diegetic is music within the scene, and non diegetic is like a score played over the scene in editing. Spacial diegesis)
Casino: Scorsese (1995)
Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker
- Same meets Ginger
- Masterful in Casino, aesthic things, that create barriers aren’t there
- MERCH, emotion story rhythm
- emotion thats created, 1min, this love story is blossoming, not a word has been exchanged, what you can to visually