Barnard, Tim 2014, Découpage, Caboose, Montréal.
In this book, Barnard tackles découpage by responding to a number of quotes from other writers on the subject. Reading these selections probably made me more confused about the term, as the first few sections all have different definitions and opinions, challenging my perspective of découpage that I had settled on from the Bunuel reading. It seems that there is not really one succinct solid definition of the term, rather than multiple interpretations that weave into each other. It’s something where its meaning is constantly evolving.
I’ve chosen select passages that caught my attention to note on.
Section 2
- The author in La Revue du Cinema raises that découpage and montage are “two very different but poorly named tasks”, but doesn’t provide what they think the distinction between them are. Barnard attempts to provide an explanation in his commentary.
- Barnard’s attempt at an explanation suggests a very set/narrow definition of découpage, unlike Bunuel who saw it as a very broad concept. At its most basic, form, découpage is the shooting script. It is a breakdown of shots to cover a scene according to the written narrative.
- He raises the point that in Hollywood editing and cutting are synonymous. However, “découpage means to cut up, but it is not editing, and is used to maintain continuity”, which I couldn’t wrap my head around.
Section 3
- To answer my question from the previous section, the quote from this section suggests a distinction between découpage and editing: “The choice of shots and camera angles is called découpage. The order and length of shots we correspond to the task we shall call editing.” -Henri Agel
- In response, Barnard brings up an alternate perspective by Andre Bazin who wrote in the same year as Agel: découpage is “camera position and camera movement”, but also “the aesthetic of the relationship between shots”.
- Earlier this semester, I wrote: “Rather, it’s when you carefully consider the connection between one shot and another, the relationship between time and space, and the rhythm that makes a scene flow that a film becomes a piece of cinema” – this was a response to the Bunuel reading.
- It seems that all these opinions connect and contradict with each other in a complicated web. If there are so many different perspectives, then is découpage something that can be covered in a blanket definition at all? Or is it purely subjective?
