Beyond the shot [the cinematographic principle the ideogram]

1. Beyond the shot [the cinematographic principle & the ideogram] Sergei Eisenstein From Film Form

2. Cinema is: so many firms so much working capital such & such a ‘star’ so many dramas First and foremost, montage Japanese cinema is well provided with firms, actors & plots Ts’ang Chieh in 2650 BC, the first ‘contingent’ of hieroglyphs Copulation- the combination of 2 hieroglyphs regarded as their product Combination corresponds to a concept This is montage!

3. Do in cinema, juxtaposing representational shots The starting-point for ‘intellectual cinema’ Japan possesses the most laconic forms of poetry, the hai-kai & the tanka Figurative effect The hai-kai is a concentrated Impressionist sketch We see these as montage phrases, montage lists Finished representation of another order, the psychological In emotional terms Born from a cross between the figurative mode & the denotative purpose

4. Sharaku was the creator of the finest prints of the 18th century Same Daumier whom Balzac (the Bonaparte of literature) in turn caled the ‘Michelangelo of caricature’ We reassemble the disintegrated phenomena into a single whole but from our own perspective This dual divergence in yet a fourth sphere – theatre The theatre is in its cradle – present in parallel form, in a curious dualism The denotation of the action is carried out by the so-called Joruri, a silent puppet on the satge

5. This antiquated practice passes into the early Kabuki theatre, preserved to this day, as a partial method, in the classical repertoire The shot, a tiny rectangle with some fragment of an event organized within it Glued together, these shots form montage The shot is an element of montage Montage is the assembling of these elements The shot is a montage cell

6. Conflict between 2 neighbouring fragments: Conflict, Collision A graduate of the Kuleshov school defends the concepts of montage as a series of fragments in a chain, ‘Bricks’ – expound an idea serially Opposed him with the view of montage as a collision, the view that the collision of 2 factors gives rise to an idea Montage is conflict, lies at the basis of every art Conflict within the shot, can take many forms Close-ups & long shots The reduction of all the properties

7. The dramaturgy of film form [the dialectical approach to film form Sergei Eisenstein From Film Form

8. Dialectical materialism - PHILOSOPHY In form – produces ART Synthesis that evolves from the opposition between thesis & antithesis FOR ART IS ALWAYS CONFLICT Its social mission Its nature Its methodology The hypertrophy of purposeful initiative – of the principle of rational logic – leaves art frozen in mathematical technicism

9. The interaction between the 2 produces and determines the dynamic The basis of distance determines the intensity of the tension The spatial form of this dynamic is the expression of the phases in its tension – rhythm ‘Architecture is frozen music’ Together with the conflict of social conditionality & the conflict of reality, principle of conflict serves as the foundation stone for the methodology of art Because of its methodology: shot & montage are the basic elements of film

10. MONTAGE Lev Kuleshov, adding individual shots to one another like building blocks Movement within these shots & the resulting length of the pieces regarded as rhythm Mesendick system VS. Bode school Not next to the one it follows, but on top of it Ex. The phenomenon of spatial depth as the optical superimposition of two planes in stereoscopy arises

11. MONTAGE Material ideogram set against material ideogram produces transcendental result (concept) The degree of incongruity determines the intensity of impression, determines the tension, become authentic rhythm I. linear: Fernand Léger, Suprematism II. ‘anecdotal’ III. Primitive Italian Futurism lies somewhere between I & II IV. It can be of ideographic kind. Characterisation of a Sharaku (18-century Japan) The resolution of the representation Finally, colour Move from the realm of the spatial-pictorial to the realm of the temporal-pictorial

12. VISUAL COUNTERPOINT The relationship between the three: conflict within a thesis (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 the shots

13. Conflict between matter & shot (achieved by spatial distortion using camera angle) “Meaning from their juxtaposition” Conflict between matter & its spatiality (achieved by optical distortion using the lens) Conflict between an event & its temporality (achieved by slowing down & speeding up Conflict between the entire optical complex & a quite different sphere The conflict between optical & acoustic experience produces: SOUND FILM which is realizable as AUDIO-VISUAL COUNTERPOINT VISUAL COUNTERPOINT

14. FILM SYNTAX I. Each moving piece of montage in its own right II. Artificially produced representation of movement A. Logical: example 2. Potemkin (1925), Sensation of a shot hitting the eye B. Alogical: example 3. Potemkin Marble lions – one sleeping, one waking, one rising The examples have shown primitive-psychological cases – using only the optical superimposition of movement