3 Russians and the impact they made on the world of film.

Sergio Eisenstein - Master 'Montageur' (<- his word.)

Sergio Mikhailovich Eisenstein, born in Riga, Latvia on January 23rd, 1898, was what many consider to be a pioneer in the type of film editing known as montage.

A montage is essentially a series of images put together in quick succession within film. Eisenstein saw it as a 'linkage' or 'collision' of related images to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors.

Eisenstein developed 5 methods of montage that are still widely used in film editing today:

1. Metric. This is a form of montage based on a specific amount of images all edited according to an amount of time allotted for each, despite anything that might be happening within the image. This is the most basic form of montage and is used to elicit the most emotional reactions from an audience.

2. Rhythmic. Still using time-based cutting, the rhythmic montage uses the visual content and change of speed of metric cuts to induce more complex meanings than can be done through metric.

3. Tonal. This uses the emotional meaning of images to elicit certain emotional reactions for the audience to imply a still more complex meaning than either metric or rhythmic.

4. Overtone/Associational. This combines the three aforementioned methods of montage - metric, rhythmic and tonal - to create an abstract and still more complex effect.

5. Intellectual. This method juxtaposes certain images together to imply a metaphor or to add significance. For example, shown below is an excerpt from Eisenstein's film Strike, where a shot of a group of workers being attacked is immediately followed by a shot of a bull being slaughtered, implying that the workers were being treated like cattle.
(for some reason the embed option on youtube isn't working, but you can go to the link here).

Lev Kuleshov - A Differing Montage Theorist

Although Eisenstein is perhaps the most well known leader in Soviet montage theory, it was Lev Kuleshov, born January 1st, 1899 in Tambov, Russia that first used the word 'montage' in relation to film editing. Kuleshov helped establish and taught at the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School, and briefly had Eisenstein as one of his pupils and clearly played a role in Eisenstein developing as a film maker. However, their views of montage film editing differed greatly and created two schools of thought.

According to an article written by Kuleshov in 1917, he wrote his mindset on film editing: "...to make a picture the director must compose the separate filmed fragments, disordered and disjointed, into a single whole and juxtapose these separate fragments into a more advantageous, integral and rhythmical sequence, just as a child constructs a whole word or phrase from separate scattered blocks of letters." He saw montage film editing as a way of joining together the images to create linkage and harmony between them, rather than how Eisenstein used montage as a way of creating conflict and collision.

Kuleshov was known for his experimenting using montage to elicit different interpretations of the same shot, known as the Kuleshov effect. He would take the same image, eg a man's face, but by juxtaposing it with differing images the audience would interpret the emotions of the man according to the shot that linked the two together. For example, when juxtaposed with a shot of a bowl of soup, the emotion became hunger; with a girl, desire; and a coffin, the same exact expression would be interpreted as one of grief.

Dziga Vertov - Cinéma vérité

Dziga Vertov, born January 2nd, 1896, was considered a pioneer in documentary film making and paved the way for a form of documentary known as Cinéma vérité. This term, French for 'cinema of truth', was taken from Vertov's documentary series done in the 1920s, Kino-Pravda (Russian for 'truth of the cinema'). He refers to as a way of getting to a 'hidden truth' by juxtaposing a series of images, usually with provocative stance taken towards its subjects.

A quote from Vertov:

"Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope…now they have perfected the cinecamera to penetrate more deeply into he visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten.

—Provisional Instructions to Kino-Eye Groups, Dziga Vertov, 1926

Soundscapes

What is a soundscape? This somewhat vague term refers to a composition made to invoke an atmosphere or a mood, drawing together found sounds from nature, mechanical and industrial sounds, music, urban sounds and wildlife sounds from across the world. The finished piece, rather than being a musical track, is meant to be one that creates atmosphere instead and immerses the listener in recreated or imaginary surroundings.

Composers of soundscapes can also use abstract, electronic sounds and speaking, such as poetry or dramatic prose from literature. Listen to an example of composer Barry Truix using such methods here, in his piece titled Song of Songs ("Afternoon").


The man who introduced the concept of soundscapes, Raymond Murray Schafer (pictured above), broke the term down into 3 key elements:

• Keynote sounds: This sound, though not always audible, identifies the key of the piece and is the sound that draws all other sounds together.
• Sound signals: These are the sounds in the foreground that are consciously heard throughout the piece.
  
• Soundmark: Just as a landmark, a soundmark is a sound that is unique and can be used in identifying or recognising a certain place.
  

One example of a soundscape showing soundmarks of specific places is this video by Electric Beats, directed by Ace Norton.

Voice Over Edit

This was my first assignment, to edit a voice over to play perfectly and to make it sound completely natural. Click here to download the finished product, or you can listen to it here.

esther voice over2.mp3

There were a few different programs we could use to do the audio editing, including Logic, Soundtrack Pro and GarageBand. I decided to use GarageBand as I've used it in the past, and found it effective in editing, cutting and pasting audio files.

First of all, we had to listen through the unedited voice over and distinguish which takes were best on parts where the speaker stumbled, stuttered or changed the pace. The first thing I did was listen through, and when I would come to a place where there was a mistake, I would use the Track Editor and zoom tool to find the exact area to delete. I would then select the specific area with the zoom set to extreme close up in order to make the most accurate cuts, without taking out any needed pause or time between sentences.


Here is a photo from the process, done using GarageBand:



After deleting the specific area where there was a mistake, I would then zoom out to find the correct take, and use the the mouse to click and drag the correct sound piece to match up with the one prior, paying attention to pace and natural pause to try to leave room and make it sound as natural as possible. One of the things we had to make sure would not happen would be for there to be a 'double breath', a common mistake in editing audio voice overs. To do this I listened over the edited area afterward, and had to to use the zoom to extreme close up of the sound waves to distinguish exactly which spike in the sound wave indicated the noise of taking in a breath before speaking. While it is natural for a speaker to intake a deep breath before speaking, I had to make sure that I didn't take away from the natural sound of it while making sure that only one intake of breath would be heard so that the place of edit would be unnoticeable and sound as natural as possible.


After finishing editing the voice over, I then downloaded a program called 'The Levelator', a program that automatically adjusts the levels within an uploaded audio file to give a more finished, polished end product.