Eisenstein wrote: "From a dynamic point of view, a work of art is a process formed in the audience's reason and feelings. This is the characteristic of a truly vital work of art, which is different from rigid art. Rigid art tells the audience some image results of the creative process, rather than pulling them into the ongoing process. " He also wrote: "The power of montage lies in absorbing the emotions and wisdom of the audience in the creative process. It forces the audience to experience the same creative path taken by the author who created the characters. The audience not only saw the descriptive factors of the work, but also experienced the vivid and powerful process of image generation and formation like the author. Obviously, this is the "power that can be felt concretely" at the moment of the author's creative work and video creation ... This is the image created by the author's conception, but it is also the image created by the audience's own creative actions. "
As we all know, the free and impromptu works of art in film art are the most perfect examples, which were created by the authors of the above-mentioned words. Potemkin, the best film of all nationalities and all ages, is immortal, not only because of its theme and ideological content, but also because of its flexibility and no artificial inspiration, and because all its components are natural and simple. At the same time, it is also manifested in the improvisation of action and montage (editing).
In this case, when we meet a highly harmonious work of art and successfully complete the creation process, we often forget the "thousand tons of ore" in flexibility and often imagine the process of achieving the result too simply. This attempt to "test chords with algebra" seems to finally equate inspiration with craftsmanship in this case. Someone met the poet Svetlov and asked him how to write Grenade. His answer flashed with wisdom irony: "If I knew how to write, I would write another one."
I was surprised when I learned from the book Parabola of Ideas that the author and director mikhalkov Goncharovsky "firmly believed that the famous Odessa staircase was montaged before filming". What surprises me is not this strange talk from other places. We have heard this argument from Reina Claire. To our surprise, spontaneous improvisation in young Eisenstein's creation, in essence, is completely contrary to the creed that the French ambassador once preached. The formula of "making a montage plan before shooting" does not conform to the creation fact of Battleship potemkin. If I hadn't read this in the first two paragraphs of the above quotation, "in principle, the more things that can be changed in the shooting material, the weaker the role of the director." I may not have noticed this nonsense. The example of Odessa ladder seems to be used to confirm this conclusion, but has it been confirmed?
The film director V Alexandrov, who was directly involved in the filming of this film, recalled that the filming of potemkin was "carried out at an extremely tense speed and was largely improvised." Aleksandrov also replied that there are only 45 scenes about the potemkin Uprising in the movie script "1905" (the film consists of 1280 scenes), and Aleksandrov also described how several famous paragraphs of the film were born. "Elder Giselle started shooting ... the beauty of the morning by chance. The lens unexpectedly became the prelude to this drama beyond poetry. "Odessa ladder? Maybe this scene is an exception? Alexander Love can't have the slightest doubt about this: "odessa steps, a famous reenactment, doesn't exist in the script or the prepared draft."
There is no doubt that Steenstein's young team began to shoot this scene after they had a clear view of the future and the rhythm of the scene and the montage principle of the future. He worked out the details and various editing schemes, but time was so tight. If Eisenstein had conceived this scene before how to start shooting, then he might not have shot so many shots or even scenes, but he was later thrown into the wastebasket. Victor Shklovsky said: "A lot of things will not be put into movies."
For the rearrangement of montage materials, the creator of Battleship concluded that montage (and improvisation in film shooting) was not an exception or accident to him, but related to the unique process of film creation in the late 1930s.
C·M· eisenstein divided the montage cost into two categories. He regards one kind as the "link" of the coherent structure of plot sentences, which can only be placed in a certain order that obeys the logic of daily life. Here, you can easily make a pre-editing plan. The editor can also cut off the filmed material after making a decision according to the movie script without a director.
The other is the "symphony order" paragraph, which is related to the development of a wide range of emotional themes. We can't use "how" and "why" to deal with this emotional drama. Because "how" and "why" are the "basis" for controlling a certain process and being selected. The choice here is not based on logical evaluation … but on direct action …
Don't use reasoning to arrange ideas, but use a lens and a series of structural processes to pave the way. ...
On this kind of emotional scene, Eisenstein wrote: "Pure plot and narrative-from the perspective of reporting, all these scenes can be arranged in any order."
On the road from film to montage, literary script will always be like a nautical chart to me, but the course, movement nature and speed of the "ship" depend on the ship itself and the helmsman who controls it ... Ask yourself: I should admit that there are many reasons why I no longer regard storyboards as truly creative parts year after year. Storyboards always get some deformed features-this is a distressing compromise between the drama and the director's idea, the writer's vision and the bonus of the studio, the possibility of technology, or the goodwill measures of the auxiliary staff and the preparation of some links in our complicated production. Although the column on the right is full of lens numbers and lenses, as well as magical "panorama", "close-up", "middle shot" and "push-pull", I still can't consider it at this stage. I don't think at all: I don't want to get fat, I just want to live.
After considering the principle of montage modeling in the first stage of literary script, it seems that I forgot it during the whole production period, and I didn't remember it until I started working on montage (editing). It seems that I forgot all about it ... Of course, even before story board drafted the first draft, and before every new shot shooting with photographers, artists, assistants and administrative staff, and before every shooting day, when I studied the specific shot processing, the montage principle had already taken shape, whether intentionally or unintentionally. This principle is basically clear when shooting, but it can only be crystallized and embodied when editing.
Naturally, montage is considered from the perspective of the rhythm of the film and its general characteristics, so the director must make it clear before shooting that it is difficult and often impossible to correct a film with internal rhythm errors with montage. (These are just admonitions, which have already been discussed in Utkevich's The Man on the Screen. ) The sense of rhythm of a future movie has already appeared in the initial impression of a literary script. When reading the script, even things like montage rhythm sketches will germinate and become concrete and flesh-and-blood bodies in the future. These first impressions are often very important.
If we are not only directors, but also screenwriters, then the idea of montage rhythm will appear in my first draft. Naturally, we can't expect to think of storyboards, shooting and montage (editing) itself, which is a preliminary thing we call "montage idea". But the "montage concept"-this is a seed, it will grow in the future and get the flesh and blood of the modeling of the picture.
Many places in the film "Pamir's Children" decided to use the freeze-frame montage technique conceived almost at the same time as the most obscure idea of the film. In the late 1950s, this technology was basically forgotten in feature films. Only Frances Truffaut's application of freeze-frame in the movie Four Hundred Times and his reapplication of freeze-frame in the movie Love at the Age of Twenty make people memorable. I have started filming Pamir's Children, but after watching these two films, I firmly believe that the envisaged freeze-frame technique does contain many possibilities. Today, the word "freeze frame" has become a common word in film language, which not only loses its innovative significance, but also has a vulgar and rigid taste in the mid-1960 s because of its excessive infatuation. To a great extent, the freeze-frame montage technique in Pamir's Children is contrary to the predetermined strong montage rhythm. This traditional contraposition method according to silent film breaks through the fluency of montage inside the lens.
Some people may point out that the author of this article lives by praising Iaroslava Kasek's famous quip: "So be it. Because things have to come. " However, I don't want people to understand me like this.
No matter how big the gap between the original script idea and the edited film is, no matter how great the changes in the film creation process are, the unity of the idea, image and content of the work is inextricably linked with the world outlook and consciousness of the artist-filmmaker. In the months of wandering in the stormy waves of filmmakers, the world outlook and sense of the world are still a beacon that will never go out. They guide the eyes and hands of the director sitting in front of the editing desk of the latter in the projection hall. In the development and organization of the whole complex film process, the original ideas recorded in literary scripts are extremely important driving forces. Its progress depends on the artist's personality, his status, his spiritual richness and his ability to stand in the struggle against production. Whether we can make good use of all vivid film expressive force depends on the creativity of creative workers.
Therefore, the scheme of literary script-this is just a direction of exploration. The whole purpose of exploration is to create a living and unique work of art, which can excite thousands of audiences. The vividness of the works also depends on the vividness of the creative process itself and the relationship between the techniques chosen by the artists and the artists. A harmonious living work with inner art is like a unique human face. His height, figure, face, glasses, hair and voice-all these constitute a unified image.
In the book Montage written by C·M· Eisenstein 1937, there is a saying: "The montage in capitals is … we should learn from the prototype … people. Take human archetypes-realistic people, living people, happy people and suffering people, people who love and hate each other, people who can sing and dance, people who have children, people who bury class disabilities, and people who have built socialism for generations as examples. ...
..... so as to draw an inexhaustible source of fresh, unique, wonderful and inexhaustible for each new theme from people's expressive force. "He went on to say:" As long as we grasp the natural organic nature of fully expressing our passion year after year, that is, expressive force, then we can grasp that wealth-that is, when we turn into the language of images and metaphors, divide the plot into montage fragments, when we suddenly see everything from colors, when all the emotional hurricanes are poured into one voice, we can make hints for our total score. Man's expressive force, only man's expressive force is the promising pillar and source of nourishing formal skills.
As a process being completed, film montage also lies in the understanding of the unity and harmony of the shooting materials, and in the understanding of the specific and special regularity-this is true in the field of formal rhythm, which is essentially the expression of new things in the materials and their emotional rendering. Only under the guidance of their own world outlook and personal interests can artists create harmonious works with the characteristics shown in the materials. The closer it is to life, the closer it is to the artist's personality and the closer it is to the artist's personality, the more wonderful the work will be. ...
I think montage is a highly concentrated creative stage. At this time, everything no longer depends on any spontaneous force or contingency, or even the quality of a member involved in film production, but only on the general director, his view of the world and his feeling of film modeling. More precisely, I think the montage editing of a movie needs willpower and inspiration at the same time in the film completion stage. Perhaps the most important thing is that montage should be a creative process. In a sense, it is almost independent and to some extent not strictly limited by what happened before.
Movies always follow a positive spiral in the past and now. At first-it was its childish infancy: "Montage can do anything!" " Then, it is its impatient childhood-"Montage is useless!" Eisenstein pointed out this evolution in 1938' s article Montage. It has been 20 years since that article was published. From the late 1950s to the early 1960s (not without the influence of television), this evolution was exquisitely reflected in the Soviet films Flying Goose and Ivan's Childhood. Although there are still fragments of montage photography technology as traces in a certain film. )
I think movies have come of age now. Or at least get ready to enter this era. In my opinion, an indisputable sign of film maturity is the great difficulties encountered in summarizing and classifying many processes and phenomena of film. At this time, any researcher who tries to examine the internal laws of modern film process will understand something. The unprecedented variety of film expression means and artistic experience accumulated by films in the past quarter century has first become the breeding ground for all unique forms and styles of each film work.
This is in line with the law. It is becoming more and more urgent to regard movies as art today. The magic of variety shows is disappearing year by year. Although today's film performance is still rough in thought and form, it is sometimes protected by the bioelectric field of a large audience. They are good at making collective responses. Thus, it strengthens the impression left by the film, which is not only caused by the quality of the film products, but also depends on the festive mood of the film audience gathered together and their feelings about the juggling illusion of life.
For this reason, technology has ensured that the film library will become as open to everyone as the lost books in the library. In this way, other evaluation criteria will inevitably appear. Seriously, what would a person look like after watching this intimate movie? What's a movie that can't hide its weaknesses by the audience's reaction? This is undoubtedly unpredictable. For me, there is no doubt that movies should be people's companions, just like books for centuries. It should also be enriched in style and skills as it has always been in literature.
I find it difficult to comment on foreign films today. But the movies I saw at international film festivals and cinemas are a consistent process I can imagine: movies all over the world, of course, I mean progressive, century-old movies with active and advanced ideas, are rapidly approaching literature in terms of the richness of themes, ideas and styles, and sometimes they are approaching literature.
From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, films broke through the formal fields mastered by various artists, and Chanel became a unique means to express a work in the most meticulous way, which enabled every director to confirm his own style, his own technique, or sometimes called his own "writing style".
"1978 montage" (back to the above question) is not "everything". However, it is certainly not "useless", and it is not even something to reconcile these two extreme views with the montage inside the lens. Today, montage, as a special means of expression and one of the professional tools for film directors, depends on a director's personal likes and dislikes when dealing with the specific tasks of each film. Today, montage is omnipotent for some people and useless for others. For most film artists, it is one of the means of expression. When I talk about the word montage, I usually mean sound montage, that is, the synthesis of sound and painting on montage.
The exploration of Soviet film pioneers in the 1920s and 1930s not only influenced China's films, but it is no exaggeration to say that the development of this postwar film seems to have largely followed the road predicted by C·M· Eisenstein and B·H· pudovkin in theory.
Let's put aside the ideological worldview of France's "new wave" first. But when it comes to the influence of the French on the exploration of film expression means in the 1950s, my colleagues may not disagree. This influence also includes the development of montage. Just recall how Jean-Luc Goodall broke through the traditional and academic montage in his first film, or alain resnais's brilliant and bold spirit in the film "Love in Hiroshima", in which he fully demonstrated the significance of the unsynchronized sound and painting. This powerful means of film expression was predicted theoretically by the great Soviet directors.
As early as 1928, C. Eisenstein, B. pudovkin and P. Aleksandrov wrote the declaration of "The Future of Audio Film", claiming that the initial experimental work of acoustics should be in sharp opposition to visual images.
"Only this' rushing out' can provide the feeling we need, which will create a new orchestral counterpoint of visual and auditory images in the future."
We also know that the post trying to show this declaration was destroyed in the disaster of Baijing Prairie.
When I first started studying movies, I was familiar with the assumption that sound and picture were out of sync. When I first came into contact with montage: I clearly knew-this principle is the most sacred modern montage thinking-that it was far beyond the framework of editing technology. In my opinion, because it involves a unique basic problem, that is, film is superior to all other art forms, even to literature. I firmly believe that on this road, there will be unexpected discoveries in the future, which will greatly enrich the modern film language, which is far behind the current literature.
Nothing in the movie will disappear without a trace. Any discovery here is not made out of thin air. Before there is any leap in the field of form, all kinds of artists must explore the vast world film field for many years. If Italian neo-realism found its source in Soviet pre-war films, then, for our films. Antonioni's lengthy and particularly protracted montage syntax is not without traces. The accidental invention of the Italian master was later understood and expressed by Huziyev in his own way.
In the 1960s, we found that if the montage in Ingmar Begemann's films is traditional and unobtrusive, then for Ferini. On the whole, montage doesn't play any significant role at all. However, Ferini admitted that he had never been involved in editing, which surprised me. But it was not until I watched all Ferini's films that I found the answer to this mystery: the emotional power of the inner modeling of the lens in his films is so powerful. It has a distinct sense of rhythm, which enables editors to infer an editing mode that is completely consistent with the master's ideas.
In short, whether it is good or bad, today's montage is in a position where it is difficult to make a unified definition here and in the world. However, this never makes me unhappy, but makes me happy.
In addition, it should be pointed out that an artist has different montage techniques at different stages of his film career. Let's talk about alain resnais again. He not only filmed Love in Hiroshima or in marion last year, but also filmed The War is Over. In this film, he didn't make any attempt in form. His rigorous and implicit narrative style is consistent with the idea of the film.
This anthology of editors was edited when I was a librarian in the library of the Film Academy. At that time, I asked Mr. Zhang Ke, then vice president, to set up a film editing department. In addition, I also saw the problems existing in editing by the directors. I don't think Beijing Film Academy has a major in film editing, but a major in film performance that doesn't exist at all. This is one thing. In addition, the so-called director teacher wrote it himself, which is actually a conceptual mistake. Editing is not subordinate to the director, and editing should be done as a profession. In view of the above mistakes in film education in China, I can only try my best to write some foreign articles to inspire teachers and students. Of course, I did it in vain at the Beijing Film Academy. Soon, my publications here were cancelled. First, there is something wrong with the audience writing about the publications we sell (in fact, there are typos). They may be playing dumb. Even if it is an excuse to send Shen Songsheng to review, Mr. Shen is a scholar and he has read all my articles, so when I showed them to him one by one, he said he had read them. Finally, he asked me if there were any more. I said that's all. He said, well, I have read all these articles, and there is no problem. I'm going back to make a report to the party Committee. If one plan fails, another will be born. The following year, I was called to the director of the Academic Affairs Office, who praised me, saying that after the Cultural Revolution, I translated many translations that were not available at that time, which made the teachers and students of the college understand foreign film theory, which was a good thing. Now, everything in society is on the right track. You have accomplished your historical task with honor. That means I don't have to do it anymore. All the introductions I have made in the library in recent years have been completely obliterated by this beautiful sentence. Later, in the 1990s, in the first editorial about the future of Chinese film theory in a certain issue of Film Art magazine, Zheng pointed out the harm that what I turned back brought to Chinese film theory. Specifically, he quoted "the discussion about two kinds of film theories in the West". This shows the effect of what I have done. Chinese film theory was led astray by Zheng Shelley and others' theory of film comprehensive art, and it has not been turned over so far. It's been a hundred years.
Now the two major film and television colleges also want to offer editing majors. I predict that the establishment of these two majors will make the editing profession more chaotic. So, I found out four film editing albums I made in the past and posted them here, hoping to play some disinfection roles.
It can be seen from this article of the Soviet Union that they didn't mention the word literature at all. Films have nothing to do with literature.
"Perhaps the most important thing is that montage should be a creative process. In a sense, it is almost independent and to some extent not strictly limited by what happened before."
From this sentence, we can make it clear that the so-called film performance in the film is just the material of editing. Pay attention to this sentence, "it is almost an independent process, not strictly limited by everything before it." Everything is clear.
"But it was not until I watched all Ferini's films that I found the answer to this mystery: the emotional power of the internal modeling of the lens in his films is so powerful. It produces a distinct sense of rhythm, which enables editors to infer an editing mode that is completely consistent with the master's thinking. "
This obviously solves the rhythm problem between long shots and short shots during editing. Editing mode obviously refers to the problem of rhythm structure.
If literature is mixed in at the beginning of the film editing major, then the major will be completely finished. A visible and audible media form should refer to the law of an invisible and inaudible media form. This is ridiculous. Besides, think about it, unless an actor is open-minded, (that is, an actor who denies the comprehensive art theory of film) can they accept the concept of film editing? They want the editing to be subordinate to the performance. That's ridiculous. I don't think it's possible. Didn't Beijing Film Academy understand film editing? Yes Just because they know there is, they don't have to.
I hope you can have an in-depth discussion on film editing. I intend to train several film editing professionals.
As the saying goes, ships often hit the shore. In fact, if the script is the starting point of "sailing", then editing is the end of the trip. And these two stages are not only the most enjoyable, but also extremely responsible. Fortunately, in these two stages, the director is the least hurt by the spontaneous force of film production full of contingency and miscalculation, which is related to the organizational level of shooting and the dramatic contradiction between the creator's infinite fantasy and extremely imperfect film technology.
All the films I have made have to go through roughly the same evolutionary process in the process of creation. The script was written for a movie, but the spontaneous force of film production forced you to release a somewhat different movie, and then, in the editing stage, it seemed to create another movie.
The stage of literary script-this is always a pure creative stage in artistic creation. At this stage, everything is in the hands of the director (author), and everything depends on whether his ideas are rich or not, and on the degree of ability and talent. The shooting stage is a destructive stage. The fate of a well-conceived film often falls into the hands of various professional representatives-creative or administrative personnel. They will definitely affect the shooting results and will have a fundamental impact. No director, even the most authoritative and ruthless director, can predict and stop the flood of accidents and accidents contained in the filming process.
In fact, outstanding discoveries by actors, artists or photographers, as well as gifts from nature (if the film is shot on location) can often make up for some losses. Of course, these are all recorded on film under the condition of collective creation by the film crew. Of course, these are all recorded on film under the condition of collective creation by the film crew. However, ideas embodied in the mind and expressed through language will almost never be realized accurately. Indeed, I am worried that 100% will realize my own ideas and make Reina Claire an enemy of natural scenery. He prefers to use the studio to ensure that accidents are minimized. But then Fidry Coe Ferini appeared, who seemed to be the opponent of the French director. For Ferini, the "destructive" shooting process turned into creation, and improvisation became his method. On the other hand, thirty years before "8 1/2" appeared, Eisenstein's powerful impromptu giant finally created his masterpiece "Battleship potemkin"! We'll talk later. )
If I can confidently repeat Reina Clare's famous saying before shooting the first film: "I have a plan for the film, and now I'm just shooting it", then in the process of shooting this first film, I experienced the power of breaking my mind repeatedly, so that when I face the second film, I can only repeat Socrates' advice: "I only know one thing.
Now I have watched four movies, especially the first and second episodes of Charming Happy Star. In fact, I think the montage editing stage is the revival stage of an idea, or more accurately, the resurrection stage. Instead of returning to the original idea (this is completely impossible! ), and after unexpected colors appear, it is more or less richer than what you first saw. The important thing is that they are not what they used to be. Can't help but think about this. Because of this, I regard montage as a step in creating movies. Admittedly, it's not the movie I'm writing, it's the movie I saw, and it's not a movie that broke through the barrier of shooting stage to a great extent.
The final processing method, as usual, cannot be predicted at once on the shooting material of several kilometers. We must re-study those specific materials one meter at a time, understand and capture its uniqueness, and feel the rhythm and regularity of those unexpected styles, which must be followed day after day in the editing stage. Because at this stage, the material itself determines the new montage scheme. Only when you have all the materials and see all its advantages and disadvantages, can you make a film-you can direct the symphony of sound and painting of this film.
According to the concentration of the creative problem itself, editors, like any kind of artistic creation, are not affected by production. In fact, it is enough for a writer or composer to write a book or symphony, except for conception. Before montage (editing), a film director has to do a lot of work: a movie script approved by a film factory and the State Film Committee, the guarantee of personnel (film crew), several months of preparation, location, studio, scenery, costumes, props, a technician and film selection, and so on. In the montage (editing) stage, the director only faces the editing staff sitting in front of the sound and painting editing desk, the projectionist in the projection room and the accepted two-piece material box.
The film has a very appropriate name. This name is not poetic, it is called matter. For example, a finished film after editing is only 2700 meters, and there may be 25000 meters of material before editing. In other words, in 15