Early Cuts

[class assembling] hi, john hess from filmmakeriq.com - in thislesson we'll look at how early soviet filmmakers established the theory of montage - an editingstyle of assembling together different shots that added a new sophisticated element tocinematic language. at the end of the first world war, russiawas in disarray. the bolsheviks led by vladimir lenin had overthrown the tsar in 1917 andthe country of 160 million people, mostly poor and illiterate, was torn apart from yearsof civil war. the first task of the ruling party was to consolidate and communicate and they turned to film as a mass communication medium but the producers and technicians of the prerevolutionary cinema were capitalists and

most of them were driven out or uncooperative with the bolshevik government. resources were scarce - what little they had was consolidatedinto a cinema committee within the new people's commissariat of education. headed by lenin's wife, the cinema committee founded a film school to train new filmmakers. this vgik- all union state institute of cinematography or moscow film school was founded in 1919and would become the first film school in the world. the school primary function was to train peopleto make films to support the bolshevik political party - making newsreels for the purposesof agitation and propaganda - agitprop. but the moscow film school wasn't only acommunist mouthpiece, faculty were also interested in the theory of film - one of the school'scofounders lev kuleshov would bring new insight

into the psychological workings of the motionpicture. lev kuleshov was one of the few prerevolutionaryfilmmakers to remain in russia after 1917. working as a newsreel cameraman during therevolution, kuleshov was instrumental in the founding of the vgik. but kuleshov's superiors at the film school didn't think the young 20-something could work well in a traditionalcurriculum setting so they let him conduct his own study group outside the formal structure of the school. this study group became known as the kuleshov workshop attracted the moreradical and innovative students. with film stock being so rare, kuleshov spentmost of the time making films without celluoid - writing scenarios and assembling actorsin a sort of mock filmmaking exercise. but

studies took a major turn when d.w. griffith's"intolerance" played for the first time in moscow in may of 1919. lenin loved "intolerance"for it's plea for the proletariat and agitation quality and he ordered it to be screened allacross the soviet union. intolerance not only became the most influential film in russiafor the next 10 years, but also a subject of deep intense study at the kuleshov workshop.they dissected d.w. griffith's editing structure, even deconstructing the shots and reassemblingthem in hundreds of ways to examine the impact that different edits had. once new film stock was becoming availablein 1922 as a result of a soviet-german trade agreement, kuleshov was ready to experimentwith some of the lessons learned from studying griffith's film.

the first experiment would illustrate whathas become known as the kuleshov effect. kuleshov took a shot of an expressionless face andcreated three different short films, editing the face with a bowl of hot soup, girl inthe coffin, or the seductive woman on a couch. he showed the film to an audience and theyraved about the range of emotion the actor portrayed from pensiveness over the thoughtof forgotten soup, mourning over the loss of a loved one and lust for the woman on thelounge. even though we know the shot of the actor exactly the same in each scenario, audiencesread meaning into the actor's face by the nature of the shots around it. in another experiment - kuleshov took threeshots - an actor smiling, a close up of a

revolver, and the same actor looking frightened. shown to an audience the interpretation was the actor grew cowardly. but reverse the orderof the shots, and now the audience interprets the actor as growing brave. it was the sameexact shots, but the the order changed the meaning. though other filmmakers like d.w.griffith had practiced this type of editing instinctively, kuleshov was the first to putit in theory - the meaning of film was not only in spatial reality - how things are arrangedin a frame, but in the film strip itself - the sequence of the shot. to further push the boundaries kuleshov experimentedwith artificial landscapes through "creative geography" - cutting together pieces offilm captured in totally different locations,

kuleshov could created a believable fictionalizedgeography in film that didn't exist in real life. this was a departure from the continuityediting of the west that sought to smooth cuts with techniques like cutting on actionand the 180 degree rule - kuleshov was demonstrating that film could transcend space - that theviewer would construct the geography as they were watching the film. the creation of the film doesn't start whenthe cameras roll - thats just getting the raw materials. a film is born in the editwhich the soviets called montage from the french verb monter which means to assemble. this montage theory would see even greaterrefinement by one of russia's most famous

silent filmmakers and student of the kuleshovworksop: sergei eisenstein. serigei eisenstein along with d.w. griffithare the two pioneering geniuses of modern cinema. though griffith would create the languageof continuity editing through practice and practical problem solving, eisenstein wouldapproach film intellectually. griffith and his american contemporaries used film andediting techniques to enhance emotional impact almost as an extenstion of 19th century theatricalmethod, whereas eisenstein used editing to break free of the confines of time and spaceand communicate abstract ideas in a new and modern way. battleship potemkin would be eisenstein'smost critically acclaimed and influential

film. shot in 1925 as part of a twentiethanniversary of the 1905 revolution against the tsar, potemkin took ten weeks to shootwith the famous odessa steps sequence shot in seven days. the editing took another 2weeks to accomplish - running 86 minutes long, potemkin contained 1,346 shots. battleship potemkin was an international success- a clear win for eisenstein and his use of montage to elicit emotional response fromthe viewer. so influential was the film that nazi propaganda minister joseph goebbels called it "a marvelous film without equal in the cinema ... anyone who had no firm politicalconviction could become a bolshevik after seeing the film" the film was pure propaganda - but the bestever made. key to potemkin's success was

the editing - which is where eisenstein beginsto articulate his most important contribution to film theory. eisenstein, an true intellectualand marxist, saw montage as a process which operated in the same way as a marxist dialectic- which is a way of looking at the course of history as the perpetual conflict in whicha thesis or force collides with an anti-thesis or counterforce to create a new phenomenoncalled a synthesis. eisenstein saw the collision of a one shotor montage cell with another as creating conflict that produced a new idea. this new idea wouldbecome it's own thesis and collide with another anti-thesis creating yet another synthesis idea. again and again these dialectics build up in a film like a series of controlled explosions in an internal combustion engine, driving

the film forward. on the subject of editing eisenstein listsfive methods of montage or how these collisions between shots can be created each one buildingup in complexity. the first and most basic is the metric - cuttingbased purely on the length of shot. this elicits the most basic emotional response, that oftempo which can be raised or lowered for effect. next is rhythmic montage - which is much likemetric montage in that it's based on time and tempo, but rhythmic concerns itself withwhat's in the frame - cutting in tempo and with action. in this shot from potemkin, therhythm of the marching solidiers legs drives the movement in the sequence beyond the basiccut..

next in complexity the tonal montage whichisn't concerned with time but with the tone of the shot - from lighting, shadows and shapesin the frame. cutting between shots of different aesthetic tones creates these marxist dialectics above that is overtonal - which is on a largerscale macro cell that combines metric, rhythmic and tonal montage - essentially how wholesequences play against each other. then lastly was the type of montage that mostinterested eisenstein - the intellectual or ideological montage. whereas the previousmethods focused on inducing emotional response, the intellectual montage sought to expressabstract ideas by creating relationships between opposing visual intellectual concepts.

a simple example in battleship potemkin isthe intercutting of the priest tapping on a cross with an officer tapping on the hiltof a sword - to express a message of corrupt association of the church and the state. anotherexample is the final sequence in the odessa steps. three quick shots of a rising stonelion - representing the rise of proletariat. so invested in the intellectual montage - eisenstein dedicated his next film, "october" - a 10th anniversary recreation of the bolshevikrevolution, to exploring its possibilities. running at just under three hours with lotsof intellectual and ideological montage imagery - october was an experimental film of immenseproportions that ultimately left audiences cold. the wild cuts were simply too much for audiences to follow. while intellectual montage can

evoke deep abstract ideas, without being rooted in a strong narrative frame work, as it was in battleship potemkin, the intellectual montage was too much abstraction for audiences to follow. some film theorists such as french film criticandre bazin claimed that dialectical montage was too manipulative and too totalitarianin the way it seeks to control the audience by ignoring natural spatial and time relationshipsfound in continuity editing. the debate may be a matter of taste but the effects of earlysoviet silent filmmakers and their montage theory would be refined and pushed even furtherin the 1950s as the french new wave as well as hollywood visionaries like alfred hitchcockbegan incorporating montage as part of their story telling technique.

with both the continuity style of d.w. griffithwith emphasis on clear understandable space and time and the soviet montage style whichignored space and time to create impact through the juxtaposition of different images, therudiments of cinematic language emerged in roughly the first 30 years of cinema's existence,quickly becoming a nuanced and intricate art form through experimentation and theory. thesefirst practitioners, who studied and built on each other's work, would in turn be studiedand imitated by the next generation of filmmakers - on and on carrying the human tradition ofstorytelling. be part of that tradition, study and go make something great. i'm john hess,i'll see you at filmmakeriq.com

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