Film Studies
How was the early days of recording to animate images? The inception of the film industry.
Even though it seems that the rise of cinema was due to market that was available at the time, it is undeniable that sometimes small indie movies may also become a hit. I don't know what I am talking about for the time-being, but I will post updates on this topic later on.
There will be a quiz at the end of the class, says Mr. Ä°pĹźirli. The first topic is a YouTube Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFkSjdaqbyE).
Hugo MĂĽnsterberg (1863-1916)
The mind locates patterns in the colors, smells, tastes, sounds and feeling it perceives and organizes the individual’s sense of the world.
Film could distort space and time.
On the one hand, the medium was literally two-dimensional, with flat images projected onto a flat screen, but on the other there was an illusion of space.
Film could take the viewer to a limitless number of locations.
Flashbacks, flashforwards, dreams and memories could represent the non-linear nature of our thoughts.
He suggested that the brain has a phi-phenomenon in which the mind controls what it perceives, and fills in the gaps between perceptions.
Just as music is the art form of the ear and painting the art form of the eye, so film is the art of the mind.
For instance, if you were to draw pictures on a notebook each of which is the next stage of what it succeeds and flip them at the right speed, it will seem as if it is moving. In other words, the brain will complete the images and make it seem so.
Vsevold Pudovkin (1893-1953)
Pudovkin assumes that the reaction of an audience is predictable. We associate emotions with our body language and using this method, conveying an emotion with our body language in a film can make it seem as though it is emotions themselves even though they may be not. For that reason, a director’s job is that of a technician.
Equally, an abstract theme or symbolism could link two elements. Two narrative can be linked together by editing to make them appear simultaneous - such as showing both sides in a chase sequence. It’s not that we see the different scenes simultaneously, but that we hold them in our minds simultaneously. Finally, there is editing which depends on a recurring visual leitmotif, an object, shape or style of lighting recurring through a film.
Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948)
Hegel and Marx: Dialectics
Discontinuity rather than continuity.
Eisenstein exaggerated such contrast with a technique known as dialectical montage.
For Hegel, dialectics is the way that concepts or ideas develop, in the process shaping the world. A thesis produces an antithesis.
For Marx, there is no synthesis—the conflict, being irreconcilable, produces a further antithesis. Marx suggest that the history of the world is a history of irreconcilable struggles between classes—master and slave in Greek feudal and capitalist societies. Through continual revolution, a better society can be created.
Kuleshov Effect
The meaning lays in the relation between the pictures rather than in the images themselves.
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DjOw5xhZpg.
High angles are contrasted with low angles, close-ups with long shots, small objects with large, and so forth; sometimes we focus briefly on the fate of an individual, other times, it is the mass of bodies that concerns us. After a while, it becomes unclear where on the steps we are—near the top, near the bottom, halfway down the stairs… the helplessness and panic of the people on the steps and the power of the army is created by the contrasts in angles and heights of the camera work.
There is missing info. I will insert it after I obtain the book that we are studying. This was pretty much a copy of the slides that we studied.