Messagepar Lully » 27 Mar 2009 00:00
PUDOVKIN
EDITING AS AN INSTRUMENT OF IMPRESSION
(Relational Editing)
We have already mentioned, in the section on editing of sequences, that editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the "psychological guidance" of the spectator. We should now acquaint ourselves with the main special editing methods having as their aim the impression of the spectator.
Contrast. Suppose it be our task to tell of the miserable situation of a starving man ; the story will impress the more vividly if associated with mention of the senseless gluttony of a well-to-do man.
On just such a simple contrast relation is based the corresponding editing method. On the screen the impression of this contrast is yet increased, for it is possible not only to relate the starving sequence to the gluttony sequence, but also to relate separate scenes and even separate shots of the scenes to another, thus, as It were, forcing flic spectator to compare the two actions ail the time, one strengthening the other.
The editing of contrast is one of the most effective, but also one of the commonest and most standardised, of methods, and so care should be taken not to overdo it.
Parallelism. This method resembles contrasts but is considerably wider. Its substance can be ex-plained more clearly by an example. In a scenario as yet unproduced a section occurs as follows:
a working man, one of the leaders of a strike, is condemned to death ; the execution is fixed for 5 a.m.
The sequence is edited thus : a factory-owner, employer of the condemned man, is leaving a restaurant drunk, he looks at his wrist-watch : 4 o'clock. The accused is shown he is being made ready to be led out. Again the manufacturer, he rings a door-bell to ask the time : 4.30.
The prison waggon drives along the street under heavy guard. The maid who opens the door the wife of the condemned is subjected to a sudden senseless assault. The drunken factory-owner snores on a bed, his leg with trouser-end upturned, his hand hanging down with wrist-watch visible, the hands of the watch crawl slowly to 5 o'clock. The workman is being hanged. In this instance two thematically unconnected incidents develop in parallel by means of the watch that tells of the approaching execution. The watch on the wrist of the callous brute, as it were connects him with the chief protagonist of the approaching tragic menty thus ever present in the consciousness of the spectator. This is undoubtedly an interesting method, capable of considerable development.
Symbolism. In the final scenes of the film Strike the shooting down of workmen is punctuated by shots of the slaughter of a bull in a stockyard.
The scenarist, as it were, desires to say : just as a butcher fells a bull with the swing of a pole-axe, so s cruelly and in cold blood, were shot down the workers.
This method is especially interesting because, by means of editing, it introduces an abstract concept into the consciousness of the spectator without use of a title.
Simultaneity. In American films the final section is constructed from the simultaneous rapid development of two actions, in which the outcome of one depends on the outcome of the other. The end of the present-day section of Intolerance , already quoted, is thus constructed.
The whole aim of this method is to create in the spectator a maximum tension of excitement by the constant forcing of a question,
such as, in this case : Will they be in time ? will they be in time ?
The method is a purely emotional one, and nowadays overdone almost to the point of boredom, but it cannot be denied that of all the methods of constructing the end hitherto devised it is the most effective.
Leit-motif (reiteration of theme}. Often it is interesting for the scenarist especially to emphasise the basic theme of the scenario. For this purpose exists the method of reiteration. Its nature can easily be demonstrated by an example. In an anti-religious scenario that aimed at exposing the cruelty and hypocrisy of the Church in employ of the Tsarist regime the same shot was several times repeated :
a church-bell slowly ringing and, superimposed on it, the title :
"The sound of bells sends into the world a message of patience and love."
This piece appeared whenever the scenarist desired to emphasise the stupidity of patience, or the hypocrisy of the love thus preached.
The little that has been said above of relational editing naturally by no means exhausts the whole abundance of its methods. It has merely been
important to show that constructional editing, a method specifically and peculiarly filmic, is, in the hands of the scenarist, an Important instrument of impression.
Careful study of its use in pictures, combined with talent, will undoubtedly lead to the discovery of new possibilities and, in conjunction with them, to the creation of new forms.
(First published as Number Three of a series of popular scientific
film handbooks by Kinopetchat, Moscow and Leningrad, 1926.)
Modifié en dernier par
Lully le 08 Fév 2010 14:09, modifié 4 fois.