Video editing. Glue language. video art

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Video editing. Gluing language

video art

Just as the direct "language" of the theater director is mise-en-scene, the "language" of the director working on the screen is montage.

Of course, this statement, which arose in the 20s, at the time of the development of the montage language in silent cinema, at first glance, exaggerates the role of montage, assigning it not even a dominant, but an absolutely dominant role.

Indeed, it cannot be denied that the language of the screen is also the composition of the frame, and the sound sequence, and special means, such as combined shots, editing and filming effects, and many other directorial tools used today to create a screen thing. After all, in fact, the entire arsenal of directing means, any of the elements used on the screen may become (or may not become) an element of the director's language, through which the viewer will not only be told a story, but also awakened feelings and emotions, caused certain general and personal associations and, as a result, many-valued sensory-intellectual information is transmitted, i.e. artistic image.

In the end, this assertion of the absolute dominance of the montage language arose at a time when, out of all the wealth of today's directing tools, cinema had only shot composition, titles, and montage cuts. Plus an actor, if the picture was a play.

But on the other hand, were the classics and theorists of silent cinema so wrong? It is unlikely that the tenacity of this assertion, which even today no serious cinematographer or even television man will undertake to dispute, can be explained solely by tradition.

To understand this, let's look at the relationships of the main elements of our language.

What is a frame? Unlike a painting or a photograph, not a single film or video frame is valuable in itself. From the point of view of even pre-editing cinematography, it is only an element, a unit of montage. With the development of the montage principle, especially after the discovery of the Kuleshov effect, there is already a different practice, a different attitude to the frame. This is what resulted in Eisenstein's formulation of the frame as a hieroglyph, the meaning of which is deciphered depending on the relationship with other frames, and then with sound.

The composition and content of each individual frame on the screen has meaning and meaning only when it correlates in a certain way with the compositions and content of other frames of the montage phrase, episode and the whole thing.

"Editing is a leap into a new dimension in relation to the composition of the frame", - S. M. Eisenstein.

The same applies to all combined shots and shooting effects, incl. and speedy.

Moreover, usually a frame that is completely finished in terms of composition and semantic meaning from the point of view of painting and photography, in the montage looks like a patch, an alien body. It instantly stops the development of the editing stream, i.e. development of action and thought on the screen and interrupts the viewer's emotion. In the audience's perception, this often translates into a feeling very similar to that which occurs when the film breaks in the projector during a movie show - bewilderment and annoyance. After it, drawing the viewer back into the on-screen action is as difficult as after the title "The End of the Movie."

Another group of elements - montage special effects - already by its name speaks of their subordination to the montage principle. In fact, all the special effects known today - from the simplest mixers and curtains to the most complex three-dimensional ones - are nothing more than a connection in one way or another of two frames, i.e. variations on the theme of gluing.

And what has been said about the completed shot is also true of the overly frilly and finished special effect. Television people often sin with this, hoping in this way to save bad shots that are indistinct in emotion and meaning, or to make up for the lack of dramaturgy, "lifting up" the audience's emotion with a bright effect. But the special effect, which is stronger in impact than the frames it connects, most often destroys both the perception of these frames and its own meaning.

After all, the normal human psyche does not tolerate nonsense when the form of presentation of the text does not make it clear its meaning. In addition, one should not forget that meaningless speech or wretched verses with a pretentious or pretentious, and even costumed performance, look even more meaningless. It’s better to mumble this without intonations under your breath: they will hear less - less and scold.

And finally, sound is the most independent of the elements of film language. Disputes about its place in the screen arts continued until the 50s. and reached two extremes: from the requirements of complete synchrony to Eisenstein's call for absolute asynchrony with the image. True, already in the 30s, D. Vertov wrote about the senselessness of these disputes, saying that “Sound frames, just like in silent frames, are mounted on an equal footing, may coincide in editing, may not coincide in editing and intertwine with each other in different ways. necessary combinations.

Arguments about the dominance of sound or image on the screen are meaningless because, firstly, the sound track, like video frames, is subject to the general form of visual art. The self-valuable sound phonogram is the domain of the radio, but not of the screen. Secondly, the sound is also edited, which means that it obeys the same editing laws as the image.

So, the main way of presenting a screen work was and remains montage. This means that all other elements must be subordinated to the assembly decision of the thing, which, in turn, is a way of translating the author's intention on the screen.

Does this mean that the montage method of thinking and storytelling is unique to cinema? Yes and no.

No - because montage, as a method, has long been known and has been widely used in literature since time immemorial. After all, it was from her that the screen borrowed all the basic editing techniques. What is Griffith's parallel montage, if not the well-known literary "Meanwhile...". Not to mention more complex editing moves and techniques, even installation by size has long been known to literature. Proving this, Eisenstein liked to quote Pushkin:

"Peter comes out (gen. pl.).

His face is terrible (kr. pl.).

The movements are fast (cf. pl.).

It is beautiful (cr. or common area - depends on the accent)."

Yes - because it was in cinema that this principle became an independent language, the main means of materializing the author's intention, or, speaking scientifically, "a means of transmitting a figurative message to the recipient."

But the main thing is that montage is the main way of human vision and thinking.

Our vision does not recognize panoramas. The gaze moves from object to object or shifts focus in a sharp jump. The storyboard only reproduces this principle. And it expands it, allowing you to cast a glance without restrictions in space and time - visualizing the process of understanding what you see.

"The main psychological justification of montage as a way of depicting the material world lies precisely in the fact that it reproduces the process that takes place in our minds, in which one visual image is replaced by another as our attention is attracted by one or another detail of our environment." E. Lindgren.

Indeed, in order to understand something, we first pay attention to the general outline, then mentally separate the object (or idea) into components, and finally, having understood the particular, we assemble the object again, but not as a kind of visual image, but rather as the concept of already a personal plane, where our sensual-emotional attitude to it is imposed on the object itself.

Those. montage reproduces the well-known formula "perception - analysis - synthesis". The only difference from ordinary thinking is that the director perceives and analyzes the real object of shooting, and the viewer himself must synthesize the parts presented to him into a complete image.

But for this synthesis to be feasible, the viewer must receive a certain amount of information about the subject. Moreover, in order for the image created by the viewer to be perceived as intended by the author, including at the sensory-emotional level, this information must be carefully selected and presented in a certain sequence. Those. The main task of montage is not assembly, but the selection and combination of elements carried out according to the laws of composition to solve a certain artistic problem. It is from this that all the principles and techniques of the editing language flow, the development of which began at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, and will most likely end no earlier than screen art itself dies.

Let's try to deal with the basic, so far the simplest lexical, grammatical and other rules that exist in montage, as in any other language. These rules unequivocally work both on the big and on the small screens, their use does not depend on the form and genre at all - from a big movie to an informational plot, they are the same. Just as spelling does not depend on the genre, and its violations can only be used to convey some special features of the character when transmitting his direct speech. All other options are considered banal illiteracy both in large literature and in an article for the district newspaper. The analogy here is direct.

Author: A. Kaminsky; Publication: v-montaj.narod.ru

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