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FILM TECHNIQUE and FILM ACTING
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FILM TECHNIQUE
AND
FILM ACTING
The Cinema Writings of V. I. PUDOVKIN
Translated by IVOR MONTAGU Introduction by LEWIS JACOBS
VISION
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CONTENTS
PAGE
Contents — Film Technique
(A separate table of contents for FILM ACTING appears at the beginning of that volume. ) Introduction by Lewis Jacobs iii
Introduction to the German Edition xiii
I. The Film Scenario and Its Theory
foreword 1
part i. the scenario 3
The meaning of the "shooting-script"— The construction of the scenario— The theme— The action- treatment of the theme— Conclusion.
PART II. THE PLASTIC MATERIAL 26
The simplest specific methods of shooting- Method of treatment of the material: struc- tural editing— Editing of the scene— Editing of the sequence— Editing of the Scenario- Editing as an instrument of impression: rela- tional editing.
II. Film Director and Film Material
part i. the peculiarities of film
material 51
The film and the theatre— The methods of the film— Film and reality— Filmic space and time —The material of films— Analysis— Editing: the logic of filmic analysis— The necessity to interfere with movement— Organisation of the material to be shot— Arranging setups— The organisation of chance material— Filmic form —The technique of directorial work.
PART H. THE DIRECTOR AND THE SCENARIO 93
The director and the scenarist— The environ- ment of the film— The characters in the envir-
PAGE
onment— The establishment of the rhythm of the film.
PART III. THE DIRECTOR AND THE ACTOR 105 Two kinds of production— The film actor and the film type— Planning the acting of the film type— The ensemble— Expressive movement- Expressive objects— The director as creator of the ensemble.
PART IV. THE ACTOR IN THE FRAME 118
The actor and the filmic image— The actor and light.
PART V. THE DIRECTOR AND THE CAMERA- MAN 120 The cameraman and the camera— The camera and its viewpoint— The shooting of movement —The camera compels the spectator to see as the director wishes— The shaping of the com- position—The laboratory— Collectivism : the basis of film-work.
III. Types Instead of Actors 137
IV. Close-ups in Time 146 v. asynchronism as a principle of sound
Film 155
VI. Rhythmic Problems in My First Sound
Film 166
VII. Notes and Appendices
A. GLOSSARIAL NOTES 175
B. — SPECIAL NOTES 180
C. ICONOGRAPHY OF PUDOVKIN's WORKS 192
D. — INDEX OF NAMES 196 The numerals in the text refer to Appendix B.
INTRODUCTION
There are few experiences more important in the education of a newcomer to motion pic- tures than the discovery of V. I. Pudovkin's Film Technique and Film Acting. No more valuable manuals of the practice and theory of film making have been written than these two handbooks by the notable Soviet director. So sound are their points of view, so valid their tenets, so revelatory their analyses, that they remain today, twenty years after their initial appear- ance, the foremost books of their kind.
First published abroad in 1929 and 1933 respectively, Film Technique and Film Acting brought to the art of film making a code of principles and a rationale that marked the medium's analytic "coming of age." Until their publication, the motion picture maker had to eke out on his own any intellectual or artistic considera- tions of film craft. No explicit body of principles existed upon which the film maker could draw with confidence. Film technique was a more or less hit or miss affair that existed in a kind of fragmentary state which, in the main, leaned heavily upon theatrical methods.
These pioneering books made clear at once that movie making need no longer flounder for a methodol- ogy or for its own standards. They elucidated what
iii
iv FILM TECHNIQUE AND FILM ACTING
were the fundamentals of film art and defined the singular process of expression that distinguished it from all other media. Now film theory and practice could be attacked with greater assurance and efficiency. The film maker now had at his disposal a consolidated and concrete source of information and knowledge that could shorten his own creative development. It is not surprising therefore that these books soon became the "bibles" for film artists.
Film Technique, in particular, had an acute and im- mediate effect. It came out at a climactic period in film history — just when the American cinema was catching its breath over the exciting innovations and new con- tributions that had been introduced first by the Ger- man film importations, then the French and finally the Russian. The originality of these foreign pictures had stirred up a wealth of film theory and criticism which was valuble and passionate but without a generally ac- cepted reference point. A criteria on which to con- struct, judge and evaluate a motion picture was sorely needed. Film Technique fulfilled this need and was greeted with hearty applause. Film theory and film making was lifted out of the gossip and "personal opinion" category and into a more conscious and de- fined art form. The concepts contained in this slim book stimulated and sharpened awareness of what was basic and true to the film medium. All films and writ- ings that followed — whether they agreed with its edicts or not — have had to take cognizance of its principles and contributions. Film makers and critics to the pres-
INTRODUCTION v
ent continue to borrow from its rich deposit of ideas, implications and conclusions.
Film Acting, which appeared shortly after the intro- duction of sound, never had the same deep influence or stirred up the same amount of excitement. This is probably because the problem of film acting was basic- ally another aspect, an extension of the problem of act- ing in general — an art which already had a great body of tradition and analysis in print, while film technique although utilizing many of the other, older crafts, was nevertheless a new and distinct medium of expression about which very little was known and which had ac- quired only the beginnings of a tradition.
No more authoritative and knowing person could have been chosen to write these books than V. I. Pu- dovkin, acknowledged internationally as one of the greatest of film directors. His early pictures — Mother, The End of St. Petersburg, Storm Over Asia — along with those of other Soviet directors, burst upon the American scene between the years of 1927-1930, pro- voking tremendous excitement, controversy and ad- miration. Intellectuals, artists and film makers argued hotly about the merits of what they were forced by these films to concede to be an art. Cries of "propa- ganda" were mingled with cheers for the pictures' dy- namic forcefulness, high imagination and profound cinematic skill. When all the excitement had simmered down, it was agreed that the films of Pudovkin and his countrymen had ushered in a new era in screen artistry.
The End of St Petersburg (1927) and Storm Over
A*
vi FILM TECHNIQUE AND FILM ACTING
Asia (1928), were the two pictures which made Pu- dovkin's reputation in the United States. Mother was not shown in this country until years later, and then only to limited audiences. The End of St. Petersburg was so popular that it had the distinction of being the first Soviet film to appear in Broadway's largest movie theatre, the Roxy. It played there for a number of weeks after an initial two-a-day run at Hammerstein's legitimate theatre — an uncommon event for that day.
The End of St. Petersburg dramatized through the eyes of a peasant the social upheaval in St. Petersburg, with a sweep and richness of detail comparable to the best efforts of Griffith and Eisenstein. Its warm human feeling for character, its atmosphere of the Russian countryside, its innumerable satirical touches and its portrait of a bewildered peasant who finally emerges from perplexity to an understanding of his country's upset, were rendered in a quick, staccato style that emphasized the intensity of the period and carried the spectator away by the sheer force and dynamic quality of its filmic construction.
Some of the film's sequences were considered so extraordinary cinematically that they have since be- come celebrated in film history. In the stock exchange sequence for instance, Pudovkin portrayed in extreme close shots the hysteria of the Czarist war profiteers, then cross cut these images to another kind of hysteria — soldiers in battle being mowed down by bursting shells, freezing in dug-outs, killing and being killed. He forced the spectator to draw his own conclusions
INTRODUCTION vii
from the cross cutting of the pictures. Such a use of editing was typical of the film throughout. The theory that was the basis for this method can be found in his manual.
Storm Over Asia had many things in common with this film. Its protagonist, as the hero in The End of St. Petersburg, was also a bewildered peasant, who in the social upheaval becomes awakened and leads his fel- low men against their oppressors. Structurally simpler than its predecessor, it also revealed a cinematic style of dexterity and originality. The film was permeated with the same deep regard for the precise image, the exact pace, the significant psychological angle, and dis- played an equally profound use of editing.
The closing sequence of the picture illustrates force- fully what Pudovkin called, "implanting an abstract concept into the consciousness of the spectator," through cinematic symbolism. The Mongol hero (mis- taken heir of Genghis Khan) who has fiercely fought his way out of his enemy's headquarters, is pursued by them as he rides across the desert. A windstorm begins. The Mongol raises his ancient sword and cries out, "O My People!" Suddenly as if in answer to his cry, the desert begins to fill with hundreds, then thousands of mounted Mongols. Again he calls: "Rise in your ancient strength!" The screen fills with tens of thou- sands of his tribesmen, riding furiously as though to battle behind their leader. Once more the Mongol calls out: " — And free yourselves!" Now the mounted war- riors blend with the fury of the storm and sweep every-
viii FILM TECHNIQUE AND FILM ACTING
thing before them — their enemy, their enemy's trading posts, trees — in a tempestuous hurricane symbolical of their united strength and the imminent storm over Asia.
These important and masterful motion pictures had been made by Pudovkin while in his early thirties. Yet he had never thought of making motion pictures his career until he was twenty-seven. Up to that time his vocational interest had been chemistry. He was about to graduate from the Moscow University with a degree in physics and chemistry when the first world war broke out. Enlisting in the artillery, he was wounded and taken prisoner. The years 1915-1918 were spent in a Pomeranian prison camp; 1919 saw him back in Mos- cow installed once more in a chemist's laboratory.
But the post-war restlessness seized him. He became so interested in the theatre that he decided to forsake his previous profession and passed the examination which admitted him to work in one of Moscow's theatre workshop groups. Then he saw D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance. This work made such a deep impres- sion upon him that there was no longer any doubt for him as to where his path lay. "After seeing it ( Intoler- ance), I was convinced that cinematography was really an art and an art of great potentialities. It fascinated me and I was eager to go into this new field."
He applied at once to the State Film School and was accepted. Here during the next two years he served an apprenticeship acting, designing sets, improvising scenes and learning the business aspects of movie mak- ing. After this he went on to the film workshop of
INTRODUCTION ix
Kuleshov, who had the reputation of being the most stimulating and inspiring teacher in his country — a reputation not unlike that of Professor Baker in this country who made his theatre workshop at Harvard so famous. Under Kuleshov, Pudovkin discovered the medium's true nature and its creative resources. Pudov- kin learned that in every art there is a material and a mode of organizing that material in terms of the me- dium. Through experiment and practice he discovered what Melies, Porter and Griffith had instinctively fallen upon many years earlier: that the basic means of ex- pression which is unique to motion pictures lies in the organization of the film strips — the shots — which in themselves contain the elements of the larger forms — the scenes and sequences — and which in relationship motivate the film's structural unity and effectiveness.
Toward the end of 1925, he directed his first feature- length picture: Mechanics of the Brain. During a lull in its production he collaborated with Nikolai Shipkov- sky in the direction of a comedy based on the Interna- tional Chess Tournament then being held in Moscow: Chess Fever. This picture brought him critical atten- tion and the admiration of other film makers. It also won for him the opportunity to direct a much more ambitious undertaking, Mother, based on the novel by Maxim Gorky, which was destined to bring him inter- national acclaim and place him in the front row of directorial talents. The film itself was hailed as a "mas- terpiece" and ranks as one of the classics in film history. It is considered by many to be his greatest work.
x FILM TECHNIQUE AND FILM ACTING
It was during the production of Mother that Pudov- kin wrote the first of these two books as part of a series of manuals on film making for use in the State Cinema Institute. The first manual, originally containing 64 pages, was called The Film Scenario; the second, 92 pages long, was called The Film Director and Film Material. So large was their circulation in Russia that they were translated and published abroad in a single handbook entitled Film Technique.
Pudovkin later amplified many of the ideas in this manual in a lecture at the Cinema Institute. At the suggestion of the State Academy of Art Research, he expanded this lecture into a third book which subse- quently was called Film Acting. Both books, Film Technique and Film Acting, became standard inter- national reading almost immediately, accepted and proselytized far beyond their author's expectations.
Early in his career, Pudovkin discovered that the human eye does not see things in a mechanical way. That is, the eye seldom focuses on anything from the point of view squarely in front of it except by the merest chance. Instead it is more natural for the eye to perceive things at some angle — either from below, above or from the side. Also, the eye does not focus on an object for a long period of time, but constantly shifts around in a succession of swift impressions. With the aid of the brain these impressions are instantly regis- tered as texture, light and shade, size, weight, etc.
This knowledge aided Pudovkin's formation of film theory. His writing is larded with pertinent observa-
INTRODUCTION xi
tions of the behavior of the eye and mind. He points out that the principles of film technique have much in common with the principles of the eye and the brain. That is, the eye does not simply act as a mechanical recorder, but is an instrument (not unlike the lens of the camera) whose impressions are linked to and quali- fied by the brain. For what the eye sees the brain appraises, computes and arranges in an organized sum- mation or concept. This activity of selection and re- arrangement for the purpose of implanting an idea or emotion or concept is the secret of film construction. Many vivid examples from Pudovkin's own and other films make the application of his method and the work- ing cause and effect enlightening, practical and stim- ulating.
At all times it is the practitioner talking, not the critic or theorist. Pudovkin grapples with the specifics of craft problems that confront every film maker and the principles he formulates flow from much study and practice in the laboratory and studio. At first glance, Pudovkin's approach may seem to some, unfeeling, doctrinaire or even mechanical. Yet his films prove that when construction and action are understood in terms of the screen medium, the results are as human and as full of feeling as the director can make them.
Film Technique and Film Acting can in no way be considered in the category of manuals which teach movie making in twelve easy lessons. Nor are they in- tended for the amateur film hobbyist — although a knowledge of the contents of Pudovkin's books can
xii FILM TECHNIQUE AND FILM ACTING
greatly improve his work. They can provide such hobbyists with an insight into the medium such as they never dreamed of and thus enable them to enhance their own pleasure by raising them from dabblers to creative craftsmen.
There is so much that is touched upon in these books that is of grave significance, that they merit continuous reading and study. Other writing on film art may go into the subject at greater length, examine more thor- oughly more aspects, include wider discussions of more technical problems more recently arisen, but no book speaks with greater authority, nor has captured with greater simplicity and comprehensiveness the basic is- sues of film structure. Because of its laconic treatment and compactness, important details are sometimes missed or oversimplified. It is important to note for example that Pudovkin says, the foundation of film art is editing. He does not say, as many of his readers have said later, that the art of film is editing. Together, Film Technique and Film Acting constitute an anatomy of film art. Their reappearance in an American edition after many years of being out of print is an augury that holds much promise for the future.
Lewis Jacobs
INTRODUCTION TO THE GERMAN EDITION
THE foundation of film art is editing. Armed with this watchword, the young cinema of Soviet Russia commenced its progress, and it is a maxim that, to this day, has lost nothing of its significance and force.
It must be borne in mind that the expression " editing " is not always completely interpreted or understood in its essence. By some the term is naively assumed to imply only a joining together of the strips of film in their proper time-succession. Others, again, know only two sorts of editing, a fast and a slow. But they forget — or they have never learnt — that rhythm (i.e., the effects controlled by the alternation in cutting of longer or shorter strips of film) by no means exhausts all the possibilities of editing.
To make clear my point and to bring home unmistakably to my readers the meaning of editing and its full potentialities, I shall use the analogy of another art-form — literature. To the poet or writer separate words are as raw material. They have the widest and most variable meanings which only begin to become precise through their position in the sentence. To that extent to which the word is an integral part of the composed phrase, to that extent is its effect and meaning variable until
xiv PUDOVKIN
it is fixed in position, in the arranged artistic form.
To the film director each shot of the finished film subserves the same purpose as the word to the poet. Hesitating, selecting, rejecting, and taking up again, he stands before the separate takes, and only by conscious artistic composition at this stage are gradu- ally pieced together the " phrases of editing," the incidents and sequences, from which emerges, step by step, the finished creation, the film.
The expression that the film is " shot " is entirely false, and should disappear from the language. The film is not shot, but built, built up from the separate strips of celluloid that are its raw material. If a writer requires a word — for example, beech — the single word is only the raw skeleton of a meaning, so to speak, a concept without essence or precision. Only in conjunction with other words, set in the frame of a complex form, does art endow it with life and reality. I open at hazard a book that lies before me and read " the tender green of a young beech " — not very remarkable prose, certainly, but an example that shows fully and clearly the difference between a single word and a word structure, in which the beech is not merely a bare suggestion, but has become part of a definite, literary form. The dead word has been waked to life through art.
I claim that every object, taken from a given view- point and shown on the screen to spectators, is a dead object, even though it has moved before the camera. The proper movement of an object before
ON FILM TECHNIQUE xv
the camera is yet no movement on the screen, it is no more than raw material for the future building-up, by editing, of the movement that is conveyed by the assemblage of the various strips of film. Only if the object be placed together among a number of separate objects, only if it be presented as part of a synthesis of different separate visual images, is it endowed with filmic life. Transformed like the word " beech " in our analogy, it changes itself in this process from a skeletal photographic copy of nature into a part of the filmic form.
Every object must, by editing, be brought upon the screen so that it shall have not photographic, but cinematographic essence.
One thus perceives that the meaning of editing and the problems it presents to the director are by no means exhausted by the logical time-succession inherent in the shots, or by the arrangement of a rhythm. Editing is the basic creative force, by power of which the soulless photographs (the separate shots) are engineered into living, cinematographic form. And it is typical that, in the construction of this form, material may be used that is in reality of an entirely different character from that in the guise of which it eventually appears. I shall take an example from my last film, The End of St. Petersburg.
At the beginning of that part of the action that represents war, I wished to show a terrific explosion, In order to render the effect of this explosion with absolute faithfulness, I caused a great mass of dyna- mite to be buried in the earth, had it blasted, and
xvi PUDOVKIN
shot it. The explosion was veritably colossal — but filmically it was nothing. On the screen it was merely a slow, lifeless movement. Later, after much trial and experiment, I managed to " edit " the explosion with all the effect I required — moreover, without using a single piece of the scene I had just taken. I took a flammenwerfer that belched forth clouds of smoke. In order to give the effect of the crash I cut in short flashes of a magnesium flare, in rhythmic alternation of light and dark. Into the middle of this I cut a shot of a river taken some time before, that seemed to me to be appropriate owing to its special tones of light and shade. Thus gradually arose before me the visual effect I required. The bomb explosion was at last upon the screen, but, in reality, its elements comprised everything imaginable except a real explosion.
Once more, reinforced by this example, I repeat that editing is the creative force of filmic reality, and that nature provides only the raw material with which it works. That, precisely, is the relationship between reality and the film.
These observations apply also in detail to the actors. The man photographed is only raw material for the future composition of his image in the film, arranged in editing.
When faced with the task of presenting a captain of industry in the film The End of St. Petersburg, I sought to solve the problem by cutting in his figure with the equestrian statue of Peter the Great. I claim that the resultant composition is effective with
ON FILM TECHNIQUE xvii
a reality quite other than that produced by the posing of an actor, which nearly always smacks of Theatre.
In my earlier film, Mother, I tried to affect the spectators, not by the psychological performances of an actor, but by plastic synthesis through editing. The son sits in prison. Suddenly, passed in to him surreptitiously, he receives a note that next day he is to be set free. The problem was the expression, filmically, of his joy. The photographing of a face lighting up with joy would have been flat and void of effect. I show, therefore, the nervous play of his hands and a big close-up of the lower half of his face, the corners of the smile. These shots I cut in with other and varied material — shots of a brook, swollen with the rapid flow of spring, of the play of sunlight broken on the water, birds splashing in the village pond, and finally a laughing child. By the junction of these components our expression of " prisoner's joy " takes shape. I do not know how the spectators reacted to my experiment — I myself have always been deeply convinced of its force.
Cinematography advances with rapid stride. Its possibilities are inexhaustible. But it must not be forgotten that its path to a real art will be found only when it has been freed from the dictates of an art- form foreign to it — that is, the Theatre. Cinemato- graphy stands now upon the threshold of its own methods.
The effort to affect from the screen the feelings and ideas of the public by means of editing is of
xviii PUDOVKIN
crucial importance, for it is an effort that renounces theatrical method. I am firmly convinced that it is along this path that the great international art of cinematography will make its further progress.
(Published in Filmregie und Filmmanuskript, translated by Georg and Nadia Friedland, Lichtbildbuehne, Berlin, 1928, and re- translated from German by I. M., in The Film Weekly, London, October 29, 1928.)
I
THE FILM SCENARIO AND ITS THEORY
FOREWORD
THE scenarios usually submitted to production firms are marked by a specific character. Almost all represent the primitive narration of some given content, their authors having appar- ently concerned themselves only with the relation of incident, employing for the most part literary methods, and entirely disregarding the extent to which the material they propose will be interesting as subject for cinematographic treatment. The question of special cinematographic treatment of material is highly important. Every art possesses its own peculiar method of effectively presenting its matter. This remains true, of course, for the film. To work at a scenario without knowing the methods of directorial work, the methods of shooting and cutting a film, is as foolish as to give a Frenchman a Russian poem in literal translation. In order to communi- cate to the Frenchman the correct impression, one must rewrite the poem anew, with knowledge of the peculiarities of French verse-form. In order to write a scenario suitable for filming, one must know the methods by which the spectator can be influenced from the screen.
The opinion is often met with that the scenarist has
2 PUDOVKIN
only to give a general, primitive outline of the action. The whole work of detailed " filmic " adaptation is an affair of the director. This is entirely false. It should be remembered that in no art can construction be divided into stages independent of one another. Already that very general approach involved in the fact of a work being thought out as a substantial future presupposes attention to possible particulari- ties and details. When one thinks of a theme, then inevitably one thinks simultaneously, be it hazily and unclearly, of the treatment of its action, and so forth. From this it follows that, even though the scenarist abstain from laying down detailed instructions on what to shoot and how to shoot it, what to edit and how to edit it, none the less a knowledge and con- sideration of the possibilities and peculiarities of directorial work will enable him to propose material that can be used by the director, and will make pos- sible to him the creation of a, Jilmically expressive film. Usually the result is exactly the opposite — usually the first approach of the scenarist to his work implies in the best cases uninteresting, in the worst insur- mountable, obstacles to filmic adaptation.
The purpose of this study is to communicate what is, it is true, a very elementary knowledge of the basic principles of scenario work in their relation to the basic principles of directorial work. Apart from those considerations specifically filmic, the scenarist, especially in the field of general construction, is con- fronted with the laws governing creation in other allied arts. A scenario may be constructed in the
ON FILM TECHNIQUE 3
style of a playwright, and will then be subject to the laws that determine the construction of a play. In other cases it may approach the novel, and its con- struction will consequently be conditioned by other laws. But these questions can be treated only super- ficially in the present sketch, and readers especially interested in them must turn to specialised works.
Part I THE SCENARIO
THE MEANING OF THE " SHOOTING-SCRIPT "
It is generally known that the finished film con- sists of a whole series of more or less short pieces following one another in definite sequence. In observing the development of the action the spectator is transferred first to one place, then to another ; yet more, he is shown an incident, even sometimes an actor, not as a whole, but consecutively by aiming the camera at various parts of the scene or of the human body. This kind of construction of a picture, the resolving of the material into its elements and subsequent building from them of a filmic whole, is called " constructive editing," and it will be discussed in detail in the second part of this sketch. As a preliminary it is necessary only for us to note the fact of this basic method of film- work.
In shooting a film, the director is not in a position to do so consecutively — that is, begin with the first
4 PUDOVKIN
scene and thence, following the scenario, proceed in order right up to the last. The reason is simple. Suppose, for argument's sake, you build a required set — it nearly always happens that the scenes taking place in it are spread throughout the whole scenario — and suppose the director take it into his head, after shooting a scene on that set, to proceed immedi- ately with the scene next following in the order of the action of the developing scenario, then it will be necessary to build a new set without demolishing the first, then another, and so forth, accumulating a whole series of structures without being able to destroy the preceding ones. To work in this way is impracticable for simple technical reasons. Thus both director and actor are deprived of the possi- bility of continuity in the actual process of shooting ; but, at the same time, continuity is essential. With the loss of continuity, we lose the unity of the work — its style and, with that, its effect. From this derives the inevitable necessity of a detailed preliminary overhauling of the scenario. Only then can a director work with confidence, only then can he attain significant results, when he treats each piece carefully according to a filmic plan, when, clearly visualising to himself a series of screen images, he traces and fixes the whole course of development, both of the scenario action and of the work of the separate characters. In this preliminary paper-work must be created that style, that unity, which con- ditions the value of any work of art. All the various positions of the camera — such as long-shot, close-up,
ON FILM TECHNIQUE 5
shot from above, and so forth ; all the technical means — such as " fade," " mask," and " pan " — that affect the relation of a shot to the piece of cellu- loid preceding and following it ; everything that comprises or strengthens the inner content of a scene, must be exactly considered ; otherwise in the shoot- ing of some scene, taken at random from the middle of the scenario, irreparable errors may arise. Thus this overhauled " working " — that is, ready for shoot- ing— form of scenario provides in itself the detailed description of each, eveta the smallest, piece, citing every technical method required for its execution.
Certainly, to require the scenarist to write his work in such a form would be to require him to become a director ; but all this scenario work must be done, and, if he cannot deliver a " cast-iron " scenario, ready for shooting, nevertheless, in that degree in which he provides a material more or less approach- ing the ideal form, the scenarist will provide the director not with a series of obstacles to be overcome, but with a series of impulses that can be used. The more technically complete his working-out of the scenario, the more chance the scenarist has to see upon the screen the images shaped as he has visualised them.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SCENARIO
If we try to divide the work of the scenarist into, as it were, a succession of stages, passing from the general to the particular, we get the following rough scheme :
6 PUDOVKIN
i . The theme.
2. The action (the treatment).*
3. The cinematographic working-out of the action
(filmic representation).
Certainly, such a scheme is the result of the dis- section of an already completed scenario. As already remarked, the creative process can take place in other sequence. Separate scenes can be imagined and simultaneously find their position in the process of growth. But, none the less, some final overhaul of the work on the scenario must take into account all these three stages in their sequence. One must always remember that the film, by the very nature of its construction (the rapid alternation of successive pieces of celluloid), requires of the spectator an exceptional concentration of attention. The director, and consequently the scenarist also, leads despoti- cally along with him the attention of the spectator. The latter sees only that which the director shows him ; for reflection, for doubt, for criticism, there is neither room nor time, and consequently the smallest error in clearness or vividness of construction will be apprehended as an unpleasant confusion or as a simple, ineffective blank. Remember, therefore, that the scenarist must always take care to secure the greatest simplicity and clarity in the resolution of each separate problem, at whatever moment in his work it may confront him. For convenience in
* I combine these two as one for the purposes of a short sketch, but this is not technically exact. (Author's note.)
ON FILM TECHNIQUE 7
elucidation we will discuss separately in order each of the separate points of the scheme outlined, that we may establish the specific requirements set by the film in the selection and application of dif- ferent materials and the different methods of their treatment.
THE THEME
The theme is a supra-artistic concept. In fine, every human concept can be employed as a theme, and the film, no more than any other art, can place bounds to its selection. The only question that can be asked is whether it be valuable or useless to the spectator. And this question is a purely sociological one, the solution of which does not enter the scope of this sketch. But mention must be made of certain formal requirements, conditioning the selection of the theme, if only because of the present-day position of film-art. The film is yet young, and the wealth of its methods is not yet extensive ; for this reason it is possible to indicate temporary limitations without necessarily attributing to them the permanence and inflexibility of laws. First of all must be mentioned the scale of theme. Formerly there ruled a tendency, and in part it exists to-day, to select such themes as embrace material spreading extraordinarily widely over time and space. As example may be quoted the American film Intolerance, the theme of which may be represented as follows : " Throughout all ages and among all peoples, from the earliest times to the present day, stalks intolerance, dragging in its wake
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murder and blood." This is a theme of monstrous extent ; the very fact that it spreads " throughout all ages and among all peoples " already conditions an extraordinary breadth of material. The result is extremely characteristic. In the first place, scarcely compressed into twelve reels, the film became so ponderous that the tiredness it created largely effaced its effect. In the second place, the abundance of matter forced the director to work the theme out quite generally, without touching upon details, and consequently there was a strong dis- crepancy between the depth of the motif and the superficiality of its form. Only the part played in the present day, in which the action was more con- centrated, produced the necessary, effective impres- sion. It is especially necessary to pay attention to this forced superficiality. At the present moment film-art, still in its infancy, does not possess means enabling it to embrace so wide a material.
Note that most good films are characterised by very simple themes and relatively uncomplicated action. Bela Balazs, in his book " Der Sichtbare Mensch," quite correctly remarks that the failure of the majority of film adaptations of literary works is to be ascribed mainly to the fact that the scenarists concerned strove to compress a superabundance of material into the narrow confines of the picture.
Cinematography is, before anything else, limited by the definite length of a film. A film more than 7,000 feet long already creates an unnecessary exhaustion. There is, it is true, a method of issuing
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a long film in several so-called serial parts. But this method is possible only to films of a special kind. Adventure-films, their content consisting chiefly of a series of extraordinary happenings in the career of the hero, little connected with one another after all, and always having each an independent inter- est (stunts — either acrobatic or directorial), can naturally be shown to the spectator in several episodes of a single/ cycle. The spectator, losing nothing in impression, can see the second part without acquaintance with the first, the content of which he gathers from an opening title. The relationship between the episodes is attained by crude play upon the curiosity of the spectator ; for example, at the end of the first part the hero lands into some inextricable situation, solved only at the beginning of the second, and so forth. But the film of deeper content, the value of which lies always in the impression it creates as a whole, can certainly not be thus divided into parts for the spectator to see separately, one each week.1 The influence of this limitation of film length is yet increased by the fact that the film technician, for the effective represen- tation of a concept, requires considerably more material than, let us say, the novelist or playwright. In a single word often a whole complex of images is contained. Visual images having an inferential significance of this nature are, however, very rare, and the film technician is therefore forced to carry out a detailed representation if he desire to achieve an effective impression. I repeat that the necessity
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to limit the scale of the theme is perhaps only a tem- porary one, but, having regard to our actual store of means of filmic representation, it is unavoidable.
Meanwhile, the other requirement, conditioned by the basic character itself of filmic spectacle, will probably exist for ever — the necessity for clarity. I have already mentioned above the necessity for absolute clarity in the resolution of every problem met with in the process of working on the film ; this holds true, of course, for the work on the theme. If the basic idea that is to serve as backbone to the scenario be vague and indefinite, the scenario is con- demned to miscarry.2 True that in the examination of the written representation, it is possible, by careful study, to disentangle one's way among the hints and unclarities, but, transposed upon the screen, such a scenario becomes irritatingly confusing.
I give an example ; a scenario-writer sent us an already completed scenario on the life of a factory workman in the days before the Russian revolution. The scenario was written round a given hero, a work- man. In the course of the action he came into contact with a series of persons — hostile and friendly : the enemies harmed him, the friends helped him. At the beginning of the scenario the hero was depicted as a rough, ungoverned man ; at the end he became an honest, class-conscious workman. The scenario was written in well-drawn, naturalistic environmental colours, it undoubtedly contained interesting, live material witnessing to the powers of observation and the knowledge of its author, yet none the less it was
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turned down. A series of slices of life, a series of chance meetings and encounters bound together by no more than their sequence in time, is, after all, no more than a group of episodes. The theme as basic idea, uniting in itself the meaning of all the events depicted — that is what was lacking. Consequently the separate characters were without significance, the actions of the he/ro and the people round him as chaotic and adventitious as the movements of pedestrians on a street, passing by before a window.
But the same author went through his scenario, altering it in accordance with the remarks made to him. He carefully reconstructed the line of the hero, guided by a clearly formulated theme. As basis he set the following idea : " It is not sufficient to be revolutionarily inclined ; to be of service to the cause one must possess a properly organised consciousness of reality." The merely blustering workman of the opening was changed to a reckless anarchist,3 his enemies thus stood in a clear and definite front, his contacts with them and with his future friends assumed clear purpose and clear meaning, a whole series of superfluous complications fell away, and the modified scenario was transformed to a rounded and convincing whole. The idea defined above can be termed that theme the clear formulation of which inevitably organises the entire work and results in a clearly effective creation. Note as rule : formulate the theme clearly and exactly — otherwise the work will not acquire that essential meaning and unity
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that conditions every work of art. All further limi- tations influencing the choice of theme are connected with the action-treatment. As I have already said, the creative process never takes place in schematic sequence : thinking of the theme involves, nearly simultaneously, thinking of the action and its treatment.
THE ACTION-TREATMENT OF THE THEME
The scenarist, in the very first stages of his work, already possesses a given material later to be dis- posed in the framework of his future creation. This material is provided for him by knowledge, experi- ence, and, finally, imagination. Having established the theme, as basic idea conditioning the selection of this material, the scenarist must begin its grouping. Here the persons of the action are introduced, their relations to one another established, their various significance in the development of the plot deter- mined, and, finally, here are indicated, given proportions for the distribution of the entire material throughout the scenario.
In entering the province of the action-treatment of the theme, the scenarist first comes into contact with the requirements of creative work. Just as the theme is, by definition, a supra-artistic element, so, con- trastingly, the work on the action is conditioned by a whole series of requirements peculiar to the given art.
Let us first approach the most general aspect — let us determine the character of the work on the action.
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A writer, when he plans out a future work, establishes always a series of, as it were, key-stones, significant to the elucidation of the theme and spread over the whole of the work in preparation. These key-stones, as it were, mark the general outline ; to them belong the elements characteristic of the various persons, the nature of the events that bring these persons together, often the details conditioning the significance and strength of the elements of crescendo and diminu- endo, often even just separate incidents selected for their power and expressiveness.
Exactly the same process occurs certainly in the work of the scenarist. To consider the action ab- stractly is impossible. It is impossible to plan merely that at the beginning the hero is an anarchist and then, after meeting with a series of mishaps in his efforts at revolutionary work, becomes a conscious communist. A scheme of this kind is no advance on the theme and brings us no nearer the essential treatment. Not only what happens must be per- ceived, but also how it happens ; in the work on the action the form must already be sensible. Imagining a reform in the cosmic philosophy of the hero is still very far from creating a climax in the scenario. Before the discovery of a definite concrete form that, in the scenarist's opinion, will affect the spectator from the screen, the abstract idea of a reform has no creative value and cannot serve as a key-stone in the constitution of the action ; but these key-stones are necessary ; they establish the hard skeleton and remove the danger of those blank gaps that may
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always occur if some important stage in the develop- ment of the scenario be treated carelessly and abstractly. Neglect of this element in the work of final filmic polishing may occasion inexpressive material, unsuitable for plastic treatment, and thus may destroy the whole construction.
The novelist expresses his key-stones in written descriptions, the dramatist by rough dialogue, but the scenarist must think in plastic (externally expres- sive) images. He must train his imagination, he must develop the habit of representing to himself whatever comes into his head in the form of a sequence of images upon the screen. Yet more, he must learn to command these images and to select from those he visualises the clearest and most vivid ; he must know how to command them as the writer commands his words and the playwright his spoken phrases.4
The clarity and vividness of the action-treatment directly depends on the clear formulation of the theme. Let us take as an example an American film, naive, certainly, and not especially valuable, issued under the name Saturday Night. Though its content is slight, it affords an excellent model of a theme clearly outlined and action simply and vividly treated. The theme is as follows : " Persons of different social class will never be happy when inter- married." The construction of the action runs so. A chauffeur spurns the favours of a laundress, for he falls in love with a capitalist's daughter whom he drives every day in his car. The son of another capitalist, chancing to see the young laundress in his
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house, falls in love with her. Two marriages are celebrated. The narrow garret of the chauffeur seems an absurd dog-kennel to the daughter of the mansion. The natural desire of the chauffeur to find a meal at home ready for him after a hard day's work encounters an invincible obstacle in the fact that his wife has no idea how to make a fire or manage the cooking utensils ; the fire is too hot, the crockery dirties her hands, and the half-cooked food flies all over the floor. When friends of the chauffeur visit him to spend a jolly evening, they behave themselves so crudely, by the standards of the spoilt lady, that she stalks demonstratively out of the room and bursts into an unexpected fit of hysterics.
Meanwhile, no better fares the ex-laundress in the mansion of the rich. Surrounded by scornful servants, she plumps from one embarrassment into another. She marvels at the lady's-maids who help her to dress and undress, she looks clumsy and absurd in her long-trained gown, at a dinner-party she becomes an object of ridicule, to the distress of her husband and his relatives. By chance the chauffeur and the former laundress meet. It is obvious that, influenced by disappointment, their former mutual inclination re-awakens. The two unhappy couples part, to reunite themselves in new and happier com- binations. The laundress is brilliant in the kitchen, and the capitalist's new wife wears her dresses faultlessly and is marvellous at the fox-trot.
The action is as primitive as the theme, but none the less the film can be regarded as highly successful
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in its clear, well-thought out construction. Every detail is in place and directly related to the pervading idea. Even in this superficial sketch of its content one senses the presence of vivid, externally expressed images : the kitchen, the chauffeur's friends, the elegant clothes, the guests at dinner, and, again, the kitchen and the clothes in another form. Every essential element in the development of the scenario is characterised by clear, plastic material.
As counter-model I shall reproduce an extract from one of the many scenarios that pour in every day : " The Nikonov family is reduced to direst poverty, neither the father nor Natasha can find work — refusals everywhere. Often Andrei visits them, and seeks with fervent words to encourage the despairing Natasha. At last, in despair, the father goes to the contractor and offers to make peace with him, and the contractor agrees on condition that he shall receive the daughter in marriage, and so forth/55 This is a typical example of filmic colourlessness and helplessness in representation. There is nothing but meetings and talkings. Such expressions as " Often Andrei visits them," " with fervent words he seeks to encourage M " refusals everywhere" and so forth, show a complete lack of any connection between the work on the action and that filmic form the scenario is later to assume. Such incidents may serve, at best, as material for titles, but never for shots. For the word " often " means, in any case, several times, and to show Andrei making his visit four or five times would seem absurd even to the author of this
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scenario ; the same applies to the expression " refusals everywhere. "
What is said here is not being pedantic about a word. It is important to realise that even in the pre- paratory general treatment of the scenario must be indicated nothing that is impossible to represent, or that is inessential, but only that which can be established as clear and plastically expressive key- stones. To express externally the character of a scene showing direst poverty, to find acts (not words) characterising the relationship of Andrei to Natasha —this is what will provide such key-stones. It may be argued that work on plastic form belongs already to the next stage and can be left to the director, but to this I emphasise once again that it is always im- portant to have the possible plastic form before one's eyes even in the general approach to the work, in order to escape the possibility of blank gaps in the subsequent treatment. Remember, for example, the word " often," already mentioned as one entirely unnecessary and incapable of plastic expression.
Thus we have established the necessity for the scenarist always to orientate himself according to the plastic material that, in the end, must serve as form for his representation. We now turn to the general questions of concentration of the action as a whole. There is a whole series of standards that regulate the construction of a narrative, of a novel, of a play* They stand all, undoubtedly, in close relation to scenario work, but their transcription cannot be compressed into the narrow limits of this sketch,5
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Of the questions of general construction of the scenario, mention must be made here only of one. During work on the treatment the scenarist must always consider the varying degree of tension in the action. This tension must, after all, be reflected in the spectator, forcing him to follow the given part of the picture with more or less excitement. This excitement does not depend from the dramatic situation alone, it can be created or strengthened by purely extraneous methods.6 The gradual winding- up of the dynamic elements of the action, the intro- duction of scenes built from rapid, energetic work of the characters, the introduction of crowd scenes, all these govern increases of excitement in the spectator, and one must learn so to construct the scenario that the spectator is gradually engrossed by the developing action, receiving the most effective impulse only at the end. The vast majority of scenarios suffer from clumsy building up of tension. As example one may quote the Russian film The Adventures of Mr. West. The first three reels are watched with ever- growing interest. A cowboy, arrived in Moscow with the American visitor West, lands into and escapes from a series of exceedingly complicated situations, the interest steadily increasing with his dexterity. The dynamically saturated earlier reels are easy to look at and grip the spectator with ever- increasing excitement. But after the end of the third reel, where the cowboy's adventures came to an unexpected end, the spectator experiences a natural reaction, and the continuation, in spite of the
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excellent directorial treatment, is watched with much diminished interest. And the last reel, containing the weakest material of the whole (a journey through the streets of Moscow and various empty factories), completely effaces the good impression of the film and lets the spectator go out unsatisfied.
As an interesting example of opposite and correct regulation of increasing elements of tension in the action may be instanced the films of the well-known American director, Griffith. He has created a type of film-ending, even distinguished by his name, that is used by the multitude of his successors up to the present day. Let us take the present-day part of the film Intolerance, already instanced. A young work- man, discharged owing to participation in a strike, comes to New York, and falls in straightway with a band of petty thieves ; but, after meeting the girl he loves, he decides to seek honest employment. Yet the " villains " do not leave him in peace. Finally they involve him in a trial for murder and he gets into prison. The proofs seem so incontestable to the judge and jury that he is condemned to death. At the end of the picture his sweetheart, meanwhile become his wife, unexpectedly discovers the real murderer. Her husband is already being prepared for execu- tion ; only the governor has power to intervene, and he has just left the town on an express train.
There ensues a terrific chase to save the hero. The woman rushes after the train on a racing-car whose owner has realised that a man's life depends upon his speed. In the cell the man receives unction. The car
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has almost reached the express. The preparations for the execution are nearing their end. At the very last moment, when the noose is being laid round the neck of the hero, comes the pardon, attained by the wife at the price of her last energy and effort. The quick changes of scene, the contrasting alternation of the tearing machines with the methodical preparations for the execution of an innocent man, the ever- increasing concern of the spectator — " will they be in time, will they be in time ? " — all these compel an intensification of excitement that, being placed at the end, successfully concludes the picture. In the method of Griffith are combined the inner dramatic content of the action and a masterly employment of external effort (dynamic tension).
His films can be used as models of correctly con- trasted intensification. A working out of the /action of the scenario in which all the lines of behaviour of the various characters are clearly expressed, in which all the major events in which the characters take part are consecutively described, and in which, last but not least, the tension of the action is correctly con- sidered and constructed in such a way that its gradual intensification rises to a climactic end — this, in fine, is a treatment already of considerable value and useful to the director in representation. Written though it may be in purely literary phraseology, such a treatment will provide the libretto, as it were, of the scenario ; and, in the hands of the specialist director, it will be transformable into a working script the more easily the more that orientation on plastic
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material, of which I spoke above, has been taken into consideration in working out the action.
Already the next stage in the work of the scenarist is the specific cinematographic overhaul of the action. The scenario must be divided into sequences, these into scenes, and the scenes into the separate shots (script-scenes) 7 that correspond to the separate pieces of celluloid from which the film is ultimately joined together. A reel must not exceed a certain length — its average length works out at from 900 to 1,200 feet. The film consists usually of from six to eight reels, and the scenario-writer desirous of endowing his work with specific filmic treatment must learn to feel its length. In order correctly to feel it he should take into consideration the following facts. The projector at normal speed runs through about one foot per second. Consequently a reel runs through in under fifteen minutes, and the whole film in about an hour and a half. If one try to visualise each separate scene as a component of a reel, as it appears upon the screen, and consider the time each will take up, one can reckon the quantity required as content of the whole scenario.8
A scenario worked out to the elementary and preliminary extent of division into a series of reels, sequences, and separate scenes looks as follows 9 :
REEL ONE
Scene 1 . — A peasant waggon, sinking in the mud, slowly trails along a country road. Sadly and reluctantly the hooded driver urges on his tired
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horse. A figure cowers into the corner of the waggon, trying to wrap itself in an old soldier's cloak for protection against the penetrating wind. A passer-by, coming towards the waggon, pauses, standing inquisitively. The driver turns to him.
Title :
" Is it far to Nakhabin ? "
The pedestrian answers, pointing with his hand. The waggon sets onward, while the passer- by stares after it and then continues on his way.
Scene 2. — A peasant hut. In the corner on a bench, lies an old man covered with rags ; he breathes with difficulty. An old woman is busy- ing herself about the hearth and irritably clattering among the pots. The sick man turns himself round painfully and speaks to her.
Title :
" // sounds as if some one were knocking''
The old woman goes to the window and looks out.
Title : " Imagination, Mironitch ; the door rattles in the wind"
A scenario written in this way, already divided into separate scenes and with titles, forms the first phase of filmic overhaul. But it is still far from the working- script, referred to above, already fully prepared for
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immediate shooting. Note that there is a whole series of details characteristic for the given scene and em- phasised by their literary form, such as, for example, " sinking in the mud," " sadly the driver,5' " a passenger, wrapped in a soldier's cloak," " the pierc- ing wind " — none of these details will reach the spectator if they are introduced merely as incidentals in shooting the scene as a whole, just as it is written. The film possesses essentially specific and highly effective methods by means of which the spectator can be made to notice each separate detail (mud, wind, behaviour of driver, behaviour of fare), show- ing them one by one, just as we should describe them in separate sequence in literary work, and not just simply to note " bad weather," " two men on a wag- gon." This method is called constructive editing.10 Something of the kind is used by certain scenario- writers in interpolating into their description of a scene a so-called "close-up" — thus, "a village street on a church holiday. An animated group of peasants. In the centre speaks a Comsomolka ll (close-up). New groups come up. The elders of the village. Indignant cries are heard from them."
Such " interpolated close-ups " had better be omitted — they have nothing to do with constructive editing. Terms such as " interpolation " and " cut- in " are absurd expressions, the remnants of an old misunderstanding of the technical methods of the film. The details organically belonging to scenes of the kind instanced must not be interpolated into the scene, but the latter must be built out of them. We
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will turn to editing, as the basic method of influencing the spectator effectively from the screen, when we have given the necessary explanations of the basic sorts and selection of plastic material.
CONCLUSION
If the scenarist wish to communicate to the spectator from the screen the entirety of his concepts, he must approximate his work as closely as possible to its final shooting form, that is to say, he must consider, use, and perhaps even partly discover, all those specific methods that the director can later employ. He must watch films attentively, and, after seeing them, must try to express various sequences, endeavouring to represent their editing construction. By such attentive observation of the work of others can the necessary experience be gained, I will give an example of an already prepared scenario sequence, its editing constructed and ready for shooting.
REEL ONE
Title :
The rising of the workers is crushed.
i . Slow fade-in. — The ground strewn with empty cartridge-cases. Rifles lying about.
2. Slow panorama. — A long barricade passes the lens, on it lie strewn the corpses of workmen.
3. Part of the barricade. The corpses of work- men. A woman with her head hanging over back- wards lies among them. From a broken flagstaff hangs a torn flag. Mix.
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4. Closer, — The woman with her head hanging back, her eyes staring at the lens. Mix.
5. The torn flag flutters in the wind. Slow fade-out.
This is an example of a slow, solemn, introductory sequence. The mixes^re used to emphasise the slow- ness. The " pan " gives the same effect, and the fades separate the sequence into a separate indepen- dent motif.
Now an example of a dynamic sequence in heightened editing tempo.
1 . From the corner rushes a crowd of workmen. They run towards the lens ; the figures flee rapidly past it.
2. A workman leaps over a great crowbar and runs on. He suddenly stops, and calls :
Title :
" Save the first shop ! "
3. A second workman clambers on to a crane.
4. Steam streams upwards. A frenzied siren shrieks.
5. The workman on the crane bends over and looks downwards.
6. The running crowd of workpeople {taken from above).
7. The workman on the crane calls with all his strength :
Title (in large letters) :
" SAVE THE FIRST SHOP ! "
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8. Shot from above. — The running crowd stops, stands for a moment, and then rushes on anew.
9. A section of the running crowd knocks over a woman.
10. Close-up. — The woman who fell raises her- self, and clasps her head, swaying.
1 1 . The running mass.
Here is shown the editing of quickly alternating pieces, creating the desired excitement by their rhythm. The increase in size of the title emphasises the increasing panic.
Of course, this form of scenario requires thorough, special training, but I repeat once again that only determined effort on the part of the scenarist to reach as near as possible to this technically correct form will turn him into a writer able to give in a general treatment material even usable in film work.
A scenario will only be good if its writer shall have mastered a knowledge of specific methods, if he know how to use them as weapons for the winning of effect ; otherwise the scenario will be but raw material that must, to an extent of ninety per cent, be subordinated to the treatment of a specialist.
Part II
THE PLASTIC MATERIAL
The scenario-writer must bear always in mind the fact that every sentence that he writes will
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have to appear plastically upon the screen in some visible form. Consequently, it is not the words he writes that are important, but the externally expressed plastic images that he describes in these words. As a matter of fact, it is not so easy to find such plastic images. They must, before anything else, be clear and expressive. Anyone familiar with literary work can well represent to himself what is an expressive word, or an expressive style ; he knows that there are such things as telling, expressive words, as vividly expressive word-constructions — sentences. Similarly, he knows that the involved, obscure style of an inexperienced writer, with a multitude of super- fluous words, is the consequence of his inability to select and control them. What is here said of literary work is entirely applicable to the work of the scenarist, only the word is replaced by the plastic image. The scenarist must know how to find and to use plastic (visually expressive) material : that is to say, he must know how to discover and how to select, from the limitless mass of material provided by life and its observation, those forms and move- ments that shall most clearly and vividly express in images the whole content of his idea. 12
Let us quote certain illustrative examples.
In the film ToVable David there is a sequence in which a new character — an escaped convict, a tramp — comes into the action. The type of a thorough scoundrel. The task of the scenarist was to give his characteristics. Let us analyse how it was done, by describing the series of following shots.
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i . The tramp — a degenerate brute, his face over- grown with unshaven bristles — is about to enter a house, but stops, his attention caught by something.
2. Close-up of the face of the watching tramp.
3. Showing what he sees — a tiny, fluffy kitten asleep in the sun.
4. The tramp again. He raises a heavy stone with the transparent intention of using it to obliterate the sleeping little beast, and only the casual push of a fellow, just then carrying objects into the house, hinders him from carrying out his cruel intention.
In this little incident there is not one single explanatory title, and yet it is effective,! clearly and vividly. Why? Because the plastic material has been correctly and suitably chosen. The sleeping kitten is a perfect expression of complete innocence and freedom from care, and thus the heavy stone in the hands of the huge man immediately becomes the symbol of absurd and senseless cruelty to the mind of the spectator who sees this scene. Thus the end is attained. The characterisation is achieved, and at the same time its abstract content wholly expressed, with the help of happily chosen plastic material.
Another example from the same film. The con- text of the incident is as follows : misfortune is come upon a family of peasants — the eldest son has been crippled by a blow with a stone ; the father has died of a heart-attack ; the youngest son (the hero of the film), still half a boy, knows who is responsible for all their ills — the tramp, who had treacherously attacked his brother. Again and again in the course
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of the picture the youngster seeks to be revenged upon the blackguard. The weapon of revenge — an old flint-lock. When the disabled brother is brought into the house, and the family, dazed with despair, is gathered round his bed, the boy, half crying, half gritting his teeth, secretly loads the flint-lock. The sudden death of the father and the supplications of the mother, clinging in despair to the feet of her son, restrain his outbreak. The boy remains the sole hope of the family. When, later, he again reaches secretly for the flint-lock and takes it from the wall, the voice of his mother, calling him to go and buy soap, compels him to hang the gun up again and run out to the store. Note with what mastery the old, clumsy-looking flint-lock is here employed. It is as if it incarnated the thirst for revenge that tortures the boy. Every time the hand reaches for the flint-lock the spectator knows what is passing in the mind of the hero. No titles, no explanations are necessary. Recall the scene of soap fetched for the mother just described. Hanging up the flint-lock and running to the store implies forgetfulness of self for the sake of another. This is a perfect characterisation, rendering on the one hand the naive directness of the man still half a child, on the other his awakening sense of duty.
Another example, from the film The Leather Pushers. The incident is as follows. A man sitting at a table is waiting for his friend. He is smoking a cigarette, and in front of him on the table stand an ash-tray and a glass half empty of liquid, both filled
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with an enormous number of cigarette ends. The spectator immediately visualises the great space of time the man has been waiting and, no less, the degree of excitement that has made him smoke nearly a hundred cigarettes.
From the examples quoted above it will be clear what is to be understood by the term : expressive plastic material. We have found here a kitten, a tramp, a stone, a flint-lock, some cigarette ends, and not one of these objects or persons yas introduced by chance ; each constitutes a visual image, requir- ing no explanation and yet carrying a clear and definite meaning.
Hence an important rule for the scenarist : in working out each incident he must carefully consider and select each visual image ; he must remember that for each concept, each idea, there may be tens and hundreds of possible means of plastic expression, and that it is his task to select from amongst them the clearest and most vivid. Special attention, how- ever, must be paid to the special part played in pictures by objects. Relationships between human beings are, for the most part, illuminated by con- versations, by words ; no one carries on conversa- tion with objects, and that is why work with them, being expressed by visual action, is of special interest to the film technician, as we have just seen in these examples. Try to imagine to yourself anger, joy, confusion, sorrow, and so forth expressed not in words and the gestures accompanying them, but in action connected with objects, and you will see how
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images saturated with plastic expression come into your mind. Work on plastic material is of the highest importance for the scenarist. In the process of it he learns to imagine to himself what he has written as it will appear upon the screen, and the knowledge thus acquired is essential for correct and fruitful work.
One must try to express one's concepts in clear and vivid visual images. Suppose it be a matter of the characterisation of some person of the action — this person must be placed in such conditions as will make him appear, by means of some action or move- ment, in the desired light (remember the tramp and the kitten). Suppose it be a matter of the representation of some event — those scenes must be assembled that most vividly emphasise visually the essence of the event represented.
In relation to what we have said, we must turn to the question of sub-titles. The usual view of titles as an invading, adventitious element, to be avoided wherever possible, is fundamentally erroneous. The title is an organic part of the film and, consequently, of the scenario. Naturally a title can be super- fluous, but only in the sense in which a whole scene can be superfluous. According to their content titles can be divided into two groups :
CONTINUITY TITLES
Titles of this kind give the spectator a necessary explanation in short and clear form, and thus
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sometimes replace a whole episode of the action in the development of the scenario. Let us take an example from ToVable David. Three tramps, needed by the scenarist to create an opposing evil influence to the hero of the scenario, are introduced. Before their appearance on the screen comes a title : " Three convicts escaped from the nearest prison." Naturally the escape itself could be shown ihstead of the title, but, as it is not the escape, but thp tramps that are important to the scenarist, he replaces the whole incident of the escape, as having no basic impor- tance in the development of the action, by a title. The essential action — the appearance of the tramps — is shown on the screen preceded by a continuity title. This is correct construction. It is an entirely different matter for a title to replace an essential element of the scenario, where the subsequent action is, so to say, its result. For example : after the title " Olga, unable to endure the character of her hard- hearted husband, resolved to leave him," Olga is shown walking out of the front door. This is no good at all. The action is weaker than the title, and shows inability to resolve the plastic problem concerned.
To the group " continuity tides " must also be referred such titles as indicate an hour or place of the action — for example : " in the evening," " at Ivan's," replacing by words those parts of the scenario the visual representation of which would uselessly spin out and burden the development of the action. To summarise what has been said about
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continuity titles we must emphasise once again the following : the continuity title is only good if it removes the superfluous from the scenario, if it shortly explains essentials to the spectator and prepares him for clearer apprehension of the sub- sequent action (as in the example with the tramps). A continuity title must never be stronger than the subsequent image of the action (as in the example of Olga leaving her husband) . i3
SPOKEN TITLES
This kind of title introduces living, spoken speech into the picture. Of their significance not much need be said. The main consideration affecting them is : good literary treatment and, certainly, as much compression as possible.14 One must consider that, on the average, every line of title (two to three words) requires three feet of film.15 Consequently a title twelve words long stays on the screen from twelve to eighteen seconds, and can, by a temporal interruption of this kind, destroy the rhythm, and with it the sequence and impression, of the current shots.
Clarity is as important for the spoken as for the continuity title. Superfluous words that may en- hance the literary beauty of the sentence but will complicate its rapid comprehension are not per- missible. The film spectator has no time to savour words. The title must " get " to the spectator quickly — in the course of the process of being read.
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To what has been said must be added that in construction of the scenario one must be careful of the distribution of the titles. A continual, even interruption of the action by titles is not desirable. It is better to try to distribute them (this is especially important with continuity titles) so that by con- centrating them in one part I of the scenario the remainder is left free for development of the action. Thus work the Americans, giving all the necessary explanations in the early reels, strengthening the middle by use of more spoken titles, and at the end, in quicker tempo, carrying through the bare action to the finish without titles.
It is interesting to note that, apart from its literal content, the title may have also a plastic content. For example, often large, distinct lettering is used, the importance of the word being associated with the size of the letters with which it is formed. An example — in the propaganda film Famine there was an end title as follows : first appeared in normal size the first word " Comrades " ; it disappeared and was replaced by a larger " Brothers " ; and finally appeared the third — filling the whole screen — " Help ! " Such a title was undoubtedly more effective than an ordinary one. Consideration of the plastic size of the title is undoubtedly very interesting, and this the scenarist should remember.16 Yet more important than the plastic aspect of a title is its rhythmic significance. We have already said that too long tides must not be used. This is not all ; it must be borne in mind that with the length of a
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title must be considered the speed of the action in which it appears. Rapid action demands short, abrupt titles 17 ; long-drawn-out action can be linked only with slow ones.
THE SIMPLEST SPECIFIC METHODS OF SHOOTING
Having learned the nature of plastic material, we must gain a knowledge of some of the purely formal methods used by the director and cameraman in shooting the picture. The simplest of these are as follows :
Fade-in 18 : The screen is entirely dark ; as it becomes lighter the picture is disclosed.
Fade-out: The reverse process — the darkening of the picture until it has disappeared.
The fade has mainly a rhythmic significance. The slow withdrawal of the picture from the view- field of the spectator corresponds, in contradistinc- tion to its usual sudden breaking-off, to the slow withdrawal of the spectator from the scene. One usually ends a sequence with a fade-out, especially when the scene itself has been carried out in retarded tempo. For example : a man exhaustedly ap- proaches an armchair, lowers himself into it, drops his head in his hands — pause — slowly the shutter closes.
The fade-in is, on the contrary, equivalent to the purposeful introduction of the spectator to a new environment and new action. It is used to begin a film, or a separate sequence. In determining the
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general rhythm of the action one should indicate the speed of the fade : quick, slow. Often shots are bounded by a fade-in and fade-out — that is to say, the scene begins with the opening and ends with the closing of the shutter. By the use of this method is achieved the emphasis 6f an incident divorced from the general line of thk scenario — very often, for example, this method is used for a refrain (leit- motif) or a flash-back. The fade can take various forms. A common form, now old-fashioned, is the round iris. At an iris-in there appears upon the dark screen a spot of light, disclosing the picture as it broadens.19 Other forms of shutter are, for example, an iris like a widening or narrowing slit, a falling or rising horizontal shutter, vertical side shutters, and so forth. It should be mentioned, however, that the frequent use of various irises and shutters 20 is unnecessarily trying to the spectator.
Shots in iris or in mask. — The screen is darkened except for a light opening in the centre, round or otherwise in shape. The action takes place in this opening. This is a so-called " mask." Its employ- ment has various meanings. The most common is its use to let the spectator see from the viewpoint of the hero — for example, the hero looks through a keyhole ; there appears what he sees, shown in a mask shaped like a keyhole. A field-glass-shaped mask can also be used, and so forth.
It is interesting to note the special use of a small, round mask (a stationary iris), often used in American films. For example : (a) The hero
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stands on a hill and gazes into the distance, (b) A road taken from far off is shown in a little round mask ; along the road gallops a horse. A dual object is attained with this kind of shot : in the first place, by the narrowing of the field of view the attention of the spectator becomes concentrated on that which the hero is looking at ; in the second place, the small scale by which the impression of distance is maintained is not lost.
The Mix. — The transition from one section of the film to another is effected not by the usual cut, but gradually — that is to say, one image disappears slowly and another appears in its place. This method has also a mainly rhythmic significance. Mixes involve a slow rhythm. Often they are used in the representation of a flash-back, as if imitating the birth of one idea from another.
It is necessary to warn the scenarist against over- use of mixes. Technically, in making a mix, the cameraman, after having taken the one shot, must immediately begin to take the other, which is not always possible. If, for example, in a scenario the action is indicated as follows : the Spasskaia Tower (Moscow) mix to the Isaakievski Cathedral (Lenin- grad), it means that after taking the tower the cameraman must proceed immediately to Lenin- grad.21
The Panorama (Pan). — In shooting, the camera is given an even movement sideways, upwards, or downwards.22 The lens of the camera turns to follow the object shot as it moves before it, or glides
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along the object showing various parts of it one after the other. This is a purely technical method, and its significance is obvious.
Forward or Backward Movement ( Tracking or Trolley- ing). — The camera approaches or becomes distant from the object during the shot. This method is nowadays scarcely ever used.23 It gives a gradual transition from long-shot to close-up, and the reverse.
Shots Out of Focus. — In the latest American films one often notices sections (especially faces in close- up) taken so that the outlines appear slightly indis- tinct.24 This method undoubtedly gives a special colour of softness and " tenderness," especially in scenes of lyric character, but it must be considered as a specific aesthetic method devoid of general application.
Everything said here regarding simple methods of taking shots has certainly only information value. What particular method of shooting is to be used, only his own taste and his own finer feelings can tell the scenarist. Here are no rules ; the field for new invention and combination is wide.
METHODS OF TREATMENT OF THE MATERIAL
(Structural Editing)
A cinematograph film, and consequently also a scenario, is always divided into a great number of separate pieces (more correctly, it is built out of these pieces). The sum of the shooting-script is
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divided into sequences, each sequence into scenes,25 and, finally, the scenes themselves are constructed from a whole series of pieces (script-scenes) shot from various angles. An actual scenario, ready for use in shooting, must take into account this basic property of the film. The scenarist must be able to write his material on paper exactly as it will appear upon the screen, thus giving exactly the content of each shot as well as its position in sequence. The construction of a scene from pieces, a sequence from scenes, and reel from sequences, and so forth, is called editing. Editing is one of the most significant instruments of effect possessed by the film technician and, therefore, by the scenarist also. Let us now become acquainted with its methods one by one.
EDITING OF THE SCENE
Everyone familiar with a film is familiar with the expression " close-up." The alternating repre- sentation of the faces of the characters during a dialogue ; the representation of hands, or feet, filling the whole screen — all this is familiar to every- one. But in order to know how properly to use the close-up, one must understand its significance, which is as follows : the close-up directs the atten- tion of the spectator to that detail which is, at the moment, important to the course of the action. For instance, three persons are taking part in a scene. Suppose the significance of this scene consist in the general course of the action (if, for example, all three are lifting some heavy object), then they are taken
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simultaneously in a general view, the so-called long- shot. But suppose any one of them change to an independent action having significance in the scenario (for example, separating himself from the others, he draws a revolver cautiously from his pocket), then the camera is directed on him alone. His action is recorded separately.
What is said above applies not only to persons, but also to separate parts of a person, and objects. Let us suppose a man is to be taken apparently listening calmly to the conversation of someone else, but actually restraining his anger with difficulty. The man crushes the cigarette he holds in his hand, a gesture unnoticed by the other. This hand will always be shown on the screen separately, in close- up, otherwise the spectator will not notice it and a characteristic detail will be missed. The view formerly obtained (and is still held by some) that the close-up is an " interruption " of the long-shot. This idea is entirely false. It is no sort of interrup- tion . It represents a proper form of construction.
In order to make clear to oneself the nature of the process of editing a scene, one may draw the follow- ing analogy. Imagine yourself observing a scene unfolded in front of you, thus : a man stands near the wall of a house and turns his head to the left ; there appears another man slinking cautiously through the gate. The two are fairly widely distant from one another — they stop. The first takes some object and shows it to the other, mocking him. The latter clenches his fists in a rage and throws himself
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at the former. At this moment a woman looks out of a window on the third floor and calls, " Police ! " The antagonists run off in opposite directions. Now, how would this have been observed ?
1 . The observer looks at the first man. He turns his head.
2. What is he looking at ? The observer turns his glance in the same direction and sees the man entering the gate. The latter stops.
3. How does the first react to the appearance on the scene of the second ? A new turn by the observer ; the first takes out an object and mocks the second.
4. How does the second react ? Another turn ; he clenches his fists and throws himself on his opponent.
5. The observer draws aside to watch how both opponents roll about fighting.
6. A shout from above. The observer raises his head and sees the woman shouting at the window.
7. The observer lowers his head and sees the result of the warning— the antagonists running off in opposite directions.
The observer happened to be standing near and saw every detail, saw it clearly, but to do so he had to turn his head, first left, then right, then upwards, whithersoever his attention was attracted by the interest of observation and the sequence of the developing scene. Suppose he had been standing farther away from the action, taking in the two persons and the window on the third floor simul- taneously, he would have received only a general
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impression, without being able to look separately at the first, the secpnd, or the woman. Here we have approached closely the basic significance of editing. Its object ii the showing of the develop- ment of the scene in relief, as it were, by guiding the attention of the spectator now to one, now to the other separate element. The lens of the camera replaces the eye of the observer, and the changes of angle of the camera — directed now on one person, now on another, now on one detail, now on another — must be subject to the same conditions as those of the eyes of the observer. The film technician, in order to secure the greatest clarity, emphasis, and vividness, shoots the scene in separate pieces and, joining them and showing them, directs the atten- tion of the spectator to the separate elements, com- pelling him to see as the attentive observer saw. From the above is clear the manner in which editing can even work upon the emotions. Imagine to your- self the excited observer of some rapidly developing scene. His agitated glance is thrown rapidly from one spot to another. If we imitate this glance with the camera we get a series of pictures, rapidly alternating pieces, creating a stirring scenario editing- construction. The reverse would be long pieces chang- ing by mixes, conditioning a calm and slow editing- construction (as one may shoot, for example, a herd of cattle wandering along a road, taken from the viewpoint of a pedestrian on the same road) .
We have established, by these instances, the basic significance of the constructive editing of scenes.
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It builds the scenes from separate pieces, of which each concentrates the attention of the spectator only on that element important to the action. The sequence of these pieces must not be uncontrolled, but must correspond to the natural transference of attention of an imaginary observer (who, in the end, is represented by the spectator). In this sequence must be expressed a special logic that will be apparent only if each shot contain an impulse towards transference of the attention to the next. For example (1) A man turns his head and looks ; (2) What he looks at is shown.
EDITING OF THE SEQUENCE
The guidance of the attention of the spectator to different elements of the developing action in succession is, in general, characteristic of the film. It is its basic method. We have seen that the separate scene, and often even the movement of one man, is built up upon the screen from separate pieces. Now, the film is not simply a collection of different scenes. Just as the pieces are built up into scenes endowed, as it were, with a connected action, so the separate scenes are assembled into groups forming whole sequences. The sequence is constructed (edited) from scenes. Let us suppose ourselves faced with the task of constructing the following sequence : two spies are creeping forward to blow up a powder magazine ; on the way one of them loses a letter with instructions. Someone else finds the letter and warns the guard, who appear
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in time to arrest the spies and save the magazine. Here the scenarist has to deal with simultaneity of various actions ih several different places. While the spies are crawling towards the magazine, some- one else finds the letter and hastens to warn the guard. The spies have nearly reached their objec- tive ; the guards are warned and rushing towards the magazine. The spies have completed their preparations ; the guard arrives in time. If we pursue the previous analogy betwen the camera and an observer, we now not only have to turn it from side to side, but also to move it from place to place. The observer (the camera) is now on the road shadowing the spies, now in the guardroom recording the confusion, now back at the magazine showing the spies at work, and so forth. But, in combination of the separate scenes (editing), the former law of sequence succession remains in force. A consecutive sequence will appear upon the screen only if the attention of the spectator be transferred correctly from scene to scene. And this correctness is conditioned as follows : the spectator sees the creeping spies, the loss of the letter, and finally the person who finds the letter. The person with the letter rushes for help. The spectator is seized with inevitable excitement — Will the man who found the letter be able to forestall the explosion ? The scenarist immediately answers by showing the spies nearing the magazine — his answer has the effect of a warning " Time is short." The excitement of the spectator — Will they be in time ? — continues ; the
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scenarist shows the guard turning out. Time is very short — the spies are shown beginning their work. Thus, transferring attention now to the rescuers, now to the spies, the scenarist answers with actual impulses to increase of the spectator's interest, and the construction (editing) of the sequence is correctly achieved.
There is a law in psychology that lays it down that if an emotion give birth to a certain movement, by imitation of this movement the corresponding emotion can be called forth. If the scenarist can effect in even rhythm the transference of interest of the intent spectator, if he can so construct the elements of increasing interest that the question, " What is happening at the other place ? " arises and at the same moment the spectator is transferred whither he wishes to go, then the editing thus created can really excite the spectator. One must learn to understand that editing is in actual fact a compulsory and deliberate guidance of the thoughts and associations of the spectator. If the editing be merely an uncontrolled combination of the various pieces, the spectator will understand (apprehend) nothing from it ; but if it be co-ordinated according to a definitely selected course of events or conceptual line, either agitated or calm, it will either excite or soothe the spectator.
EDITING OF THE SCENARIO 26
The film is divided into reels. The reels are usually equal in length, on an average from 900 to
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1,200 feet long. The combination of the reels forms the picture. The usual length of a picture should not be more than from 6,500 to 7,500 feet. This length, as yet, involves no unnecessary exhaustion of the spectator. The film is usually divided into from six to eight reels. It should be noted here, as a practical hint, that the average length of a piece (remember the editing of scenes) is from 6 to 10 feet, and consequently from 100 to 150 pieces go to a reel. By orientating himself on these figures, the scenarist can visualise how much material can be fitted into the scenario. The scenario is composed of a series of sequences. In discussing the con- struction (editing) of the scenario from sequences, we introduce a new element into the scenarist's work — the element of so-called dramatic con- tinuity of action that was discussed at the beginning of this sketch. The continuity of the separate sequences when joined together depends not merely upon the simple transference of attention from one place to another, but is conditioned by the develop- ment of the action forming the foundation of the scenario. It is important, however, to remind the scenarist of the following point : a scenario has always in its development a moment of greatest tension, found nearly always at the end of the film. To prepare the spectator, or, more correctly, preserve him, for this final tension, it is especially important to see that he is not affected by unneces- sary exhaustion during the course of the film. A method, already discussed, that the scenarist can
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employ to this end is the careful distribution of the titles (which always distract the spectator), securing compression of the greater quantity of them into the first reels, and leaving the last one for uninterrupted action.
Thus, first is worked out the action of the scenario, the action is then worked out into sequences, the sequences into scenes, and these constructed by editing from the pieces, each corresponding to a camera angle.
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
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scenes and even separate shots of the scenes to one another, thus, as it were, forcing the spectator to compare the two actions all the time, one strengthen- ing 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 contrast, 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 manufac- turer, 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
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chief protagonist of the approaching tragic denoue- ment, 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, 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 develop- ment 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.27 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 now- adays overdone almost to the point of boredom, but it cannot be denied that of all the methods of con- structing the end hitherto devised it is the most effective.
Leit-motif {reiteration of theme) . — Often it is interest- ing for the scenarist especially to emphasise the
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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.)
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II
FILM DIRECTOR AND FILM MATERIAL
Part I THE PECULIARITIES OF FILM MATERIAL
THE FILM AND THE THEATRE
IN the earliest years of its existence the film was no more than an interesting invention that made it possible to record movements, a faculty denied to simple photography. On the film, the appearances of all possible movements could be seized and fixed. The first films consisted of primitive attempts to fix upon the celluloid, as a novelty, the movements of a train, crowds passing by upon the street, a landscape seen from a railway- carriage window, and so forth. Thus, in the begin- ning, the film was, from its nature, only " living photography." The first attempts to relate cinema- tography to the world of art were naturally bound up with the Theatre. Similarly only as a novelty, like the shots of the railway-engine and the moving sea, primitive scenes of comic or dramatic character, played by actors, began to be recorded. The film public appeared. There grew up a whole series of relatively small, specialised theatres in which these primitive films were shown.
The film now began to assume all the charac- teristics of an industry (and indeed a very profitable
c* 51
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one). The great significance was realised of the fact that from a single negative can be printed many positives, and that by this means a reel of film can be multiplied like a book, and spread broadcast in many copies.28 Great possibilities began to open themselves out. No longer was the film regarded as a mere novelty. The first experiments in record- ing serious and significant material appeared. The relationship with the Theatre could not, however, yet be dissolved, and it is easy to understand how, once again, the first steps of the film producer consisted in attempts to carry plays over on to celluloid. It seemed at that time to be especially interesting to endow the theatrical performance — the work of the actor, whose art had hitherto been but transitory, and real only in the moment of perception by the spectator — with the quality of duration.
The film remained, as before, but living photo- graphy. Art did not enter into the work of him who made it. He only photographed the " art of the actor." Of a peculiar method for the film actor, of peculiar and special properties of the film or of tech- nique in shooting the picture for the director, there could as yet be no suspicion. How, then, did the film director of that time work ? At his disposal was a scenario, exactly resembling the play written for the Theatre by the playwright ; only the words of the characters were missing, and these, as far as possible, were replaced by dumb show, and some- times by long-winded titles. The director played the
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scene through in its exact theatrical sequence ; he recorded the walkings to and fro, the entrances and exits of the actors. He took the scene thus played- through as a whole, while the cameraman, always turning, fixed it as a whole upon the celluloid. The process of shooting could not be conceived of other- wise, for as director's material served these same real persons — actors — with whom one worked also in the Theatre ; the camera served only for the simple fixation of scenes already completely arranged and definitely planned. The pieces of film shot were stuck together in simple temporal sequence of the developing action, just as the act of a play is formed from scenes, and then were presented to the public as a picture. To sum up in short, the work of the film director differed in no wise from that of the theatrical producer.
A play, exactly recorded upon celluloid and pro- jected upon a screen, with the actors deprived of their words — that was the film of those early days.
THE METHODS OF THE FILM
The Americans were the first to discover in the film- play the presence of peculiar possibilities of its own. It was perceived that the film can not only make a simple record of the events passing before the lens, but that it is in a position to reproduce them upon the screen by special methods, proper only to itself.
Let us take as example a demonstration that files by upon the street. Let us picture to ourselves an observer of that demonstration. In order to receive
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a clear and definite impression of the demonstration, the observer must perform certain actions. First he must climb upon the roof of a house, to get a view from above of the procession as a whole and measure its dimensions ; next he must come down and look out through the first-floor window at the inscriptions on the banners carried by the demonstrators ; finally, he must mingle with the crowd, to gain an idea of the outward appearance of the participants.
Three times the observer has altered his view- point, gazing now from nearer, now from farther away, with the purpose of acquiring as complete and exhaustive as possible a picture of the pheno- menon under review. The Americans were the first to seek to replace an active observer of this kind by means of the camera. They showed in their work that it was not only possible to record the scene shot, but that by manoeuvring with the camera itself — in such a way that its position in relation to the object shot varied several times — it was made possible to repro- duce the same scene in far clearer and more expres- sive form than with the lens playing the part of a theatre spectator sitting fast in his stall. The camera, until now a motionless spectator, at last received, as it were, a charge of life. It acquired the faculty of movement on its own, and transformed itself from a spectator to an active observer. Henceforward the camera, controlled by the director, could not merely enable the spectator to see the object shot, but could induce him to apprehend it.
It was at this moment that the concepts close-up,
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mid-shot, and long-shot first appeared in cinemato- graphy, concepts that later played an enormous part in the creative craft of editing, the basis of the work of film direction. Now, for the first time, became apparent the difference between the theatrical pro- ducer and his colleague of the film. In the beginning the material with which both theatrical producer and film director worked was identical. The same actors playing through in their same sequence the same scenes, which were but shorter, and, at the most, unaccompanied by words. The technique of acting for the films differed in no respect from that of stage-acting. The only problem was the replace- ment, as comprehensibly as possible, of words by gestures. That was the time when the film was rightly named " a substitute for the stage."
FILM AND REALITY
But, with the grasping of the concept editing, the position became basically altered. The real material of film-art proved to be not those actual scenes on which the lens of the camera is directed. The theatrical producer has always to do only with real processes — they are his material. His finally com- posed and created work — the scene produced and played upon the stage — is equally a real and actual process, that takes place in obedience to the laws of real space and real time. When a stage-actor finds himself at one end of the stage, he cannot cross to the other without taking a certain necessary number of paces. And crossings and intervals of this kind are
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a thing indispensable, conditioned by the laws of real space and real time, with which the theatrical pro- ducer has always to reckon, and which he is never in a position to overstep. In fact, in work with real processes, a whole series of intervals linking the separate significant points of action are unavoidable.
If, on the other hand, we consider the work of the film director, then it appears that the active raw material is no other than those pieces of celluloid on which, from various viewpoints, the separate move- ments of the action have been shot. From nothing but these pieces is created those appearances upon the screen that form the filmic representation of the action shot. And thus the material of the film director consists not of real processes happening in real space and real time, but of those pieces of cellu- loid on which these processes have been recorded. This celluloid is entirely subject to the will of the director who edits it. He can, in the composition of the filmic form of any given appearance, eliminate all points of interval, and thus concentrate the action in time to the highest degree he may require.
This method of temporal concentration, the concen- tration of action by the elimination of unnecessary points of interval, occurs also, in a more simplified form, in the Theatre. It finds its expression in the construction of a play from acts. The element of play-construction by which several years are made to pass between the first and second act is, properly, an analogous temporal concentration of the action. In the film this method is not only pursued to a
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maximum, it forms the actual basis of filmic repre- sentation. Though it is possible for the theatrical producer temporally to approach two neighbouring acts, he is, none the less, unable to do the same with separate incidents in a single scene.29
The film director, on the contrary, can concen- trate in time not only separate incidents, but even the movements of a single person. This process, that has often been termed a " film trick/' is, in fact, nothing other than the characteristic method of filmic representation.
In order to show on the screen the fall of a man from a window five stories high, the shots can be taken in the following way :
First the man is shot falling from the window into a net, in such a way that the net is not visible on the screen 30 ; then the same man is shot falling from a slight height to the ground. Joined together, the two shots give in projection the desired impression. The catastrophic fall never occurs in reality, it occurs only on the screen, and is the resultant of two pieces of celluloid joined together. From the event of a real, actual fall of a person from an appalling height, two points only are selected : the beginning of the fall and its end. The intervening passage through the air is eliminated. It is not correct to call the process a trick ; it is a method of filmic representa- tion exactly corresponding to the elimination of the five years that divide a first act from a second upon the stage.
From the example of the observer watching the
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demonstration pass by on the street, we learned that the process of film-shooting may be not only a simple fixation of the event taking place before the lens, but also a peculiar form of representation of this event. Between the natural event and its appearance upon the screen there is a marked difference. It is exactly this difference that makes the film an art. Guided by the director, the camera assumes the task of removing every superfluity and directing the attention of the spectator in such a way that he shall see only that which is significant and characteristic. When the demonstration was shot, the camera, after having viewed the crowd from above in the long-shot, forced its way into the press and picked out the most characteristic details. These details were not the result of chance, they were selected, and, moreover, selected in such a way that from their sum, as from a sum of separate elements, the image of the whole action could be assembled. Let us suppose, for instance, that the demonstration to be recorded is characterised by its component detail : first Red soldiers, then workmen, and finally Pioneers.31 Suppose the film technician try to show the spectator the detail composition of this demonstration by simply setting the camera at a fixed point and letting the crowd go by unbroken before the lens, then he will force the spectator to spend exactly as much time in watching the representation as he would have needed to let the crowd itself go by. By taking the procession in this way he would force the spec- tator to apprehend the mass of detail as it streamed
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past. But, by the use of that method peculiar to films, three short pieces can be taken separately : the Red soldiers, the workmen, and the Pioneers. The combination of these separate pieces with the general view of the crowd provides an image of the demonstration from which no element is lacking. The spectator is enabled to appreciate both its composition and its dimension, only the time in which he effects that appreciation is altered.
FILMIC SPACE AND TIME
Created by the camera, obedient to the will of the director — after the cutting and joining of the separate pieces of celluloid — there arises a new filmic time ; not that real time embraced by the phenomenon as it takes place before the camera, but a new filmic time, conditioned only by the speed of perception and controlled by the number and duration of the separate elements selected for filmic representation of the action.
Every action takes place not only in time, but also in space. Filmic time is distinguished from actual in that it is dependent only on the lengths of the separate pieces of celluloid joined together by the director. Like time, so also is filmic space bound up with the chief process of film-making, editing. By the junction of the separate pieces the director builds a filmic space entirely his own. He unites and compresses separate elements, that have perhaps been recorded by him at differing points of real, actual space, into one filmic space. By virtue of the
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possibility of eliminating points of passage and interval, which we have already analysed and which obtains in all film-work, filmic space appears as a synthesis of real elements picked out by the camera.
Remember the example of the man falling from the fifth floor. That which is in reality but a ten- foot fall into a net and a six-foot further leap from a bench appears upon the screen as a fall from a hundred feet high.
L. V. Kuleshov assembled in the year 1920 the following scenes as an experiment :
1. A young man walks from left to right.
2. A woman walks from right to left.
3. They meet and shake hands. The young man points.
4. A large white building is shown, with a broad flight of steps.
5. The two ascend the steps.
The pieces, separately shot, were assembled in the order given and projected upon the screen. The spectator was presented with the pieces thus joined as one clear, uninterrupted action : a meeting of two young people, an invitation to a nearby house, and an entry into it. Every single piece, however, had been shot in a different place ; for example, the young man near the G.U.M. building, the woman near Gogol's monument, the handshake near the Bolshoi Teatr, the white house came out of an American picture (it was, in fact, the White House), and the ascent of the steps was made at St. Saviour's
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Cathedral. What happened as a result? Though the shooting had been done in varied locations, the spectator perceived the scene as a whole. The parts of real space picked out by the camera appeared concentrated, as it were, upon the screen. There resulted what Kuleshov termed " creative geo- graphy." By the process of junction of pieces of celluloid appeared a new, filmic space without existence in reality. Buildings separated by a dis- tance of thousands of miles were concentrated to a space that could be covered by a few paces of the actors.
THE MATERIAL OF FILMS
We have now established the chief points in the difference between the work of the film director and that of the theatrical producer. This difference lies in the distinction of material. The theatrical pro- ducer works with real actuality, which, though he may always remould, yet forces him to remain bound by the laws of real space and real time. The film director, on the other hand, has as his material the finished, recorded celluloid. This material from which his final work is composed consists not of living men or real landscapes, not of real, actual stage-sets, but only of their images, recorded on separate strips that can be shortened, altered, and asembled according to his will. The elements of reality are fixed on these pieces ; by combining them in his selected sequence, shortening and lengthening them according to his desire, the director builds up his own " filmic " time and " filmic " space. He
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does not adapt reality, but uses it for the creation of a new reality, and the most characteristic and important aspect of this process is that, in it, laws of space and time invariable and inescapable in work with actuality become tractable and obedient. The film assembles the elements of reality to build from them a new reality proper only to itself; and the laws of space and time, that, in work with living men, with sets and the footage of the stage, are fixed and fast, are, in the film, entirely altered. Filmic space and filmic time, the creation of the technician, are entirely subject to the director. The basic method of filmic representation, this construction of the unity of a film from separate pieces or elements, the superfluous among which can be eliminated and only the characteristic and significant retained, offers exceptional possibilities.
Everyone knows that the nearer we approach a regarded object, the less material appears simul- taneously in our view-field ; the more clearly our investigating glance examines an object, the more details we perceive and the more limited and sec- tional becomes our view. We no longer perceive the object as a whole, but pick out the details with our glance in order, thus receiving by association an impression of the whole that is far more vivid, deeper, and sharper than if we had gazed at the object from a distance and perceived the whole in a general view, inevitably missing detail in so doing. When we wish to apprehend anything, we always begin with the general outlines, and then, by
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intensifying our examination to the highest degree, enrich the apprehension by an ever-increasing number of details. The particular, the detail, will always be a synonym of intensification. It is upon this that the strength of the film depends, that its characteristic speciality is the possibility of giving a clear, especially vivid representation of detail. The power of filmic representation lies in the fact that, by means of the camera, it continually strives to penetrate as deeply as possible, to the mid-point of every image. The camera, as it were, forces itself, ever striving, into the profoundest deeps of life ; it strives thither to penetrate, whither the average spectator never reaches as he glances casually around him. The camera goes deeper ; anything it can see it approaches, and thereafter eternalises upon the celluloid. When we approach a given, real image, we must spend a definite effort and time upon it, in advancing from the general to the particular, in intensifying our attention to that point at which we begin to remark and apprehend details. By the process of editing the film removes, eliminates, this effort. The film spectator is an ideal, perspicuous observer. And it is the director who makes him so. In the discovered, deeply embedded detail there lies an element of perception, the creative element that characterises as art the work of man, the sole element that gives the event shown its final worth.
To show something as everyone sees it is to have accomplished nothing. Not that material that is embraced in a first, casual, merely general and
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superficial glance is required, but that which dis- closes itself to an intent and searching glance, that can and will see deeper. This is the reason why the greatest artists, those technicians who feel the film most acutely, deepen their work with details. To do this they discard the general aspect of the image, and the points of interval that are the inevitable concomitant of every natural event. The theatrical producer, in working with his material, is not in a position to remove from the view of the spectator that background, that mass of general and inevitable outline, that surrounds the characteristic and parti- cular details. He can only underline the most essential, leaving the spectator himself to concentrate upon what he underlines. The film technician, equipped with his camera, is infinitely more powerful. The attention of the spectator is entirely in his hands. The lens of the camera is the eye of the spectator. He sees and remarks only that which the direc- tor desires to show him, or, more correctly put, that which the director himself sees in the action concerned.
ANALYSIS
In the disappearance of the general, obvious out- line and the appearance on the screen of some deeply hidden detail, filmic representation attains the highest point of its power of external expression. The film, by showing him the detail without its back- ground, releases the spectator from the unnecessary task of eliminating superfluities from his view-field.
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By eliminating distraction it spares the spectator's energy, and reaches thereby the clearest and most marked effect. As example we shall take some instances from well-known films in which notable directors have attained great strength of expression. As example, the trial scene in Griffith's Intolerance. Here there is a scene in which a woman hears the death sentence passed on her husband, who is innocent of the crime. The director shows the face of the woman : an anxious, trembling smile through tears. Suddenly the spectator sees for an instant her hands, only her hands, the fingers convulsively gripping the skin. This is one of the most powerful moments in the film. Not for a minute did we see the whole figure, but only the face, and the hands. And it is perhaps by virtue of this fact that the director understood how to choose and to show, from the mass of real material available, only these two characteristic details, that he attained the wonderful power of impression notable in this scene. Here once more we encounter the process, mentioned above, of clear selection, the possibility of the elimination of those insignificances that fulfil only a transition function and are always inseparable from reality, and of the retention only of climactic and dramatic points. Exactly upon this possibility depends the essence of the significance of editing, the basic process of filmic creation. Confusion by linkage and wastage by intervals are inevitable attributes of reality. When a spectator is dealing with actuality he can overcome them only by a given
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effort of attention. He rests his glance on a face, then lets it glide down the body until finally it rests attentively on the hands — this is what a spectator has to do when looking at a real woman in real surroundings.
The film spares this work of stopping and down- ward-gliding. Thus the spectator spends no super- fluous energy. By elimination of the points of interval the director endows the spectator with the energy preserved, he charges him, and thus the appearance assembled from a series of significant details is stronger in force of expression from the screen than is the appearance in actuality.
We now perceive that the work of the film director has a double character. For the construction of filmic form he requires proper material ; if he wishes to work filmically, he cannot and must not record reality as it presents itself to the actual, average onlooker. To create a filmic form, he must select those elements from which this form will later be assembled. To assemble these elements, he must first find them. And now we hit on the necessity for a special process of analysis of every real event that the director wishes to use in a shot. For every event a process has to be carried out comparable to the process in mathematics termed " differentiation " — that is to say, dissection into parts or elements. Here the technique of observation links up with the creative process of the selection of the characteristic elements necessary for the future finished work. In order to represent the woman in the court scene,
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Griffith probably imagined, he may even have actually seen, dozens of despairing women, and perceived not only their heads and hands, but he selected from the whole images only the smile through tears and the convulsive hands, creating from them an unforgettable filmic picture.
Another example. In that filmically outstanding work, The Battleship " Potemkin" 32 Eisenstein shot the massacre of the mob on the great flight of steps in Odessa.33 The running of the mob down the steps is rendered rather sparingly and is not especially expressive, but the perambulator with the baby, which, loosed from the grip of the shot mother, rolls down the steps, is poignant in its tragic intensity and strikes with the force of a blow. This perambulator is a detail, just like the boy with the broken skull in the same film. Analytically dissected, the mass of people offered a wide field for the creative work of the director, and the details correctly discovered in editing resulted in episodes remarkable in their expressive power.
Another example, simpler, but quite characteristic for film-work : how should one show a motor-car accident ? — a man being run over.
The real material is thoroughly abundant and complex. There is the street, the motor-car, the man crossing the street, the car running him down, the startled chauffeur, the brakes, the man under the wheels, the car carried forward by its impetus, and, finally, the corpse. In actuality everything occurs in unbroken sequence. How was this material
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worked out by an American director in the film Daddy ? The separate pieces were assembled on the screen in the following sequence :
1 . The street with cars in movement : a pedes- trian crosses the street with his back to the camera ; a passing motor-car hides him from view.
2. Very short flash : the face of the startled chauffeur as he steps on the brake.
3. Equally short flash : the face of the victim, his mouth open in a scream.
4. Taken from above, from the chauffeur's seat : legs, glimpsed near the revolving wheels.
5. The sliding, braked wheels of the car.
6. The corpse by the stationary car.
The separate pieces are cut together in short, very sharp rhythm. In order to represent the accident on the screen, the director dissected analytically the whole abundant scene, unbroken in actual development, into component parts, into elements, and selected from them — sparingly — only the six essential. And these not only prove sufficient, but render exhaustively the whole poignancy of the event represented.
In the work of the mathematician there follows after dissection into elements, after " differentiation," a combination of the discovered separate elements to a whole — the so-called " integration."
In the work of the film director the process of analysis, the dissection into elements, forms equally only a point of departure, which has to be followed by
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the assemblage of the whole from the discovered parts. The finding of the elements, the details of the action, implies only the completion of a preparatory task. It must be remembered that from these parts the complete work is finally to emerge, for, as said above, the real motor-car accident might be dis- sected by the onlooker into dozens, perhaps indeed hundreds, of separate incidents. The director, how- ever, chooses only six of them. He makes a selection, and this selection is naturally conditioned in advance by that filmic image of the accident — happening not in reality but on the screen — which, of course, exists in the head of the director long before its actual appearance on the screen.
EDITING : THE LOGIC OF FILMIC ANALYSIS
The work of the director is characterised by thinking in filmic pictures ; by imagining events in that form in which, composed of pieces joined together in a certain sequence, they will appear upon the screen ; by considering real incidents only as material from which to select separate characteristic elements ; and by building a new filmic reality out of them. Even when he has to do with real objects in real surroundings he thinks only of their appearances upon the screen. He never considers a real object in the sense of its actual, proper nature, but considers in it only those properties that can be carried over on to celluloid. The film director looks only conditionally upon his material, and this conditionally is extra- ordinarily specific ; it arises from a whole series of
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properties peculiar only to the film. Even while being shot, a film must be thought of already as an editable sequence of separate pieces of celluloid. The filmic form is never identical with the real appear- ance, but only similar to it. When the director establishes the content and sequence of the separate elements that he is to combine later to filmic form, he must calculate exactly not only the content, but the length of each piece, or, in other words, he must regard it as an element of filmic space and filmic time. Let us suppose that before us lie, haphazard on the table, those separate pieces of material that were shot to represent that scene of the motor-car accident described above. The essential thing is to unite these pieces and to join them into one long strip of film. Naturally we can join them in any desired order. Let us imagine an intentionally absurd order — for example, the following :
Beginning with the shot of the motor-car, we cut into the middle of it the legs of the man run over, then the man crossing the street, and finally the face of the chauffeur. The result is a senseless medley of pieces that produces in the spectator an impression of chaos. And rational order will only be brought into the alternation of pieces when they are at least conditioned by that sequence with which a chance observer would have been able to let his glance and attention wander from object to object ; only then will relation appear between the pieces, and their combination, having received organic unity, be effective on the screen. But it is not sufficient that
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the pieces be united in definite order. Every event takes place not only in space, but in time, and, just as filmic space is created, as we saw, by the junction in sequence of selected pieces, so must also be created, moulded from the elements of real time, a new filmic time. Let us suppose that, at the junction of the pieces shot to represent the accident, no thought has been given to their proportionate lengths ; in result the editing is as follows :
1. Someone crosses the street.
2. Long : the face of the chauffeur at his brake.
3. Equally long : the screaming, wide-open mouth of the victim.
4. The braked wheel and all the other pieces shown similarly in very long strips.
A reel of film cut in this way would, even in correct spacial sequence, appear absurd to the spectator. The car would appear to travel slowly. The inherently short process of running-over would be disproportionately and incomprehensibly drawn out. The event would disappear from the screen, leaving only the projection of some chance material. Only when the right length has been found for every piece, building a rapid, almost convulsive rhythm of picture alternation, analogous to the panic glance, thrown this way and that, of an observer mastered by horror, only then will the screen breathe a life of its own imparted to it by the director. And this is because the appearance created by the director is enclosed, not only in filmic space, but also in filmic
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time, integrated from elements of real time picked from actuality by the camera. Editing is the lan- guage of the film director. Just as in living speech, so, one may say, in editing : there is a word — the piece of exposed film, the image ; a phrase — the combination of these pieces. Only by his editing methods can one judge a director's individuality. Just as each writer has his own individual style, so each film director has his own individual method of representation. The editing junction of the pieces in creatively discovered sequence is already a final and completing process whose result is the attainment of a final creation, the finished film. And it is with this process in mind that the director must attend also to the formation of these most elementary of pieces (corresponding to the words in speech), from which later the edited phrases — the incidents and sequences — will be formed.
THE NECESSITY TO INTERFERE WITH MOVEMENT
The organising work of the director is not limited to editing. Quite a number of film technicians maintain that editing should be the only organising medium of the film. They hold that the pieces can be shot anyhow and anywhere, the images must only be interesting ; afterwards, by simply joining them according to their form and kind, a way will be found to assemble them to a film.34 If any unifying idea be taken as basis of the editing, the material will no doubt be organised to a certain degree. A whole series of shots taken at hazard in Moscow can
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be joined to a whole, and all the separate shots will be united by their place of taking — the town of Moscow. The spacial grasp of the camera can be narrowed to any desired degree ; a series of figures and happenings can be taken on the market-place and then finally in a room where a meeting is being held, and in all these shots there will undoubtedly be an organising embryo, but the question is how deeply it will be developed. Such a collection of shots can be compared to a newspaper, in which the enormous abundance of news is divided into sections and columns. The collection of news of all the happenings in the world, given in the newspaper, is organised and systematised. But this same news, used in an article or a book, is organised in an even higher degree. In the process of creating a film, the work of organisation can and must extend more widely and deeply than the mere establishment of a hard and fast editing scheme of representation. The separate pieces must be brought into organic relation with each other, and for this purpose their content must be considered in the shooting as a deepening, as an advancement, of the whole editing construction into the inner depth of each separate element of this construction.
In considering certain of our examples, we have had to deal with events and appearances that take place before the camera independent of the will of the director. The shooting of the demonstration was, after all, only a selection of scenes of real actuality, not created by the director, but picked out by him
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from the hurly-burly flow of life. But, in order to produce an edited representation of a given action, in order to take some piece of reality not specially arranged by him in editable form, the director must none the less, in one way or another, subordinate this action to his will. Even in the shooting of this demonstration we had, if we wished to render as vivid as possible a scenic representation of it, to insinuate ourselves with the camera into the crowd itself and to get specially selected, typical persons to walk past the lens just for the purpose of being taken, thus arbitrarily interfering with the natural course of events in order to make them serve for subsequent filmic representation.35
If we use a more complex example we shall see even more clearly that in order to shoot and filmically represent any given action we must subject it to our control — that is, it must be possible for us to bring it to a standstill, to repeat it several times, each time shooting a new detail, and so forth. Suppose we wish editably to shoot the take-off of an aeroplane. For its filmic representation we select the following elements :
i. The pilot seats himself at the controls.
2. The hand of the pilot makes contact.
3. The mechanic swings the propeller.
4. The aeroplane rolls towards the camera.
5. The take-off itself shot from another position so that the aeroplane travels away from the camera as it leaves the ground.
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In order to shoot in editable form so simple an action as a take-off, we must either stop after the first movement of the aeroplane, and, having quickly changed the position of the camera, placing it at the tail-end of the machine, take the continuation of the movement, or we must unavoidably repeat the movement of the aeroplane twice ; once let it travel towards the camera, and, the second time, changing the set-up, away from the camera.
In both cases we must, in order to obtain the filmic representation desired, interrupt the natural course of the action, either by stopping or by repetition. Almost invariably, in shooting a dynamically con- tinuous action, we must, if we wish to obtain from it the necessary details, either stop it by interruption or repeat it several times. In such a way we must always make our action dependent on the will of the director, even in the shooting of the simplest events that have nothing to do with " artistic " direction. If we chose not to interfere with the natural unfolding of the real event, then we should be knowingly making the film impossible. We should have left nothing but a slavish fixation of the event, excluding all possibility of using such advantages of filmic representation as the particularisation of details and the elimination of superfluous transitory points.
ORGANISATION OF THE MATERIAL TO BE SHOT
We now turn to a new side of directorial work — namely, the methods of organisation of the material
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to be shot. Suppose the director to be concerned only in making an industrial film (the work of a factory, large workshop, or institution), a subject which would appear to consist only in the fixation of a number of processes not requiring his interference as director, even so his work consists of something more than the simple setting up of the camera and shooting the machines and people at work from various angles. In order to finish up with a really filmically clear, editable representation, the director is, with each separate process he shoots, inevitably compelled to interrupt and interfere, guided by a clear perception of that editing sequence in which he will later project the pieces on the screen. The director must introduce into his work the element of direction, the element of a special organisation of every action shot, the goal of which organisation is the clearest and most exact possible recording of characteristic details.
But when we go on to the shooting of so-called " dramatic " subjects, then naturally the element of direction, the element of organisation of the material to be shot, becomes yet more important and indis- pensable. In order to shoot all the essentials of the filmic representation of the motor-car accident, the director had many times to alter the position of his camera ; he had to make the motor-car, the chauf- feur, and the victim carry out their separate and essential movements many times. In the direction of a dramatic film very often an event shown on the screen never had existence as a whole in reality. It
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has been present only in the head, in the imagination of the director, as he sought the necessary elements for the later filmic form.
Here we come to the consideration of that which must be shot in the limits of one uninterrupted piece of celluloid, in the limits of one " shot," as the technical term has it. Work in the limits of one shot is naturally dependent on real space and real time ; it is work with single elements of filmic space and filmic time ; and is naturally directly conditioned by the cutting later to be carried out. In order to arouse in the spectator the necessary excited impres- sion, the director, in editing the motor-car accident, built up a disturbed rhythm, effected by the excep- tionally short lengths of each single piece. But remember, the desired material cannot be got by merely cutting or abruptly shortening the pieces of celluloid ; the necessary length into which the con- tent of each piece had to fit must have been borne in mind when it was shot. Let us suppose that it is our task to shoot and edit a disturbed, excited scene, that accordingly makes necessary quick change of the short pieces. In shooting, however, the scenes and parts of scenes are acted before the lens very slowly and lethargically. Then, in selecting the pieces and trying to edit them, we shall be faced by an insuperable obstacle. Short pieces must be used, but the action that takes place in the limits of each separate piece proves to be so slow that, to reach the necessary shortness of each piece, we must cut, remove part of the action ; while, if
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we preserve the shots entire, the pieces prove too long.
ARRANGING SET-UPS
Let us imagine that the camera, embracing in its view-field a wide area, for example two persons talking to one another, suddenly approaches one of the characters and shows some detail important to the development of the action and, at the given moment, particularly characteristic. Then the camera withdraws once more and the spectator sees the further development of the scene in long-shot as previously, both persons of the action being found again in the field of view. It must be emphasised that the spectator only derives an impression of unbroken development of the action when the tran- sition from long-shot to close-up (and reverse) is associated with a movement common to the two pieces. For example, if as detail concerned is selected a hand drawing a revolver from a pocket during the conversation, the scene must infallibly be shot as follows : the first long-shot ends with a movement of the hand of the actor reaching for his pocket ; in the following close-up, showing the hand alone, the movement begun is completed and the hand gets out the revolver ; then back to the long-shot, in which the hand with the revolver, continuing the movement from the pocket begun at the end of the close-up, aims the weapon at its adversary. Such linkage by movement is the essen- tial desideratum in that form of editing construction
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in which the object taken is not removed from the view-field at a change of set-up. Now, all three pieces are shot separately (technically, more cor- rectly, the whole of the long-shot is taken uninter- ruptedly, from the hand-movement to the threat to the adversary ; the close-up is taken separately). It is naturally obvious that the close-up of the hand of the actor, cut into the long-shot of the hand- movement, will only be in the right place and only blend to a unity if the movements of the actor's hand at both moments of actual recording are in exact external correspondence.36
The example given of the hand is extremely elementary. The hand-movement is not compli- cated and exact repetition not hard to achieve. But the use of several set-ups in representing an actor's work occurs very frequently in films. The move- ments of the actors may be very complicated. And in order to repeat in the close-up the movements made in long-shot, to conform to the requirements of great spacial and temporal exactness, both director and actor must be technically highly practised. Yet another property of films conditions exactness of spacial directorial construction. In the preparation of the material to be shot, in the construction of the work before the camera, in the choice and fixation of one or other movement form — or, in other words, in the organisation of these tasks — not only are bounds set to the director by the considerations of his editing plan, but he is limited also by the specific view-field of the camera itself, which forces all the
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material shot into the well-known rectangular con- tour of the cinematograph screen. During his work the film director does not see what takes place in front of him with the eye of a normal spectator — he looks at it with the eye of the lens.37 The normal human gaze, widely embracing the area in front of him, does not exist for the director. He sees and constructs only in that conditioned section of space that the camera can take in ; and yet more — this space is, as it were, delimited by fast, fixed boun- daries, and the very definite expression of these boundaries themselves inevitably conditions an inflexibility of composition in the spacial construc- tion. It is obvious that an actor taken with a fairly close approximation of the camera will, in making a movement too wide in relation to the space he occupies, simply disappear from the view-field of the camera. If, for example, the actor sit with bended head, and must raise his head, at a given approxi- mation of the camera, an error on his part of only an inch or two may leave only his chin visible to the spectator, the rest of him being outside the limits of the screen, or, technically, " cut off." This elemen- tary example broadly emphasises once again the necessity of an exact spacial calculation of every movement the director shoots. Naturally this neces- sity applies not only to close-ups. It may be a gross mistake to take instead of the whole of somebody, only two-thirds of him. To distribute the material shot and its movements in the rectangle of the picture in such a way that everything is clearly and sharply
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apprehensible, to construct every composition in such a way that the right-angled boundaries of the screen do not disturb the composition found, but perfectly contain it — that is the achievement towards which film directors strive.
THE ORGANISATION OF CHANGE MATERIAL
Anyone who knows anything of painting knows how the shape of the canvas on which the picture is painted conditions the composition of the design. The forms presented upon the canvas must be organically enclosed in the boundaries of its space. The same is true of the work of the film director. No movement, no construction is thinkable for him outside that piece of space, limited by a rectangular contour and technically termed the " picture."38 It is true that not always does a film director happen to deal with subordination as direct as that of actors receiving orders easily obeyed. He often encounters happenings and processes that cannot be directly subordinated to his will. For the director strives ever to seize and use everything that the world around can offer him. And far from everything in this world obeys the shouting of a director. For instance, the shooting of a sea, a waterfall, a storm, an avalanche : all this is often brought into a film, and, forming a firmly integral part of the subject, must consequently be organised exactly as any other material prepared for editing. Here the director is completely sub- merged in a mass of chance happenings. Nothing is directly obedient to his will. The movements
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before the camera develop in accordance with their own laws. But the material required by the director — that is, out of which the film can be made — must none the less be organised. If the director finds himself confronted with a phenomenon that is chance in this sense, he cannot and must not give in to it, for otherwise his work will change itself to a simple, unregulated record. He must employ the adven- titious phenomenon, and he does so by constantly inventing a series of special methods. Here comes to his help that possibility of disregarding the natural development of the action in real time, of which I have already spoken above. The director, alertly watching with his camera, finds it possible to pick out the material required and to unite the separate shots on the screen, even though they may in reality be separated from one another by wide temporal intervals. Suppose he require for a film a small stream, the bursting of a dam, and the flood conse- quent on the catastrophe, he can shoot the stream and the dam in autumn, the river when in spate in spring, and secure the required impression by combination of the two sections. Suppose the action take place on the shores of a sea with a continuous and tempestuous breaking of the surf, the director can only take his shots when the waves are high after a storm. But the shots, though spread out over several months, will represent on the screen perhaps only a day or an hour. Thus the director utilises the (natural) repetition of a chance happening for the required filmic representation.
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The recording of the animals that so often appear in films affords a further instance of the use of special methods in organising the adventitious. It is said that an American director spent sixty working hours and the corresponding amount of celluloid in order to get on the screen the exact spring that he needed of a kitten on a mouse. In another film a sea-lion had to be recorded.39 The timorous animal swam rapidly and irregularly around its pond. Of course, the simple method would have been to take in the whole pond, setting up the camera the required distance away, and enabling the spectator to follow the movements of the sea-lion just as a given observer standing on the bank would have followed them. The camera could not, and had not, to watch thus ; it had before it a number of separate problems. The camera had to observe how the beast glided swiftly and dexterously over the surface of the water, and it had to observe it from the best viewpoint. The sea-lion had also to be seen from closer, making close-ups necessary. The editing-plan, that preceded the taking of the shots, was as follows :
1. The sea-lion swims in the pond towards the bank — taken slightly from above, the better to follow the movements of the beast in the water.
2. The sea-lion springs out on to the bank, and then plunges back into the water.
3. It swims back to its den.
Three times had the viewpoint of the camera to be altered. Once the photographing had to be from
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above, then the camera had to be placed so that the beast, springing on to the bank, would happen to be very near it, and the third time the sea-lion had to be taken swimming away from the camera, so as to show the speed of its movement. At the same time, the whole material had to be shown in connected form, so that, on the screen, in the apprehension of the spectator, the three separate shots of sea-lion should blend to the impression of one continuous movement of the animal, despite the fact that they were taken from different points. One cannot command a beast to swim in a desired direction or to approach a camera ; but at the same time its movement was exactly prescribed in the editing-plan, with which the construction of the whole picture was bound up. When the sea-lion was being taken from above, it swam — tempted by the throwing of a fish — several times across the pond until it came by chance into the view-field of the camera in the way the director required. For the close-up, the bait was thrown again and again until the sea-lion leaped on to the right place on the bank and made the necessary turn. Out of thirty takes made, three were chosen, and these gave on the screen the desired image of continuous movement. This movement was not organised by direct pres- cription of the work required, but attained by approximate control of adventitious elements and subsequent strict selection of the material gathered. The chance is synonymous of real, unfalsified, unacted life. In fifty per cent of his work the director
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encounters it. Organisation and exact arrangement — this is the basic slogan of film work, and it is chiefly accomplished by the editing. The editing-plan can exist before the moment of shooting, and then the will of the director transforms and subdues reality in order to assemble the work out of it. The editing- plan can appear during the process of shooting, if the director, come upon unforeseen material, use it simultaneously orientating his work according to that feasible future form that will compose, from the pieces shot, a united filmic image.
So, for example, in The Battleship " Potemkin " the brilliant shots taken in the mist by the cameraman Tisse are cut beautifully into the film with striking effect and organically weld themselves to its whole, though nobody had foreseen the mist. Indeed, it was the more impossible to foresee the mist because mists had hitherto been regarded as a hindrance in film-work.
But, in either case, the shooting must be related organically to the editing-plan, and consequently the paramount requirement of an exact spacial and temporal calculation of the content of each piece remains in force.
FILMIC FORM
When, instead of making a simple fixation of some action that takes place in reality, we wish to render it in its filmic form — that is to say, exchange its actual, uninterrupted flow for an integration of creatively selected elements — then we must bear
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invariably in mind those laws that relate the spec- tator to the director who edits the shots. When we discussed a haphazard, chaotic ordination of shots, we laid it down that this would appear as a meaningless disorder to the spectator. To impress the spectator is correctly to discover the order and rhythm of the combination.
How does one hit upon such an ordination ? Certainly, generally speaking, this, like any other creative artistic process, must be left ultimately to the artist's intuition. None the less, at least the paths that approximately determine the direction of this work should be indicated. We have already made comparison above between the lens and the eye of an observer. This comparison can be carried very far. The director, as he determines the position of the camera in shooting and prescribes the length of each separate shot, can, in fact, be compared to an observer who turns his glance from one element of the action to another, so long as this observer is not apathetic in respect to his emotional state. The more deeply he is excited by the scene before him, the more rapidly and suddenly (staccato) his attention springs from one point to another. (The example of the motor-car accident.) The more disinterestedly and phlegmatically he observes the action, the calmer and slower will be the changes of his points of attention, and consequently the changes of set-up of the camera. The emotion can unquestionably be communicated by the specific rhythm of the editing. Griffith, the American, richly uses this method in
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the greater part of his films. Here belongs also that characteristic directorial method of forcing the spec- tator to insinuate himself into the skin of the actor, and letting him see with the latter's eyes. Very often after the face of the hero looking at something, the object looked at is shown from his viewpoint. The greater part of the methods of editing a film yet known to us can be linked to this regarding of the camera as observer. The considerations that determine changes of glance coincide almost exactly with those that govern correct editing construction.
But it cannot be claimed that this comparison is exhaustive. The construction of filmic form in editing can be carried out in several ways. For, finally, it is the editing itself that contains the culmi- nation of the creative work of the film director. Indeed, it is in the direct discovery of methods for use in the editing of the material filmed that the film will gain for itself a worthy place among the other great arts. Film-art is yet inks period of birth. Such methods as approximation, comparison, pattern, and so forth, that have already been long an organic preparatory part of the existing arts, are only now being tested fumblingly in the film. I cannot here refrain from the opportunity of instancing a brilliant example of an unquestionably new editing method that Eisenstein used in The Battleship " Potemkin"
The fourth reel ends with the firing of a gun, on board the rebel battleship, at the Odessa Theatre. This seemingly simple incident is handled in an
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extraordinarily interesting way by Eisenstein. The editing is as follows :
i. Title: " And the rebel battleship answered the brutality of the tyrant with a shell upon the town.'9
2. A slowly and deliberately turning gun-turret is shown.
3. Title :
" Objective — the Odessa Theatre99
4. Marble group at the top of the theatre building.
5. Title :
" On the General9 s Headquarters99
6. Shot from the gun.
7. In two very short shots the marble figure of Cupid is shown above the gates of a building.
8. A mighty explosion ; the gates totter.
9. Three short shots, a stone lion sleeping, a stone lion with open eyes, and a rampant stone lion.
10. A new explosion, shattering the gates.
This is an editing construction that is reproduced in words only with difficulty, but that is almost shatteringly effective on the screen. The director has here employed a daring form of editing. In his film a stone lion rises to its feet and roars. This image has hitherto been thinkable only in literature, and its appearance on the screen is an undoubted and
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thoroughly promising innovation. It is interesting to observe that in this short length of film all the characteristic elements peculiar and specific to filmic representation are united. The battleship was taken in Odessa, the various stone lions in the Crimea,40 and the gates, I believe, in Moscow. The elements are picked out and welded into one united filmic space. From different, immovable stone lions has arisen in the film the non-existent movement of a filmic lion springing to its feet. Simultaneously with this movement has appeared a time non-existent in reality, inseparably bound up with each movement. The rebel battleship is concentrated to a single gun- muzzle, and the General's headquarters stare at the spectator in the shape of a single marble group on the summit of their roof. The struggle between the enemies not only loses nothing thereby, but gains in clearness and sharpness. Naturally this example of the lions instanced here cannot be brought into relation with the use of the camera as observer. It is an exceptional example, offering undoubted possi- bilities in the future for the creative work of the film director. Here the film passes from naturalism, which in a certain degree was proper to it, to free, symbolic representation, independent of the requirements of elementary probability.
THE TECHNIQUE OF DIRECTORIAL WORK
We have already laid down, as the characteristic property of filmic representation, the striving of the camera to penetrate as deeply as possible into the
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details of the event being represented, to approach as nearly as possible to the object under observation, and to pick out only that which can be seen with a glance, intensified to eliminate the general and superficial. Equally characteristic is its externally exhaustive embrace of the events it handles. One might say that the film, as it were, strives to force the spectator to transcend the limits of normal human apprehension. On the one hand, it allows this appre- hension to be sharpened by incredible attentiveness of observation, in concentrating entirely on • the smallest details. At the same time, it allows events in Moscow and nearly related events in America to be embraced in a nearly simultaneous comprehension. Concentration on details and wide embrace of the whole include an extraordinary mass of material. Thus the director is faced with the task of organising and carefully working out a great number of separate tasks, according to a definite plan previously devised by him. As instance : in every, even in an average, film the number of persons in the action is seldom less than several dozen, and each of these persons — even those shown only shortly — is organically related to the film as a whole : the performance of each of these persons must be carefully ordered and thought out, exactly as carefully as any shot from the part of a principal. A film is only really signifi- cant when every one of its elements is firmly welded to a whole. And this will only be the case when every element of the task is carefully mastered. When one calculates that in a film of about 4,000 feet there
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are about five hundred pieces, then one perceives that there are five hundred separate but interlocked groups of problems to be solved, carefully and atten- tively, by the director. When one considers yet again that work on a film is always and inevitably limited by a given maximal time duration, then one sees that the director is so overloaded with work that successful carrying through of the film with direction from one man alone is almost impossible. It is therefore quite easily comprehensible that all notable directors seek to have their work carried out in a departmentalised manner. The whole work of producing a film disintegrates into a series of separate and, at the same time, firmly interrelated sections. Even if one only enumerates the basic stages super- ficially, one gets, none the less, a very impressive list. As follows :
1. The scenario, and its contained treatment.
2. The preparation of the shooting-script, determination of the editing construction.
3. The selection of actors.
4. The building of sets and the selection of exteriors.
5. The direction and taking of the separate elements into which incidents are divided for editing, the shooting-script script-scenes.
6. Laboratory work on the material shot.
7. The editing (the cutting).
The director, as the single organising control that guides the assembling of the film from beginning to
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end, must naturally make his influence felt in each of these separate sections. If a hiatus, a mishap, creep into the work of but one of the stages listed, the whole film — the result of the director's collective creation — will inevitably suffer, equally whether it be a matter of a badly chosen actor, of an uneven piece of continuity in the treatment, or of a badly developed piece of negative. Thus it is obvious that the director must be the central organiser of a group of colleagues whose efforts are directed upon the goal mapped out by him.
Collective work on a film is not just a concession to current practice, but a necessity that follows from the characteristic basic peculiarities of films. The American director is surrounded during his direc- torial work by a whole staff of colleagues, each of whom fulfils a sharply defined and delimited func- tion. A series of assistants, each provided by the director with a task in which the latter's idea is clearly defined, works simultaneously on the many incidents and parts of incidents. After having been checked and confirmed by the director, these incidents are shot and added to the mass of material being pre- pared for the assembling of the film. The resolution of certain problems — such, for instance, as the organised shooting of crowd-scenes including some- times as many as a thousand persons — shows quite clearly that the director's work cannot attain a proper result unless he has a sufficiently extensive staff of colleagues at his disposal. In fine, a director working with a thousand extras exactly resembles a
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commander-in-chief. He gives battle to the indif- ference of the spectator ; it is his task to conquer it by means of an expressive construction of the movement of the masses he guides ; and, like a commander-in-chief, he must have a sufficient number of officers at his disposal to be able to sway the crowd according to his will. We have said already that, in order to attain a unified creation, a complete film, the director must lead constant through all the numerous stages of the work a unifying, organising line created by him. We shall now examine these stages one by one, in order to be able to represent to ourselves yet more clearly the nature of the work of film direction.
Part II THE DIRECTOR AND THE SCENARIO
THE DIRECTOR AND THE SCENARIST
In production, affairs usually take the following course : a scenario is received, handed over to the director, and he submits it to a so-called directorial treatment — that is to say, he works over the entire material submitted him by the scenarist according to his own individuality ; he expresses the thoughts offered him in his own filmic speech — in the language of separate images, separate elements, shots, that follow one another in a certain sequence he establishes.
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In short, if a film be compared with the scenario lying basic to it, it is possible to distinguish the theme, the subject treatment of the theme, and, finally, that imaginary filmic formation of the treat- ment that is worked out by the director in the process of production. Needless to say, these three stages of work must be directly and organically interdependent. None the less, it is evident that the work of the scenarist extends only up to a certain point, after which the share of the director begins. There is no art-form in which a sharp division between two stages of work is thinkable. One cannot continue a work from some point in its course, and not have been linked with it from its beginning. Therefore, as a result of the necessity for unification of two stages, the preliminary work of the scenarist and the subsequent directorial work, the following is inevitable : either the director must be directly associated with the work of the scenarist from the beginning, or, if this be impossible for some reason or other, he must inevitably go through the scenario, removing anything foreign to him, maybe altering separate parts and sequences, maybe the entire subject-construction. The director is ever faced with the task of creating the film from a series of plastically expressive images. In the ability to find such plastic images, in the faculty of creating from separate shots, by editing, clear, expressive " phrases," and con- necting these phrases into vividly impressive periods, and from these periods constructing a film — in this consists the art of the director. Not always can the
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scenarist, especially when he has not a clearly filmi- cally thinking brain and is thus in some degree himself a director, provide in ready form the plastic material required by the director. Usually it is otherwise, the scenarist gives the director the idea, as such— the detached content of the image, and not its concrete form. But in a collaboration of this kind the welding together of the two colleagues, the scenarist and the director, is certainly of tremendous importance. It is easy to put forward ideas that will wake no echo in the director and must remain a pure abstraction without concrete form. Even the theme itself of the scenario — in other words, its basis — must inevitably be selected and established in contact with the director. The theme conditions the action, colours it, and thus, of course, inevitably colours that plastic content the expression of which is the chief substance of the director's task. Only if the theme be organically comprehended by the director will he be able to subdue it to the unifying outline of the form he is creating.
Pursuing further, we come to the action. The action outlines a number of situations for the characters, their relations to one another, and, not least, their encounters. It prescribes in its develop- ment a whole number of events that already have, in some sort, feelable form. The action cannot be thought of without already some plastically expres- sive form. In most cases it is difficult for a scenarist, having graduated from the literary field, to steer his course by the conditions of externally expressive
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form. Already in planning the action the basic incidents that are to determine its shape must infallibly be mapped out. Here comes yet more clearly to light the inevitable dependence on the later directorial work. Even such a thing as the characteristics of a person of the action will be meaningless if not shown in a series of plastically effective movements or situations.
THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE FILM
To continue. All the action of any scenario is immersed in some environment that provides, as it were, the general colour of the film. This environ- ment may, for example, be a special mode of life. By more detailed examination, one may even regard as the environment some separate peculiarity, some special essential trait of the given mode of life selected. This environment, this colour, cannot, and must not, be rendered by one explanatory scene or a title ; it must constantly pervade the whole film, or its appropriate part, from beginning to end. As I have said, the action must be immersed in this background. A whole series of the best films of recent times has shown that this emphasis by means of an environment in which the action is immersed is quite easily effected in cinematography. The film Tot' able David shows us this vividly. It is also interesting that the effecting of the unity of this colour of a film is based upon the scarcely communi- cable ability to saturate the film with numerous fine and correctly observed details. Naturally it is not
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possible to require of the scenarist that he shall discover all these details and fix them in writing. The best that he can do is to find their necessary abstract formulation, and it is the affair of the director to absorb this formulation and give it the necessary plastic shape. Remarks by the scenarist such as, perhaps, " There was an insufferable smell in the room " or " Many factory-sirens vibrated and sang through the heavy, oil-permeated atmosphere " are not in any sense forbidden. They indicate cor- rectly the relation between the ideas of the scenarist and the future plastic shaping by the director. It may already now be said with a fair degree of certainty that the most immediate task next awaiting the director is that very solution by filmic methods of the descriptive problems mentioned. The first experiments were carried out by the Americans in showing a landscape of symbolic character at the beginning of a film. ToVable David began with the picture of a village taken through a cherry-tree in flower. The foaming, tempestuous sea symbolised the leit-motif of the film The Remnants of a Wreck.
A wonderful example, affording unquestionably an achievement of this kind, are the pictures of the misty dawn rising over the corpse of the murdered sailor in The Battleship " Potemkin" The solution of these problems — the depiction of the environment — is an undoubted and important part of the work on the scenario. And this work naturally cannot be carried out without direct participation by the director. Even a simple landscape — a piece of nature
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so often encountered in films — must, by some inner guiding line, be bound up with the developing action.
I repeat that the film is exceptionally economical and precise in its work. There is, and must be, in it no superfluous element. There is no such thing as a neutral background, and every factor must be collected and directed upon the single aim of solving the given problems. For every action, in so far as it takes place in the real world, is always involved in general conditions — that is, the nature of the environment.
The action of the scenes may take place by day or by night. Film directors have long been familiar with this point, and the effort to render night effects is to this day an interesting problem for film directors. One can go further. The American, Griffith, suc- ceeded in the film America in obtaining, with marvellous tenderness and justness, graduations of twilight and morning. The director has a mass of material at his disposal for this kind of work. The film is interesting, as said before, not only in that it is able to concentrate on details, but also in its ability to weld to a unity numerous materials, deriving from widely embraced sources.
As example, this same morning light : To gain this effect, the director can use not only the growing light of sunrise, but also numerous correctly selected, characteristic processes that infallibly relate them- selves with approaching dawn in the apprehension of the spectator. The light of lamp-posts growing
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paler against the lightening sky, the silhouettes of scarcely visible buildings, the tops of trees tenderly touched with the light of the not yet ascended sun, awakening birds, crowing cocks, the early morning mist, the dew — all this can be employed by the director, shot, and in editing built to a harmonious whole.
In one film an interesting method was used of representing the filmic image of a dawn. In order to embrace in the editing construction the feeling of growing and ever wider expanding light, the separate shots follow one another in such wise that at the beginning, when it is still dark, only details can be seen upon the screen. The camera took only close- ups, as if, like the eye of man in the surrounding dark, it saw only what was near to it. With the increase of the light the camera became ever more and more distant from the object shot. Simul- taneously with the broadening of the light, broader and broader became the view-field embraced by the lens. From the close-ups in darkness the director changed to ever more distant long-shots, as if he sought directly to render the increasing light, per- vading everything widely and more widely. It is notable that here is employed a pure technical pos- sibility, peculiar only to the film, of communicating a very subtle feeling.
It is clear that work on the solution of problems of this kind is bound up so closely with the knowledge of film technique, so organically with the pure directorial work of analysis, selection of the material,
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and its unification in creative editing, that such problems cannot, independently of the director, be resolved for him by the scenarist alone. At the same time, it is, as already mentioned, absolutely essential to give the expression of this environment in which the action of every film is immersed, and accordingly, in the creation of the scenario, it is indispensable for the director to collaborate in the work.
THE CHARACTERS IN THE ENVIRONMENT
I should like to note that in the work of one of the strongest directors of the present day, David Griffith, in almost every one of his films, and indeed especially in* those in which he has reached the maximum expression and power, it is almost invariably the case that the action of the scenario develops among characters blended directly with that which takes place in the surrounding world.
The stormy finale of the Griffith film is so con- structed as to strengthen for the spectator the conflict and the struggle of the heroes to an unimagined degree, thanks to the fact that the director introduces into the action, gale, storm, breaking ice, rivers in spate, a gigantic roaring waterfall. When Lilian Gish, in Way Down East, runs broken from the house, her happiness in ruins, and the faithful Barthelmess rushes after her to bring her back to life, the whole pursuit of love behind despair, developing in the furious tempo of the action, takes place in a fearful snowstorm ; and at the final climax, Griffith forces the spectator himself to feel despair, when a rotating
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block of ice, on it cowering the figure of a woman, approaches the precipice of a gigantic waterfall, itself conveying the impression of inescapable and hopeless ruin.
First the snowstorm, then the foaming, swirling river in thaw, packed with ice-blocks that rage yet wilder than the storm, and finally the mighty water- fall, conveying the impression of death itself. In this sequence of events is repeated, on large scale as it were, the same line of that increasing despair — despair striving to make an end, for death, that has irresistibly gripped the chief character. This har- mony— the storm in the human heart and the storm in the frenzy of nature — is one of the most powerful achievements of the American genius.41 This example shows particularly clearly how far-reaching and deep must be that connection, between the content of the scenario and the director's general treatment, that adds strength and unity to his work. The director not only transfers the separate scenes suggested by the scenarist each into movement and form, he has also to absorb the scenario in its entirety, from the theme to the final form of the action, and perceive and feel each scene as an irremovable, component part of the unified structure. And this can only be the case if he be organically involved in the work on the scenario from beginning to end.
When the work on the general construction has been finished, the theme moulded to a subject, the separate scenes in which the action is realised laid down, then only do we come to the period of the
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hardest work on the treatment of the scenario, that stage of work when, already concrete and percep- tible, that filmic form of the picture that will result can be foreseen ; do we come to the period of the planning out of the editing scheme for the shots, of the discovery of those component parts from which the separate images will later be assembled.
To bring a waterfall into the action does not necessarily mean to create it on the screen. Let us remember what we said regarding the creation of a filmic image that becomes vivid and effective only when the necessary details are correctly found. We come to the stage of utilising the pieces of real space and real time for the future creation of filmic space and filmic time. If it may be said at the beginning of the process that the scenarist guides the work — and that the director has only to pay attention so as properly to apprehend it organically, and so as, not only to keep contact with it at every given moment, but to be constantly welded to it — now comes a change. The guide of the work is now the director, equipped with that knowledge of technique and that specific talent that enables him to find the correct and vivid images expressing the quintessential element of each given idea. The director organises each separate incident, analysing it, disintegrating it into elements, and simultaneously thinking of the connection of these elements in editing. It is here of special interest to note that the scenarist at this later stage, just as the director in the early stages, must not be divorced from the work. His task it is
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to supervise the resolution to editable shape of every separate problem, thinking at every instant of the basic theme — sometimes completely abstract, yet current in every separate problem.
Only by means of a close collaboration can a correct and valuable result be attained. Naturally one might postulate as the ideal arrangement the incarnation of scenarist and director in one person. But I have already spoken of the unusual scope and complexity of film creation, that prevents any possi- bility of its mastery by one person. Collectivism is indispensable in the film, but the collaborators must be blended with one another to an exceptionally close degree.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE RHYTHM OF THE FILM
The editing treatment of the scenario consists not only in the determination of the separate incidents, scenes, objects that are to be shot, but also in the arrangement of the sequence in which they are to be shown. I have already said that in the deter- mination of this sequence one must not only have in mind the plastic content, but also the length of each separate piece of celluloid — that is to say, the rhythm with which the pieces are to be joined must be considered. This rhythm is the means of emo- tionally influencing the spectator. By this rhythm the director is equally in the position to excite or to calm the spectator. An error of rhythm can reduce the impression of the whole scene shown to zero, but equally can rhythm, fortunately found, raise the
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impression of a scene to an infinite degree, though it may contain in its separate, imagined, visual material nothing especial.42 The rhythmic treatment of the film-scenario is not limited to the treatment of the separate incidents, to the finding of the necessary images comprising them. One must remember that the film is divided into separate shots, that these are joined together to form incidents, the incidents to sequences, these last to reels, and the reels together form the whole film. Wherever there is division, wherever there is an element of succession of pieces, be they separate pieces of celluloid or separate parts of the action — there everywhere the rhythmic ele- ment must be considered, not indeed because " rhythm " is a modern catchword, but because rhythm, guided by the will of the director, can and must be a powerful and secure instrument of effect. Remember, for instance, how exhausting, and how extinguishing in its effect, was the badly created, constantly confused rhythm of that big film, The Ray , of Death ; and, on the other hand, how clever was the distribution of material in Tollable David, in which the alternation of quiet and tense sections kept the spectator fresh and enabled him to appreciate the violent finale. The editable preparation of the scenario — in which not only the exact plastic content of each separate little piece is taken into considera- tion, but also the position in rhythmic sequence of its length when the pieces are joined to incidents, the incidents to sequences and so forth — the establish- ment of this position, which is already completely
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decisive for the final form that the film projected on the screen will take, is the last stage of the work of the director on the scenario. Now is the moment come at which new members of the collective team enter the work of creating the film — in fact, those who are concerned with real men and objects, with the movements and backgrounds in which they are locked. The director now has to prepare the material in order to record it on the film.
Part III THE DIRECTOR AND THE ACTOR
TWO KINDS OF PRODUCTION
In accordance with their acting, films can roughly be divided into two kinds. In the first group are included such productions as are based on one particular actor — the " star," as he is called in America. The scenario is written especially for the actor. The entire work of the director resolves itself to the presentation to the spectator, once again in new surroundings and with a new supporting cast, of some well-known and favourite figure. Thus are produced the films of Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pickford, and Lloyd. To the second group belong those films that are underlain by some definite idea or thought. These scenarios are not written for an actor, but actors must be found for their realisation when written. Thus works David Griffith. It is not,
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therefore, remarkable that in several of his pictures Griffith rejects such brilliant names as Pickford, Mae Marsh, and others, a whole series of heroes and heroines whom, having used them for one or two films, he gives up to other hands. To that extent to which a film is basically inspired by some thought, by some definite idea — and not merely by the display of clever technique or a pretty face — the relationship between the actor and the material of the film receives a special and specific character, proper only to the film.
THE FILM ACTOR AND THE FILM TYPE
In order to create a required appearance, the stage actor tries to find and create the necessary make-up, altering his face. If he has to take the part of a strong man in the play, he binds muscles of wadding on his arms. Suppose, for example, it were proposed to him to play Samson, he would not be ashamed of erecting pasteboard pillars on the set, to overthrow them later with one push of his shoulder. Such deceit in properties, equally with make-up drawn upon the face, is unthinkable in films. A made-up, property human being in a real environ- ment, among real trees, near real stones and real water, under a real sky, is as incongruous and inacceptable as a living horse on a stage filled with pasteboard.43 The conditionality of the film is not a property conditionality : it changes not matter, but only time and space. For this reason one cannot build up a required type artificially for the screen ;
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one must discover him. That is why even in those productions the pivot of which is the inevitable and necessary " star," none the less the supporting actors for the second and third parts are always sought by the director from among many. The work of finding the necessary actors, the selection of persons with vividly expressive externalities conforming to the requirements made by the scenario is one of the hardest tasks of the director. It must be remembered that, as I have already said, one cannot " play a part " on the film ; one must possess a sum of real qualities, externally clearly expressed, in order to attain a given effect on the spectator. It is therefore easy to understand why, in film production, a man, passing by chance on the street, who has never had any idea of being an actor, is often brought in, only because he happens to be a vividly externally expressive type, and, moreover, the one desired by the director. In order to make concretely clear this inevitable necessity to use, as acting material, persons possessing in reality the properties of the image required, I shall instance at random the following example.
Let us suppose that we require for a production an old man. In the Theatre the problem would be perfectly simple. A comparatively young actor could paint wrinkles on his face, and so make on the spectator, from the stage, the external impression of an old man. In the film this is unthinkable. Why ? Just because a real, living wrinkle is a deepening, a groove in the face. And when an old man with a
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real wrinkle turns his head, light plays on this wrinkle. A real wrinkle is not only a dark stripe, it is a shadow from the groove, and a different position of the face in relation to light will always give a different pattern of light and shade. The living wrinkle lives by means of movement in light. But if we paint a black stripe on a smooth skin, then on the screen the face in movement will never show the living groove played on by the light, but only a stripe painted in black paint. It will be especially incongruous in cases of close approximation of the lens — that is, in close-ups.
In the Theatre, make-up of this kind is possible because the light on the stage is conditionally constant and throws no shadows.
By this example it may in some wise be judged to what degree the actor we seek must resemble his prescribed appearance in the scenario. It may be said, in fine, that in most cases the film actor plays himself, and the work of the director consists not in compelling him to create something that is not in him, but in showing, as expressively and vividly as possible, what is in him, by using his real characteristics.
PLANNING THE ACTING OF THE FILM-TYPE
Where the acting material is assembled in this way, the possibility of using a stock company, as in the Theatre, is naturally almost excluded.44 In almost every film the director is compelled to work with ever new human material, often entirely untrained. But at the same time the work of the person being
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photographed must be strictly subjected to a whole series of conditions dictated by the film. I have already said that each piece shot must be exactly organised in space and time. The work of the actor being shot, as much as everything being shot, must be exactly considered. Remember that we have discussed the process of taking editable shots, whereby the same movements have to be repeated several times with great exactitude, in order to make it possible for the director to form into a single whole the incidents later composed by the junction of separate pieces. In order to work exactly one must know how, one must learn how, or at least be able to remember by heart. For the work of the film actor, or, if you prefer it, his acting, is deprived of that unbroken quality proper to the work of his colleague on the stage. The film image of the actor is composed from dozens and hundreds of separate, disintegrated pieces in such a way that sometimes he works at the beginning on something that will later form a part of the end. The film actor is deprived of a consciousness of the uninterrupted development of the action, in his work. The organic connection between the consecutive parts of his work, as result of which the distinct whole image is created, is not for him. The whole image of the actor is only to be conceived as a future appearance on the screen, subsequent to the editing of the director ; that which the actor performs in front of the lens in each given piece is only raw material, and it is necessary to be endowed with
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special, specific, filmic powers in order to imagine to oneself the whole edited image, meticulously composed of separate pieces picked sometimes from the beginning, sometimes from the middle. It is therefore understandable why it was first in films that there appeared exact directorial construction of the actor's work.45 In most cases only the director knows the shooting-script so thoroughly and so well as to be able clearly to imagine it to himself in that shape in which it will later be transposed upon the screen, and therefore only he can imagine to himself each given part, each given image in its editing construction. If an actor, even a very talented one, allow himself to be inspired by a given separate scene, he will never be able, of himself, so to limit his work as to be able to give a part of his acting of exactly that length and that content later required by the editing. This will only be possible when the actor has entered as deeply and organically into the work of building the film creation as the director producing it. There are schools that maintain that the play of the actor must be ordered by the director down to its least details ; down to the finest movements of the fingers, of the eyebrows, of the eyelashes, everything must be exactly calculated by the director, in- structed by him, and recorded on the film. This school represents an undoubted exaggeration that results in unnecessary mechanicalisation ; it is, none the less, not to be gainsaid that the free per- formance of the actor must be enclosed in a
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frame-work of the severest directorial control. It is interesting that even such a director as Griffith — who is distinguished by a special " psychologicality " that should, strictly speaking, preclude the possi- bility of hard and fast construction — none the less does undoubtedly plastically " create " his actor. Griffith has a peculiar feminine type of his own, pathetically helpless and heroic at the same time. It is interesting to follow how, in various of his films, various women express the same emotional states by the same external means. Remember how Mae Marsh weeps in the trial in Intolerance, how the heroine in America sobs over her dying brother, and how Lilian Gish sobs in the Orphans of the Storm as she tells of her sister. There is the same heart- rending face, the same streaming tears, and the helpless, trembling attempt to show a smile behind tears. The similarity of method of many American actors who have worked under control of one and the same director shows markedly how far-reaching is the directorial construction of the actor's work.
THE " ENSEMBLE "
In the Theatre there exists a concept "ensemble " the concept implying that general composition which embraces the work of all the actors collaborating in the play. The ensemble undoubtedly exists also in the film, and the same may be said about it as has been said about the edited image of the actor. The fact is that the film actor is deprived of the possibility of himself directly appreciating this ensemble. Very
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often an actor, from beginning to end of his part in front of the camera, does not once see the per- formance of the actor opposite him in the film, and is shot separately. None the less, however, when the film is subsequently joined, the scenes of this actor will appear directly connected with those of the other, whom he has never seen. The conscious- ness of the ensemble, the relationship between the work of the separate characters, consequently becomes once again a task of the director. Only he, imagining to himself the film in its edited form, already projected upon the screen, already joined from its separately shot pieces — only he can appre- ciate this ensemble, and direct and construct the actor's work in conformity with its requirements. The question of the bounds of the influence the director should exert on the work of the actors is a question that is still open. Exact mechanical obedience to a plan provided by the director has undoubtedly no future. But also a wavering free improvisation by the actor according to general suggestions from the director — a method hitherto a characteristic of most Soviet directors — is definitely inadmissible. Only one thing is still undoubted, that the whole image of the actor will only result when the separately shot pictures are united one to the other in editing, and the work of the actor in each separate shot has been firmly and organi- cally linked to the clear understanding of the future whole. If such an understanding is present to the actor he can work freely, but, if not, then only
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the exact instructions of the director, the future creator of the editing, can correctly construct the acting work. Special difficulties are encountered by the director with casually collected human material, but this casual material is, as we have said, nearly inevitable in every film ; and, on the other hand, this material is of exceptional interest. An average film lasts an hour and a half. In this hour and a half there pass before the spectator sometimes dozens of faces that he may remember, surrounding the heroes of the film, and these faces must be especially carefully selected and shown. Often the entire expression and value of an incident, though it may centre round the hero, depends from these characters of second rank who surround him. These characters may be shown to the spectator for no more than six or seven seconds. Therefore they must impress him clearly and vividly. Remember the example of the gang of blackguards in ToVable David, or of the two old men in The Isle of Lost Ships. Each face impresses as firmly and vividly as would a separate, clever characterisation by a talented writer. To find a person such that the spectator, after seeing him for six seconds, shall say of him, " That man is a rogue, or good-natured, or a fool " — this is the task that presents itself to the director in the selection of his human material.
EXPRESSIVE MOVEMENT
When the persons are selected, when the director begins to shoot their work, they provide him with a
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new problem : the actor must move in front of the camera, and his movements must be expressive. The concept " an expressive movement " is not so simple as it appears at first sight. First of all, it is not identical with that everyday movement, that customary behaviour proper to an average man in his real surroundings. A man not only has gestures, but words also are at his disposal. Sometimes the word accompanies the gesture and sometimes, reversed, the gesture aids the word. In the Theatre both are feasible. That is why an actor with deeply ingrained theatrical training conforms with difficulty to the standards of the screen. In The Postmaster y Moskvin — an actor of undoubted exceptionally big filmic possibilities — none the less tires one unpleasantly with his ever-moving mouth and with petty movements beating time to the rhythm of the unspoken words. Gesture-movement accom- panying speech is unthinkable on the film. Losing its correspondence with the sounds that the spectator does not hear, it degenerates to a senseless plastic muttering. The director in work with an actor must so construct the performance of the latter that the significant point shall lie always in the move- ment, and the word accompany it only when required. In a pathetic scene, when he learns from the godmother that the hussar officer has eloped with Dunia, Moskvin speaks a great deal and obviously, while at the same time, automatically and quite naturally, like a man accustomed to spoken business, he accompanies every word with
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one and the same repeated movement of the hand. During the shooting, when the words were audible, the scene was effective, and even very effective ; but on the screen it resulted as a painful and often ridiculous shuffling about on one spot. The idea that the film actor should express in gesture that which the ordinary man says in words is basically false. In creating the picture the director and actor use only those moments when the word is superfluous, when the substance of the action develops in silence, when the word may accompany the gesture, but does not give birth to it.46
EXPRESSIVE OBJECTS
That is why the inanimate object has such enormous importance on the films. An object is already an expressive thing in itself, in so far as the spectator always associates with it a number of images. A revolver is a silent threat, a flying racing-car is a pledge of rescue or of help arriving in time. The performance of an actor linked with an object and built upon it will always be one of the most powerful methods of filmic construction. It is, as it were, a filmic monologue without words. An object, linked to an actor, can bring shades of his state of emotion to external expression so subtly and deeply as no gesture or mimicry could ever express them conditionally. In The Battleship "Potemkin " the battleship itself is an image so powerfully and clearly shown that the men on board are resolved into it, organically blended with it.
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The shooting down of the crowd is answered not by the sailors standing to the guns, but by the steel battleship itself, breathing from a hundred mouths. When, at the finale, the battleship rushes under full steam to meet the fleet, then, in some sort, the steadfastly labouring, steel driving-rods of the engine incarnate in themselves the hearts of its crew, furiously beating in tenseness of expectation.
THE DIRECTOR AS CREATOR OF THE " ENSEMBLE "
For the film director the concept of ensemble is extraordinarily wide. Material objects enter organically into it as well as characters, and it is necessary once more to recall that, in the final editing of the picture, the performance of the actor will stand next to, will have to be welded to, a whole series of other pieces, which he cannot see, and of which he can know only indirectly. Only the direc- tor knows and gauges them completely. Therefore the actor is considered by the director, before any- thing else, as material requiring his " treatment." Let us, in fine, also remember that even each actor separately who is, in real conditions, apprehended as something whole, as the figure of a human being whose movements are perceived as the simultaneous connected work of all the members of his body — such a man often does not exist on the screen. In editing, the director builds sometimes not only scenes, but also a separate human being. Let us remember how often in films we see and remember a character
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despite the fact that we saw only his head and, separately, his hand.
In his experimental films Lev Kuleshov tried to record a woman in movement by photographing the hands, feet, eyes, and head of different women. As consequence of editing resulted the impression of the movements of one single person. Naturally this example does not suggest a special means of practical creation of a man not available in reality, but it emphasises especially vividly the statement that, even in the limits of his short individual work unconnected with other actors, the image of the actor derives not from a separate stage of work, the shooting of a separate piece, but only from that editing construction that welds such pieces to a filmic whole. Take this as one more confirmation of the absolute necessity for exactness in working, and one more confirmation of the axiomatic supremacy of its imagined edited image over each separate element of the actual work in front of the lens. Also, quite obviously of course, the axiomatic supremacy of the director, bearer of the image of the general construction of the film, over the actor who provides material for this construction.
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Part IV THE ACTOR IN THE FRAME
THE ACTOR AND THE FILMIC IMAGE
I have already spoken above of the necessity constantly to bear in mind the rectangular space of the screen that always encloses every movement shot. The movement of the actor in real three-dimensional space once again serves the director only as material for the selection of the elements required for construction of the future appearance, flat and inserted exactly into the space of the frame. The director never sees the actor as a real human being ; he imagines and sees the future filmic appearance, and carefully selects the material for it by making the actor move in various ways and altering the position of the camera relative to him. The same disintegration as with every- thing in film. Not for one moment is the director presented with live men. Before him he has always only a series of component parts of the future filmic construction. This does not necessitate a sort of killing and mechanicalisation of the actor. He can be as spontaneous as he likes, and need not in any way disturb the natural continuity of his movements, but the director, controlling the camera, will, owing to the nature of cinematographic representation, himself pick out from the entire work of the living man the pieces he requires. When Griffith shot
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the hands of Mae Marsh in the trial scene, the actress was probably crying when she pinched the skin of her hands ; she lived a full and real experience and was completely in the grip of the necessary emotion as a whole, but the director, for the film, picked out only her hands.
THE ACTOR AND LIGHT
There is one more element characteristic for the work of the director with the actor — that is light, that light without which neither object nor human being nor anything else has existence on the film. The director, determining the lighting in the studio, literally creates the future form upon the screen. For light is the only element that has effect on the sensitive strips of celluloid, only of light of varying strengths is woven the image we behold upon the screen. And this light serves not only to develop the forms — to make them visible. An actor unlit is — nothing. An actor lit only so as to be visible is a simple, undifferentiated, indefinite object. This same light can be altered and constructed in such a way as to make it enter as an organic component into the actor's work. The composition of the light can eliminate much, emphasise much, and bring out with such strength the expressive work of the actor, that it becomes apparent that light is not simply a condition for the fixation of expressive work by the actor, but in itself represents a part of this expressive work. Remember the face of the priest in The Battleship "Potemkin " lit from underneath.47
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Thus the work of the film actor in creation of his filmic image is bounded by a technically complex frame of conditions specifically proper to the film. The exact awareness of