I generally watch films purely for the content, but for once I changed my perspective to look at them very technically.An amazing lot to learn from the greats!
The use the power of suggestion through visuals alone - aka montages. It's quite revealing how, through simple placement of frames in set sequences, viewers can be led to make inferences. Quite similar in a photo essay - lay out the images in one sequence and you project one idea, change the sequence and it could result in a completely different inference. Rear Window, for instance, could easily have been a series of stills in a photo montage and, together with the excellent audio cues, would have made a great photo story.
Point of View also comes out strongly in rear window where, camera angles, what we see (and don't see) are all confined to the views of the wheelchair bound Jeff. Then there's Hitchcock's use of editing to compress / elongate time - even with simple fades. This is a key in editing video sequences - keep the key components in the activity and imply the rest. Also, his use of the panning camera at the start of Rear Window to set the scene in space. This is an excellent example of when a pan is called for.
Of course, this idea of panning is turned on its head by Godard in Breathless. He uses some very long sequences without any cuts - the camera follows the actors around in the figure 8 movement. Then there are the many instances where he breaks the fundamental rule of 180 degree axis of viewing, taking the camera from one side of the axis to the opposite. How many video shooting manuals will tell us never cross the axis - it disorients the viewer. But Godard seeks to do just that - disorient us.And the most fundamental way the does this is with hundreds of "jump cuts". He literally stitches together scenes (using anti-aesthetic cut points), creating "jumps". For instance: Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg are engaged in a discussion in a bedroom, Belmondo seated on the bed, in one frame and in the very next Belmondo is standing by Seberg by the cupboard. It is quite disconcerting, when did he get off the bed? These jumps happen repeatedly through the film.
By breaking the rules, Godard gives us a better understanding of the smooth cuts in editing - let the action leave the frame before the cut etc. Generally we would be told let Belmondo begin to get off the bed, then show him in the next scene standing by the cupboard - continuity.
First do the right thing and then break the rules - knowing you are doing so.
David Dunkley Gyimah of viewmagazine.tv executes this technique in video journalism, calling it anti-aesthetic edits using jerky camera movements, disconcertingly jerky/jump cuts, grain. But again, this technique can be appreciated and executed only once the rules are known. He is today's Godard in video journalism.
Break the rules once you know what you are breaking.
Of course, by simply watching Godard's cuts in Breathless, it could easily be construed as being "badly edited".
Isn't that what a lot of art provokes us to say!
The workshop, held at the newly opened center for the arts - Sunapranta, is being facilitated by Anuja Ghosalkar, Programme Executive for Arts Research and Documentation at the India Foundation for the Arts. She curated the Tri-Continental Human Rights Film Festival 2007 and is a trained lecturer in literature and mass media. She has worked with a number of film projects including Channel 4.
