Sergei Eisenstein clearly has a liking for Japanese cinema, however he clearly establishes that it lacks montage, and montage is very important. He defines it as "combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in content-into intellectual contexts and series"(14). Eisenstein portrays a basic formula of the adornment transforming into an image. I enjoyed his essay because the author emphasized that we create our own aspect by combining different events into one whole. Montage is also conflict, according to Eisenstein. Conflict can result from shots, scales, masses, and depths, resulting in conflicts in time and duration. However, it is a necessary component in media. Eisenstein concludes by pointing out the link of Japanese theater sound film, which goes along with our senses.
Having associated "montages" mainly with video's close cousin, photography, it was a little hard for me to imagine video as a montage, but the more I read into the essay, the more I realized this was the case. I enjoyed the extended metaphor of video shots being cells, and the cells colliding, but I disagree with Sergei Einstein's idea of linkage being a result of collision. This thought implies that because of the collision of two shots comes about a result.
I doubt many filmmakers would start shooting random scenes and simultaneously decide that so-and-so scenes would make a wonderful conclusion. The theory that collision arises from linkage might be a more plausible one, in my opinion. The organization of two shots might create such an interesting result that the artist might decide to create an offshoot from the two links, which represents the "collision" and vectors Einstein brought up.
As a whole, however, I cannot pretend to fully understand the point of this essay, since Einstein used a lot of examples from Japanese "cinematography," though they more closely resemble descriptions of on-stage performances, rather than motion pictures.
The second week’s reading, “The Cinematic Principle and Ideogram” by Sergei Eisenstein seemed a bit distorted to me and could have discussed the idea behind Japanese cinematography better. It starts with the idea of montage, which I casually think of is artistic understanding and instinct to deduce meaning from symbols and cannot be subjective to the interpretation of a single individual. A mouth and a child together do not necessarily mean ‘scream’ to me. The child could be ‘hungry’. But however, the article quickly moves to discussing theatre art and how the stage architecture and an artist’s topography and facial expressions can define stakes in scenarios. In concluding the article, it believes that Japanese culture is not using theatre characteristics into cinematography and believes it could do wonders for the Japanese cinematography if included.
The second reading, emphasize the idea that cinematography is foremost montage. Eisenstein used Japanese cinema as a prime example of how incognizant they are to it. He explains that if used properly, montage can in fact enhance and even improve their level of cinematography. Interestingly, Eisentein explains that "shots is a montage cell" (37), and through the collisions of shots, together can create one abstract idea. From shot A to shot B, one can take two non-related objects and together can create a new message, idea, or even statement. For example, a mouth and a bird together symbolize "to sing", and a dog and a mouth symbolize "to bark", thus creating a more clever way to reveal the message.
Sergei Eisenstein commends the Japanese culture for their profound application of montage. For example, in forms such as hieroglyphics, poetry, and theater, Eisenstein outlines the use of montage holds in his article “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram”. Aspects of Japanese theater impress me most. It is intriguing to learn about the quick changes of character in contrast to the “use of a slow tempo” (43) exhibited onstage.
Likewise, I find the connection between the article and this week’s section on montage equally enjoyable. As we witnessed in the lecture, a montage can be any two unrelated ideas joined to arouse a narrative or certain emotion. Eisenstein appropriately defines montage as a “…collision…by the conflict of two pieces in opposition to each other” (37). He provides an example in a Japanese hieroglyphic—“a dog + a mouth = to bark” (30)—to display two seemingly dissimilar objects that, when combined, produce a particular response. I find that his explanations are both concise and valuable in explaining the application of montage in different forms of art.
In "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" by Sergei Eisenstein, he investigates why Japanese cinema fails to utilize montage. He highlights that Japan uses montage in several aspects of Japanese culture, which makes you wonder why it is not more prevalent in Japanese cinema. Eisenstein's first example of the Japanese's use of montage is the hieroglyph. The combination of two "depictables" creates a new idea or new meaning, which could not be represented by either picture alone. Eisenstein then goes into Japanese theater, noting methods of montage through "acting without transitions" and the use of a slow tempo. Eisenstein criticizes Japanese cinema for imitating poor American and European cinema, and instead urges the Japanese to draw influence from their own representational culture and implement montage into their cinema.
This article was interesting in disecting Japanese culture and arts (drawing, theatre and language) in order to understand the cinematic form. Eisenstein uses the commonality of "Montage" in all of these forms in order to describe film. The difference between the aspects of Japanese culture and cinema is the use of time and space. The control of time and space can create narratives that are more focused as well as abstract. The flimmaker can control what the audiences sees through the use of the lense, but this can be distorted and manipulated using filters in order to create a heightened emotional response. Time can also appear continuous or fractured depending on how one edits the images together. A question this article made me curious about is whether abstraction in an art form or language (such as hieroglyphics being converted to simplier lines and shapes)creates more possiblity for meaning and functional use?
Before reading the “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram”, I have known a little bit about Sergei Eisenstein. He is a pioneering Soviet film director and the Father of Montage. I have seen one of his films “The Battleship Potemkin”, it has perfectly presented how Montage editing works.
The article basically describes Montage editing as combining two simple scenes and get into a more meaningful idea to audiences. Different combination can lead to a totally different meaning. In the article, Eisenstein gives us an example of some subjects (a dog, a child and a bird) combine with mouth and get into different results. It is a very interesting editing ways to think about.
However, Eisenstein thinks Montage is conflict; he even defines every art is conflict. I totally agree with him since the different opinion about identifying the elements that make it a piece of art. People have variety opinion of the world and Arts. Comparing to simply offering a strong and shocking conflict for the viewers, it seems that a resolution to the conflict proposed has also been a prominent way of presenting art.
Sergei Eisenstein illustrates how ideogram and the cinematic principle develop in this article. He surprised me with his study on the connection between cinematic principle and the traditional Japanese ideogram, Haiku, and pictorial art. I used to hold the opinion that films are built by the shots but after reading this article, I noticed that actually there are many “chemical effects” taking place between those shots. Just as he says in his article that “by what, then, is montage characterized and, consequently its cell-the shot? By collision, by the conflict of two pieces in opposition to each other, by conflict, by collision”. Which means combining shots together, we can get the product after they conflict with each other rather than the sum of them. Adding shots together is like adding parts of hieroglyph together to get a new word or like adding words together to create scenes in Haiku. His point of view enlightens me that when we are writing articles or making films, the effects of the films and articles as a whole is much more important than having a single scene or a paragraph which is beautiful.
Sergei Einstein's essay describes the phenomena of montage in film. Mostly, he differentiates between Japanese art form and performance and typical film practices of his home country of Russia as well as other film practices around the world. His main topic of discussion deals with montages. I always believed that a montage was just a bunch of different and random shots strung together that somehow came together to create meaning in a scene. But Sergei, being a bit more of an expert than I am, shows off his artistic prowess when he goes on to describe a montage as a conflict. He goes much more in depth than my understanding, but it makes perfect sense- the conflicts between perspective, long shots and close shots, conflicts between direction, slow-motion and fast-motion, as well as conflicts in lighting. His description goes into so much more depth and detail in comparison to mine, but it really is true. There seems to be a fight occurring between these different facets of the shots, and what may seem crazy and distorted shots in a scene actually come out to make perfect sense and add so much more to the overall emotion and feelings experienced when watching a film. I would certainly not have been introduced to such a concept of montage without the un-matched knowledge and expertise of the one and only, Sergei Einstein.
Sergei Eisenstein places an heavy emphasis on the word "laconic" which he then connects to haikus and how they are essentially literal montages. The way haikus depict imagery and connect that information to a deeper meaning is essentially an cinematographer's mission. Which then introduces the ambiguity and essential aspect of the art medium. He also introduces how, in montages, there is a conflict and collision of information which then creates a story or idea. This is essentially an editor's duty to place images together to create such conflict. Another aspect of the film medium he discusses is how in drawing process, pupils are to deduct information from a whole and then compose in such a way that is compositional. In my opinion, he practically fuses all aspects of the art world together, from the paint to literal medium, which shows how layered cinema truly is. It is amazing how much of film production techniques are deducted from all different centuries of the Japanese art world and became a stepping stone for many artists to follow.
Sergei Eisenstein takes a look at Japanese video art and compares it's lack of montage to the inherent montage in Japanese culture. Haiku's and writing are both done in montage within Japanese culture and yet that isn't translated over into the video. A key concept brought up is this idea of conflict in videos, more specifically montages. Whenever we want to bring up an idea or emotion we create conflict in the scene. Having 2 opposing shots, or 2 entirely different moods captured by the lens are normal ways of creating conflict. I feel that nearly all of video productions is based around this conflict. Every shot is meticulously constructed to have a certain feel, a certain emotion which can only be brought out with some sort of conflict. And lastly brought up was this conflicting methodology in media over how to teach drawing. Whether to focus on having the camera dissect a shot or to have the camera capture the perfect shot seemed to be the difference. Overall they both seem like good techniques to employ, which is probably why they synthesize so well.
Sergei Einstein's essay on Japanese cinema was interesting in its point of view on the different roles montage plays in most cinema and the Japanese style. Sergei states that cinema is first and for most montage but, at the same time writes that Japanese cinema is completely unaware of montage. I found this odd because by that logic Japanese cinema isn't cinema at all then. Getting past that I found Einstein's description of the hieroglyph intriguing. He explains how two images put together are more defined by their product rather than their sum and thus able to represent some thing that otherwise could not be drawn. The problem with that is two images' product might be different for each individual depending how they interpret them. This can also be true in cinema as well since two scenes one after the other might not be viewed with the same meaning.
Sergei Eisenstein’s “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram” is an essay in film theory that correlates the Japanese culture and the foremost cinematic principle, montage. Japanese cinema apparently lacks montage, however its culture constantly incorporates its most basic concept and application. Eisenstein points out that the Japanese written language is very similar to montage. The Japanese language is composed of hieroglyphs. A standalone hieroglyphic character has a singular meaning, but a combination of characters creates another meaning, word, or phrase. In comparison to the basic understanding of montage, a single character is equivalent to a single shot, but multiple characters combined is equivalent to a series of shots which create a different context. Eisenstein goes on to describe other aspects of the Japanese culture that incorporate montage, but his analogy to the Japanese written language best simplified and described the concept of montage.
In “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram”, Sergei Eisenstein draws an intriguing connection to the cinematographic montage to many Japanese cultural traditions, while maintaining that the montage is precisely what is lacking in Japanese cinema. He compares the Japanese hieroglyph – two illustrations that when separate correspond to and object, but their combination corresponds to a concept (30). This is precisely what a montage is but only with cinematic shots instead of illustrations. Eisenstein also draws a parallel with the Japanese artist Sharaku stating that all the facial features of his portraits are misrelated and disproportionate. “By combining these monstrous incongruities we newly collect the disintegrated event into one whol, but in our aspect. According to the treatment of our relation to the event” (34). Eisenstein’s explanation of a montage being a collision/conflict rather than a linear sequence of different shots is interesting and the way he related it to methods of teaching was unexpected; although, I can’t say that I fully grasped this concept. I would have also liked to have had a more in depth explanation and more examples of how Japanese cinema does not fulfill his idea of the montage since I do not have background knowledge on this topic.
In Sergei Einstein’s essay “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram”, he talks about the use and role of cinematography and how it’s “first and foremost” (Einstein 28) montage. He goes on to say that Japanese cinema is “unaware of montage” (28). It’s interesting that he points out how the principle of montage is used everywhere in Japanese culture like writing for example. It is also interesting that Einstein would say that there is Japanese cinema when there is no montage, or no cinematography. This seems a bit impractical. However, the Japanese culture, more specifically in Japanese cinema, they have adapted to create something new and profound. For example, the use of “acting without transitions” (42) where actors would be temporarily hidden from the audience while he changes, and after a few moments, he is back on stage again but with a new costume and make-up. He is now another character. So Japanese cinema has stepped away from the traditional European and Western style of transitioning and created something else that also works in cinema if done in a certain way. Another interesting point Einstein points out in his essay is the “colliding” two things into one thing to create a concept. It can almost be like a ying-yang idea where two contrasting ideas merge into one unified idea to create something profound.
Sergei talks about how montage is conflict. He talks about how conflict can be within and outside the fram or the story. One of the conflict includes optical conflict, which is the conflict between frame of the shot and the object. He uses Japanese drawing as an example for cinemetography; which piece is a piece of actuality with the ax of the lens. He also uses Japanese theater as an example of early acting without transitions. In addition, he mentions that sound film is the most important link to Japanese theater. He mentions, however, that because the Japanese are manifest only the most "revolting" examples of American and European entries in the international film race, it is both shameful and ironic.
Sergei Eisenstein’s article “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram” is a timeless discussion of montage and how it came to be. He also discusses how it works mechanically in relation to older forms of media. Eisenstein references the time-old example of Chinese and Japanese characters, explaining how evocative the characters are as images, especially when combined. Images, which when separate have one meaning, are completely different when put in relation to another. For example, he points out how a dog next to a mouth indicates barking, where as a bird next to a mouth indicates singing. In this way the individual meaning of the images is lost, and instead replaced by one meaning indicated with their combination. I found it interesting when he brought up haiku poetry, and brought to light that it does much the same thing. In a way, it is a script for a very short, beautiful film. It describes two or three frames, and combines them in intentional succession to create an overall significance .Moving from the simple comination of words or images, Eisenstein describes his opinion on how best to use montage. Rather than asserting montage as similar to laying bricks, he firmly states it to be more of a collision. This makes sense to me, especially in relation to what he was saying previously about combining images to affect one another. Brick laying implies they are equal and no more significant together than they are apart except to create the overall structure. Montage should create an overall structure, but this structures is composed of many small collisions: every frame evokes a feeling or meaning. If a frame has no meaning, then it should not exist. Eisenstein goes into further detail regarding these collisions, praising contrast between two frames, be it through line, scale, volume, mass or depth. That is to say, by using different lighting between two shots, or filming on a different scale to pull attention to something important. If each frame is too similar, the film loses its strength, and becomes monotone and bland. Eisenstein, a master of film, has much to offer in this article which does not date badly at all. I believe this is because he discusses abstract concepts which are very relevant to any era of technology.
Sergei Eisenstein uses historic examples from Japan and Egyptian heiroglyphs to make a point about the importance of montage in conveying a message in cinema. Like in lecture, he asserts that putting two seemingly unrelated images together can form a contrast that brings out a completely new meaning. He backs up this claim by comparing it to the Egyptian hieroglyphs, where a single symbol can mean something different when paired together with another. When compared to Japanese theater, we can see the importance of having montage to convey clear meaning through conflicted images. While in theater everything is exposed to the viewer, in film one can frame the shot a certain way so as to portray a specific mood or tone. I agree with Eisenstein to some extent, because it is true that montage is important to convey meaning, but it is also important to appreciate other forms of art and expression.
In "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram", Sergei Einstein is mainly expounding the general knowledge and the importance of montage. For perhaps Einstein has done his research in Japanese film industry, he uses the country as the stage, mostly critically point out their lack of montage by stating several examples based on Japanese culture and film education. However in the end, he still leaves words of admiration on the remarkable Japanese theater which is unknown for the western world. For my own opinion, there's no right or wrong with the a certain way of using montage. The differences among the quantity and the strategy for montage can actually be used to produce films in a great variety of styles and keep film from being more and more industrialized.
In the article “The Cinematic Principle of the Ideogram”, Sergei Eisenstein proposes that Japanese culture holds more cinematographic traits than Japanese cinema. He approaches this through the cultural icons of Japan, such as hieroglyph and Kabuki theater, as examples of montage, objects with separate implications but together create a new concept. He fights the notion of montage as being a combination, assembly, or linkage of the elemental shots; rather, he characterizes montage as “the conflict of two pieces in opposition to each other” (37). This notion of conflict and idea of opposition seems to work specifically with elements in the frame, such as scales and masses. He also describes the overall struggle and conflict of an object and the framing of the shot, and whether or not to direct or dissect a shot, possibly even both. He relates this back to Japanese cinema at the end, encouraging the Japanese to take cinema through the already existent montage (or “cinematography”) in their culture.
In "The Cinematic Principle of the Ideogram," Sergei Einstein shows us the many uses of cinematic principles in Japanese culture, and their conspicuous absence in its cinema. He also goes into some depth as to the nature of montage.
According to Einstein, montage is the "collision" of two pieces in opposition to each other. He denounces the old-school thinking that claims montage works "brick by brick," noting the limitations imposed by this method of thinking. Essentially, he defines montage as something greater than the sum of its parts.
Almost all aspects of cinema are covered in Japanese culture. I haven't thought of writing as cinematic of itself, but Einstein makes a good case for the montage inherent in Chinese hieroglyphs. Sets of their stylized imagistic script collide as a product to form new meaning, much as the shots on a video come together to craft a narrative. Japanese students learn how to draw by cutting out compositional units from larger pictures; not so different from the way cinematographers frame their shots.
Einstein also states that Japanese theater excels in cinematic innovation as well, and is especially intrigued by its abrupt and unusual transitions. Emotions on actors' faces range from different extremes from moment to moment in the theater, duly aided by rapid changes of grease-paint makeup. Montage is especially apparent in the unique separation of body-roles e.g., arm, leg acting.
He ends by pointing out that Japanese cinema itself fails to adopt the cinematic principles that most all other aspects of its culture clearly have. He exhorts his Japanese peers to apply their cultural "peculiarities" to their cinema, and challenges them to improve.
Personally I think Einstein may be almost arrogant in his judgement against Japanese cinema, but I do believe that he makes a compelling argument for its potential for betterment.
In his article The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram, Segei Einstein argues the cinematographic traits of Japanese culture are derived from outside of Japanese cinema. The author opens by suggesting that cinematography is, in essence, a montage--a concept unrecognized by Japanese cinema. Rather, Einstein claims that writing in Japanese cinema is represented by the hieroglyph, and each hieroglyph when paired with another hieroglyph takes on an extra dimension of meaning. The author explains that a series of hieroglyphs functions as a concept, which is roughly analogous to “depiction,” combining shots, each of which are (often) singular in meaning into intellectual contexts. It is in this way, argues Einstein, that Chinese Laconism and the Japanese Haiku are merely Hieroglyphs transposed into phrases, structurally analogous to the ideogram. Einstein goes on (and on, and on) to support his claim by referencing everything from the disproportions of Sharaku sculptures to the geometrical representation of hyperbolae to biological cell division to spheres colliding in physics. Einstein argues that the most progressive leaders of Japanese theater are misdirecting their energies, resulting in “…revolting examples American and European entries in the international commercial film race.”
The stylistic cinematic montage Eisenstein correlated to Japanese culture of communicating through a representational writing defines a culture based understanding of images when depicted together create a concept. A key point is that the culture creates the understanding of the concept. I would not have associated the ideogram of the independent mouth and symbol of a child to mean "scream" as it has not been part of my culture. I do understand that the famous montage on the steps of Odessa in the Battleship Potemkin signifies danger and fear. The last part of the article sounded like huge criticism of Japanese cinema without any examples to support the opinion and seemed to be a disjointed way to end the article.
Sergei Eisenstein in the article, The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram, talks mainly about montage usage in film and relating montage to the Japanese characters of hieroglyph writings. I feel that this article is a bit biased in a way he doesn't appreciate Japanese cinematography because they don't master in montage as well as other countries. Eisenstein seems to be fascinated by Japanese writings in which they use montage of having two different-meaning characters (kanji) put together to make a new character with a new meaning. Eisenstein doesn't think Japanese don't use montage at all in their acting as they concentrate more in "consecutive and detailed flesh and blood of naturalism(43)". However, I don't think this should lead him to believe that the Japanese HAS to implement montage in any of their film productions as I don't think ALL of their movies suck without montages. I have seen several japanese movies, tv shows and films myself and it is true they don't use as much montage as in American movies. I think that is why Japanese movies feels like it has a slower plot line since there's not that many suspense build-up through montage and how I personally think American action movies are better than Japanese through the usage of montage (except for scary movies, I think Japanese scary movies are the best in building suspense). I thought Eisenstein brought up a good point of montage use in Japanese writing and interesting by the concept of montage in their characters. I never thought of how that very same technique of montage is also used in cinematography as well.
Sergei Eisenstein makes a strong point when analyzing Japanese film that the lack of montage in its theater is contrary to the history and culture of Japanese society. It is interesting to note that Japanese calligraphy, haiku and drawings all share a method of montage by which two images are juxtaposed to infer a third greater idea. As Eisenstein describes an eye drawn next to a tear means sorrow in Japanese calligraphy just as two independent clips in film may be juxtaposed to create some other abstract idea. I however disagree with Eisenstein when he suggests that this lack of montage in their film is somehow a negative thing. I believe that lacking montage or rather performing a whole scene in a single cut in and of itself has its own merit. One does not need to rely on the illusion of montage to create interesting or worthwhile cinema. In fact I would argue that long scenes are in and of themselves a form of montage simply by being video. Video after all is a progression of still images to create the illusion of motion. In this thought two separate yet related images are combined to create a third thing this third thing is the illusion of motion that we only perceive in our mind but does not physically exist within the piece and therefore simply by being a part of film does not simply Japanese film but all film exhibit the fundamental characteristics of montage.
Sergei Eisenstein clearly has a liking for Japanese cinema, however he clearly establishes that it lacks montage, and montage is very important. He defines it as "combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in content-into intellectual contexts and series"(14). Eisenstein portrays a basic formula of the adornment transforming into an image. I enjoyed his essay because the author emphasized that we create our own aspect by combining different events into one whole. Montage is also conflict, according to Eisenstein. Conflict can result from shots, scales, masses, and depths, resulting in conflicts in time and duration. However, it is a necessary component in media. Eisenstein concludes by pointing out the link of Japanese theater sound film, which goes along with our senses.
ReplyDeleteHaving associated "montages" mainly with video's close cousin, photography, it was a little hard for me to imagine video as a montage, but the more I read into the essay, the more I realized this was the case. I enjoyed the extended metaphor of video shots being cells, and the cells colliding, but I disagree with Sergei Einstein's idea of linkage being a result of collision. This thought implies that because of the collision of two shots comes about a result.
ReplyDeleteI doubt many filmmakers would start shooting random scenes and simultaneously decide that so-and-so scenes would make a wonderful conclusion. The theory that collision arises from linkage might be a more plausible one, in my opinion. The organization of two shots might create such an interesting result that the artist might decide to create an offshoot from the two links, which represents the "collision" and vectors Einstein brought up.
As a whole, however, I cannot pretend to fully understand the point of this essay, since Einstein used a lot of examples from Japanese "cinematography," though they more closely resemble descriptions of on-stage performances, rather than motion pictures.
The second week’s reading, “The Cinematic Principle and Ideogram” by Sergei Eisenstein seemed a bit distorted to me and could have discussed the idea behind Japanese cinematography better. It starts with the idea of montage, which I casually think of is artistic understanding and instinct to deduce meaning from symbols and cannot be subjective to the interpretation of a single individual. A mouth and a child together do not necessarily mean ‘scream’ to me. The child could be ‘hungry’. But however, the article quickly moves to discussing theatre art and how the stage architecture and an artist’s topography and facial expressions can define stakes in scenarios. In concluding the article, it believes that Japanese culture is not using theatre characteristics into cinematography and believes it could do wonders for the Japanese cinematography if included.
ReplyDeleteThe second reading, emphasize the idea that cinematography is foremost montage. Eisenstein used Japanese cinema as a prime example of how incognizant they are to it. He explains that if used properly, montage can in fact enhance and even improve their level of cinematography. Interestingly, Eisentein explains that "shots is a montage cell" (37), and through the collisions of shots, together can create one abstract idea. From shot A to shot B, one can take two non-related objects and together can create a new message, idea, or even statement. For example, a mouth and a bird together symbolize "to sing", and a dog and a mouth symbolize "to bark", thus creating a more clever way to reveal the message.
ReplyDeleteSergei Eisenstein commends the Japanese culture for their profound application of montage. For example, in forms such as hieroglyphics, poetry, and theater, Eisenstein outlines the use of montage holds in his article “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram”. Aspects of Japanese theater impress me most. It is intriguing to learn about the quick changes of character in contrast to the “use of a slow tempo” (43) exhibited onstage.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, I find the connection between the article and this week’s section on montage equally enjoyable. As we witnessed in the lecture, a montage can be any two unrelated ideas joined to arouse a narrative or certain emotion. Eisenstein appropriately defines montage as a “…collision…by the conflict of two pieces in opposition to each other” (37). He provides an example in a Japanese hieroglyphic—“a dog + a mouth = to bark” (30)—to display two seemingly dissimilar objects that, when combined, produce a particular response. I find that his explanations are both concise and valuable in explaining the application of montage in different forms of art.
In "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" by Sergei Eisenstein, he investigates why Japanese cinema fails to utilize montage. He highlights that Japan uses montage in several aspects of Japanese culture, which makes you wonder why it is not more prevalent in Japanese cinema. Eisenstein's first example of the Japanese's use of montage is the hieroglyph. The combination of two "depictables" creates a new idea or new meaning, which could not be represented by either picture alone. Eisenstein then goes into Japanese theater, noting methods of montage through "acting without transitions" and the use of a slow tempo. Eisenstein criticizes Japanese cinema for imitating poor American and European cinema, and instead urges the Japanese to draw influence from their own representational culture and implement montage into their cinema.
ReplyDeleteThis article was interesting in disecting Japanese culture and arts (drawing, theatre and language) in order to understand the cinematic form. Eisenstein uses the commonality of "Montage" in all of these forms in order to describe film. The difference between the aspects of Japanese culture and cinema is the use of time and space. The control of time and space can create narratives that are more focused as well as abstract. The flimmaker can control what the audiences sees through the use of the lense, but this can be distorted and manipulated using filters in order to create a heightened emotional response. Time can also appear continuous or fractured depending on how one edits the images together. A question this article made me curious about is whether abstraction in an art form or language (such as hieroglyphics being converted to simplier lines and shapes)creates more possiblity for meaning and functional use?
ReplyDeleteBefore reading the “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram”, I have known a little bit about Sergei Eisenstein. He is a pioneering Soviet film director and the Father of Montage. I have seen one of his films “The Battleship Potemkin”, it has perfectly presented how Montage editing works.
ReplyDeleteThe article basically describes Montage editing as combining two simple scenes and get into a more meaningful idea to audiences. Different combination can lead to a totally different meaning. In the article, Eisenstein gives us an example of some subjects (a dog, a child and a bird) combine with mouth and get into different results. It is a very interesting editing ways to think about.
However, Eisenstein thinks Montage is conflict; he even defines every art is conflict. I totally agree with him since the different opinion about identifying the elements that make it a piece of art. People have variety opinion of the world and Arts. Comparing to simply offering a strong and shocking conflict for the viewers, it seems that a resolution to the conflict proposed has also been a prominent way of presenting art.
Sergei Eisenstein illustrates how ideogram and the cinematic principle develop in this article. He surprised me with his study on the connection between cinematic principle and the traditional Japanese ideogram, Haiku, and pictorial art. I used to hold the opinion that films are built by the shots but after reading this article, I noticed that actually there are many “chemical effects” taking place between those shots. Just as he says in his article that “by what, then, is montage characterized and, consequently its cell-the shot? By collision, by the conflict of two pieces in opposition to each other, by conflict, by collision”. Which means combining shots together, we can get the product after they conflict with each other rather than the sum of them. Adding shots together is like adding parts of hieroglyph together to get a new word or like adding words together to create scenes in Haiku. His point of view enlightens me that when we are writing articles or making films, the effects of the films and articles as a whole is much more important than having a single scene or a paragraph which is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteSergei Einstein's essay describes the phenomena of montage in film. Mostly, he differentiates between Japanese art form and performance and typical film practices of his home country of Russia as well as other film practices around the world. His main topic of discussion deals with montages. I always believed that a montage was just a bunch of different and random shots strung together that somehow came together to create meaning in a scene. But Sergei, being a bit more of an expert than I am, shows off his artistic prowess when he goes on to describe a montage as a conflict. He goes much more in depth than my understanding, but it makes perfect sense- the conflicts between perspective, long shots and close shots, conflicts between direction, slow-motion and fast-motion, as well as conflicts in lighting. His description goes into so much more depth and detail in comparison to mine, but it really is true. There seems to be a fight occurring between these different facets of the shots, and what may seem crazy and distorted shots in a scene actually come out to make perfect sense and add so much more to the overall emotion and feelings experienced when watching a film. I would certainly not have been introduced to such a concept of montage without the un-matched knowledge and expertise of the one and only, Sergei Einstein.
ReplyDeleteSergei Eisenstein places an heavy emphasis on the word "laconic" which he then connects to haikus and how they are essentially literal montages. The way haikus depict imagery and connect that information to a deeper meaning is essentially an cinematographer's mission. Which then introduces the ambiguity and essential aspect of the art medium. He also introduces how, in montages, there is a conflict and collision of information which then creates a story or idea. This is essentially an editor's duty to place images together to create such conflict. Another aspect of the film medium he discusses is how in drawing process, pupils are to deduct information from a whole and then compose in such a way that is compositional. In my opinion, he practically fuses all aspects of the art world together, from the paint to literal medium, which shows how layered cinema truly is. It is amazing how much of film production techniques are deducted from all different centuries of the Japanese art world and became a stepping stone for many artists to follow.
ReplyDeleteSergei Eisenstein takes a look at Japanese video art and compares it's lack of montage to the inherent montage in Japanese culture. Haiku's and writing are both done in montage within Japanese culture and yet that isn't translated over into the video. A key concept brought up is this idea of conflict in videos, more specifically montages. Whenever we want to bring up an idea or emotion we create conflict in the scene. Having 2 opposing shots, or 2 entirely different moods captured by the lens are normal ways of creating conflict. I feel that nearly all of video productions is based around this conflict. Every shot is meticulously constructed to have a certain feel, a certain emotion which can only be brought out with some sort of conflict. And lastly brought up was this conflicting methodology in media over how to teach drawing. Whether to focus on having the camera dissect a shot or to have the camera capture the perfect shot seemed to be the difference. Overall they both seem like good techniques to employ, which is probably why they synthesize so well.
ReplyDeleteSergei Einstein's essay on Japanese cinema was interesting in its point of view on the different roles montage plays in most cinema and the Japanese style. Sergei states that cinema is first and for most montage but, at the same time writes that Japanese cinema is completely unaware of montage. I found this odd because by that logic Japanese cinema isn't cinema at all then. Getting past that I found Einstein's description of the hieroglyph intriguing. He explains how two images put together are more defined by their product rather than their sum and thus able to represent some thing that otherwise could not be drawn. The problem with that is two images' product might be different for each individual depending how they interpret them. This can also be true in cinema as well since two scenes one after the other might not be viewed with the same meaning.
ReplyDeleteSergei Eisenstein’s “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram” is an essay in film theory that correlates the Japanese culture and the foremost cinematic principle, montage. Japanese cinema apparently lacks montage, however its culture constantly incorporates its most basic concept and application. Eisenstein points out that the Japanese written language is very similar to montage. The Japanese language is composed of hieroglyphs. A standalone hieroglyphic character has a singular meaning, but a combination of characters creates another meaning, word, or phrase. In comparison to the basic understanding of montage, a single character is equivalent to a single shot, but multiple characters combined is equivalent to a series of shots which create a different context. Eisenstein goes on to describe other aspects of the Japanese culture that incorporate montage, but his analogy to the Japanese written language best simplified and described the concept of montage.
ReplyDeleteIn “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram”, Sergei Eisenstein draws an intriguing connection to the cinematographic montage to many Japanese cultural traditions, while maintaining that the montage is precisely what is lacking in Japanese cinema. He compares the Japanese hieroglyph – two illustrations that when separate correspond to and object, but their combination corresponds to a concept (30). This is precisely what a montage is but only with cinematic shots instead of illustrations.
ReplyDeleteEisenstein also draws a parallel with the Japanese artist Sharaku stating that all the facial features of his portraits are misrelated and disproportionate. “By combining these monstrous incongruities we newly collect the disintegrated event into one whol, but in our aspect. According to the treatment of our relation to the event” (34).
Eisenstein’s explanation of a montage being a collision/conflict rather than a linear sequence of different shots is interesting and the way he related it to methods of teaching was unexpected; although, I can’t say that I fully grasped this concept. I would have also liked to have had a more in depth explanation and more examples of how Japanese cinema does not fulfill his idea of the montage since I do not have background knowledge on this topic.
In Sergei Einstein’s essay “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram”, he talks about the use and role of cinematography and how it’s “first and foremost” (Einstein 28) montage. He goes on to say that Japanese cinema is “unaware of montage” (28). It’s interesting that he points out how the principle of montage is used everywhere in Japanese culture like writing for example. It is also interesting that Einstein would say that there is Japanese cinema when there is no montage, or no cinematography. This seems a bit impractical. However, the Japanese culture, more specifically in Japanese cinema, they have adapted to create something new and profound. For example, the use of “acting without transitions” (42) where actors would be temporarily hidden from the audience while he changes, and after a few moments, he is back on stage again but with a new costume and make-up. He is now another character. So Japanese cinema has stepped away from the traditional European and Western style of transitioning and created something else that also works in cinema if done in a certain way. Another interesting point Einstein points out in his essay is the “colliding” two things into one thing to create a concept. It can almost be like a ying-yang idea where two contrasting ideas merge into one unified idea to create something profound.
ReplyDeleteSergei talks about how montage is conflict. He talks about how conflict can be within and outside the fram or the story. One of the conflict includes optical conflict, which is the conflict between frame of the shot and the object. He uses Japanese drawing as an example for cinemetography; which piece is a piece of actuality with the ax of the lens. He also uses Japanese theater as an example of early acting without transitions. In addition, he mentions that sound film is the most important link to Japanese theater. He mentions, however, that because the Japanese are manifest only the most "revolting" examples of American and European entries in the international film race, it is both shameful and ironic.
ReplyDeleteSergei Eisenstein’s article “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram” is a timeless discussion of montage and how it came to be. He also discusses how it works mechanically in relation to older forms of media. Eisenstein references the time-old example of Chinese and Japanese characters, explaining how evocative the characters are as images, especially when combined. Images, which when separate have one meaning, are completely different when put in relation to another. For example, he points out how a dog next to a mouth indicates barking, where as a bird next to a mouth indicates singing. In this way the individual meaning of the images is lost, and instead replaced by one meaning indicated with their combination. I found it interesting when he brought up haiku poetry, and brought to light that it does much the same thing. In a way, it is a script for a very short, beautiful film. It describes two or three frames, and combines them in intentional succession to create an overall significance .Moving from the simple comination of words or images, Eisenstein describes his opinion on how best to use montage. Rather than asserting montage as similar to laying bricks, he firmly states it to be more of a collision. This makes sense to me, especially in relation to what he was saying previously about combining images to affect one another. Brick laying implies they are equal and no more significant together than they are apart except to create the overall structure. Montage should create an overall structure, but this structures is composed of many small collisions: every frame evokes a feeling or meaning. If a frame has no meaning, then it should not exist. Eisenstein goes into further detail regarding these collisions, praising contrast between two frames, be it through line, scale, volume, mass or depth. That is to say, by using different lighting between two shots, or filming on a different scale to pull attention to something important. If each frame is too similar, the film loses its strength, and becomes monotone and bland. Eisenstein, a master of film, has much to offer in this article which does not date badly at all. I believe this is because he discusses abstract concepts which are very relevant to any era of technology.
ReplyDeleteSergei Eisenstein uses historic examples from Japan and Egyptian heiroglyphs to make a point about the importance of montage in conveying a message in cinema. Like in lecture, he asserts that putting two seemingly unrelated images together can form a contrast that brings out a completely new meaning. He backs up this claim by comparing it to the Egyptian hieroglyphs, where a single symbol can mean something different when paired together with another. When compared to Japanese theater, we can see the importance of having montage to convey clear meaning through conflicted images. While in theater everything is exposed to the viewer, in film one can frame the shot a certain way so as to portray a specific mood or tone. I agree with Eisenstein to some extent, because it is true that montage is important to convey meaning, but it is also important to appreciate other forms of art and expression.
ReplyDeleteIn "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram", Sergei Einstein is mainly expounding the general knowledge and the importance of montage. For perhaps Einstein has done his research in Japanese film industry, he uses the country as the stage, mostly critically point out their lack of montage by stating several examples based on Japanese culture and film education. However in the end, he still leaves words of admiration on the remarkable Japanese theater which is unknown for the western world. For my own opinion, there's no right or wrong with the a certain way of using montage. The differences among the quantity and the strategy for montage can actually be used to produce films in a great variety of styles and keep film from being more and more industrialized.
ReplyDeleteIn the article “The Cinematic Principle of the Ideogram”, Sergei Eisenstein proposes that Japanese culture holds more cinematographic traits than Japanese cinema. He approaches this through the cultural icons of Japan, such as hieroglyph and Kabuki theater, as examples of montage, objects with separate implications but together create a new concept. He fights the notion of montage as being a combination, assembly, or linkage of the elemental shots; rather, he characterizes montage as “the conflict of two pieces in opposition to each other” (37). This notion of conflict and idea of opposition seems to work specifically with elements in the frame, such as scales and masses. He also describes the overall struggle and conflict of an object and the framing of the shot, and whether or not to direct or dissect a shot, possibly even both. He relates this back to Japanese cinema at the end, encouraging the Japanese to take cinema through the already existent montage (or “cinematography”) in their culture.
ReplyDeleteIn "The Cinematic Principle of the Ideogram," Sergei Einstein shows us the many uses of cinematic principles in Japanese culture, and their conspicuous absence in its cinema. He also goes into some depth as to the nature of montage.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Einstein, montage is the "collision" of two pieces in opposition to each other. He denounces the old-school thinking that claims montage works "brick by brick," noting the limitations imposed by this method of thinking. Essentially, he defines montage as something greater than the sum of its parts.
Almost all aspects of cinema are covered in Japanese culture. I haven't thought of writing as cinematic of itself, but Einstein makes a good case for the montage inherent in Chinese hieroglyphs. Sets of their stylized imagistic script collide as a product to form new meaning, much as the shots on a video come together to craft a narrative. Japanese students learn how to draw by cutting out compositional units from larger pictures; not so different from the way cinematographers frame their shots.
Einstein also states that Japanese theater excels in cinematic innovation as well, and is especially intrigued by its abrupt and unusual transitions. Emotions on actors' faces range from different extremes from moment to moment in the theater, duly aided by rapid changes of grease-paint makeup. Montage is especially apparent in the unique separation of body-roles e.g., arm, leg acting.
He ends by pointing out that Japanese cinema itself fails to adopt the cinematic principles that most all other aspects of its culture clearly have. He exhorts his Japanese peers to apply their cultural "peculiarities" to their cinema, and challenges them to improve.
Personally I think Einstein may be almost arrogant in his judgement against Japanese cinema, but I do believe that he makes a compelling argument for its potential for betterment.
In his article The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram, Segei Einstein argues the cinematographic traits of Japanese culture are derived from outside of Japanese cinema. The author opens by suggesting that cinematography is, in essence, a montage--a concept unrecognized by Japanese cinema. Rather, Einstein claims that writing in Japanese cinema is represented by the hieroglyph, and each hieroglyph when paired with another hieroglyph takes on an extra dimension of meaning. The author explains that a series of hieroglyphs functions as a concept, which is roughly analogous to “depiction,” combining shots, each of which are (often) singular in meaning into intellectual contexts. It is in this way, argues Einstein, that Chinese Laconism and the Japanese Haiku are merely Hieroglyphs transposed into phrases, structurally analogous to the ideogram. Einstein goes on (and on, and on) to support his claim by referencing everything from the disproportions of Sharaku sculptures to the geometrical representation of hyperbolae to biological cell division to spheres colliding in physics. Einstein argues that the most progressive leaders of Japanese theater are misdirecting their energies, resulting in “…revolting examples American and European entries in the international commercial film race.”
ReplyDeleteThe stylistic cinematic montage Eisenstein correlated to Japanese culture of communicating through a representational writing defines a culture based understanding of images when depicted together create a concept. A key point is that the culture creates the understanding of the concept. I would not have associated the ideogram of the independent mouth and symbol of a child to mean "scream" as it has not been part of my culture. I do understand that the famous montage on the steps of Odessa in the Battleship Potemkin signifies danger and fear.
ReplyDeleteThe last part of the article sounded like huge criticism of Japanese cinema without any examples to support the opinion and seemed to be a disjointed way to end the article.
Sergei Eisenstein in the article, The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram, talks mainly about montage usage in film and relating montage to the Japanese characters of hieroglyph writings. I feel that this article is a bit biased in a way he doesn't appreciate Japanese cinematography because they don't master in montage as well as other countries. Eisenstein seems to be fascinated by Japanese writings in which they use montage of having two different-meaning characters (kanji) put together to make a new character with a new meaning.
ReplyDeleteEisenstein doesn't think Japanese don't use montage at all in their acting as they concentrate more in "consecutive and detailed flesh and blood of naturalism(43)". However, I don't think this should lead him to believe that the Japanese HAS to implement montage in any of their film productions as I don't think ALL of their movies suck without montages.
I have seen several japanese movies, tv shows and films myself and it is true they don't use as much montage as in American movies. I think that is why Japanese movies feels like it has a slower plot line since there's not that many suspense build-up through montage and how I personally think American action movies are better than Japanese through the usage of montage (except for scary movies, I think Japanese scary movies are the best in building suspense).
I thought Eisenstein brought up a good point of montage use in Japanese writing and interesting by the concept of montage in their characters. I never thought of how that very same technique of montage is also used in cinematography as well.
Sergei Eisenstein makes a strong point when analyzing Japanese film that the lack of montage in its theater is contrary to the history and culture of Japanese society. It is interesting to note that Japanese calligraphy, haiku and drawings all share a method of montage by which two images are juxtaposed to infer a third greater idea. As Eisenstein describes an eye drawn next to a tear means sorrow in Japanese calligraphy just as two independent clips in film may be juxtaposed to create some other abstract idea. I however disagree with Eisenstein when he suggests that this lack of montage in their film is somehow a negative thing. I believe that lacking montage or rather performing a whole scene in a single cut in and of itself has its own merit. One does not need to rely on the illusion of montage to create interesting or worthwhile cinema. In fact I would argue that long scenes are in and of themselves a form of montage simply by being video. Video after all is a progression of still images to create the illusion of motion. In this thought two separate yet related images are combined to create a third thing this third thing is the illusion of motion that we only perceive in our mind but does not physically exist within the piece and therefore simply by being a part of film does not simply Japanese film but all film exhibit the fundamental characteristics of montage.
ReplyDeleteBy Mike Boulrice