WHAT HAPPENED TODAY
Today, the class was introduced to the newest unit- montage editing.
The usual presentation included some examples, one of which was the Rocky 4 training montage. This opened the introduction, and we were lead to learn more about the theory of film as an art form and how montage editing solves the "problem" that cinema has, namely being limited to storytelling. Even in documentary form, storytelling is evident, with the use of continuity editing to tell that story in order to evoke thought processes from the viewer. In other, more fictional story based genres of film, the story being told by continuity editing is used to evoke emotions. Montage, as suggested by Sergei Eisenstein, utilizes discontinuous editing to evoke emotions that come from the viewer themself based on the connections our minds make with the sequence of certain images (e.g., a picture of a dead baby and then another picture of a crying person would allow the viewer to piece together that the crying person is reacting to the dead baby). Of course, this is evidently a technique already used in continuous films. However, montage allows juxtaposition to be used and manipulated to its fullest, and to a class of students who are brought up themselves on continuous film, as well as studying continuous editing and film for years, this is all very hard to take in.
We did, though, get to try what is coined as the Kuleshov effect (named after Lev Kuleshov- see notes) in a short exercise today, where we got into groups of three and shot someone acting out an emotion, then acting two completely different scenarios which the person could be reacting to, finally using montage editing to create two different clips telling entirely different stories.
My group, Hannah, Sapphire and I, chose the emotion to be interpreted as either someone who was "crushed", or terrified. The action involved Hannah putting her head in her hands and slinking to the floor. The two scenarios were someone dying, and someone advancing on her intending to attack. In editing, this became very clear (as I suppose it was intended to).
IB LEARNER PROFILE
Today, during the presentation I had to take in the new information and process it. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but today I had to be a thinker in order to actually understand it properly from the perspective of someone who grew up on more or less the opposite. Even with examples I had to squint and try my hardest to see the idea. This also reflects having to be knowledgeable, as I had to explore indepth concepts such as this.
I was very confused initially too during the activity and didn't understand it fully until editing it, meaning that I had to be a risk taker and try it with the best of my ability.
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