Hollywood editing vs. soviet montage

Previously I focused on American editing otherwise called Hollywood realism. At the time I thought continuity editing introduced in early films, although very important, was basic. For me continuity is fundamentally important as it makes films follow logical thinking and more pleasant to watch.  Then I read about Soviet montage, used in Battleship Potemkin. Eisenstein, the ground-breaking film innovator, relied heavily on strong cutting. He was inspired by the Kuleshov effect, which determinates viewer’s ideas, by putting different shots together.  The shots should be different, should have strong impact and produce new ideas. I read that the meaning can be created by the content of the shot or by juxtaposing two shots. (Rabiger, Hurbis – Cherrier, 2013). That would sum up my idea of the minor difference between Hollywood editing and soviet montage. This part was significant to my written assignment. I started thinking about montage as a manipulation technique, in which sequences can be produced from existing footage to create something completely different in meaning.

For me it was important to understand Kuleshow’s effect based on the theory that when two pieces of film are placed side by side the audience try to create meaning by combining the two separate images.  Perhaps this creates a new set of ideas about how an edited image could manipulate and deceive an audience (Nelmes).  “The very nature of the process, constructing a “story” from separate and potentially unrelated sources, is very manipulative”. (Bowen and Thompson, 2013, p.220). This manipulative editing aims to achieve the main goal of filmmaking – entertaining the audience. Having analysed this I felt now my research could begin.

In contrast to soviet montage films I have been looking at soviet documentary – cinema verite  - sometimes called observational cinema. I have noticed how it combines improvisation with the use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind crude reality. As an example of this movement I watched Vertov’s a man with a movie camera – famous for the range of cinematic techniques Vertov invents and develops. I noticed his use of double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, stop motion animations and self-reflexive visuals.    

      

At this stage I started to structure the idea of my research. I wanted to talk about postproduction process in documentary. I realised that I would like to write about how the footage can be manipulated in the postproduction process. Especially at this phase of postproduction when choosing the right parts of the footage is significant for the outcome. The editor, for instance, can have footage from a bar in Warsaw. The footage shows aggressively behaving males and the voice over says that pubs in Warsaw are extremely dangerous. But it is not shown that the filming crew provoked this aggressive behaviour. They were filming against the will of the pub owner and his costumers.