Thursday 4 February 2010

Battleship Potemkin stair scene

While I was looking at editing I came across a film called 'Battleship Potemkin'.
This clip is taken at the stairs scene where a lot of people from russia got gun down. it's really sad seeing this and the editing really increase the saden feeling.
I don't know how to upload a video so here's a link, copy and paste it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZOFRtmMj8o&NR=1&feature=fvwp

1 comment:

  1. Shahbs - this is one of the most FAMOUS examples of editing in cinema history - do some more reading around this scene and the director of the movie... for instance, it took me about five seconds to find this wonderful extract...

    " Eisenstein (1898-1948) was a student and advocate of Soviet theories of film montage, which argued that film has its greatest impact not by the smooth unrolling of images, but by their juxtaposition. Sometimes the cutting is dialectical: point, counterpoint, fusion. Cutting between the fearful faces of the unarmed citizens and the faceless troops in uniform, he created an argument for the people against the czarist state. Many other cuts are as abrupt: After Potemkin's captain threatens to hang mutineers from the yardarm, we see ghostly figures hanging there. As the people call out, ``Down with the tyrants!'' we see clenched fists. To emphasize that the shooting victims were powerless to flee, we see one revolutionary citizen without legs. As the troops march ahead, a military boot crushes a child's hand. In a famous set of shots, a citizen is seen with eyeglasses; when we cut back, one of the glasses has been pierced by a bullet.

    Eisenstein felt that montage should proceed from rhythm, not story. Shots should be cut to lead up to a point, and should not linger because of personal interest in individual characters. Most of the soundtracks I've heard with ``Potemkin'' do not follow this theory, and instead score the movie as a more conventional silent drama. Concrete, the Michigan band (Boyd Nutting, Jon Yazell, Andrew Lersten), underlined and reinforced Eisenstein's approach with an insistent, rhythmic, repetitive score, using keyboards, half-heard snatches of speech, cries and choral passages, percussion, martial airs and found sounds. It was an aggressive, insistent approach, played loud, by musicians who saw themselves as Eisenstein's collaborators, not his meek accompanists..."

    http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980719/REVIEWS08/401010302/1023

    now watch this scene from Brian DePalma's The Untouchables

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTtj-VXxgbc&feature=related

    (it's not in English, but you'll see my point)

    Also - ask someone how to upload youtube clips - ask Ruben.

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