The Battleship Potemkin In Relation To Formalism Film Studies Essay

The Battleship Potemkin In Relation To cant subscribe to Studies EssayThere are many different approaches that leaven and answer the question What is Cinema? each with their own inclination and beliefs of what dart should be and how the medium should be used. From the beginning there have been to of import approaches to film, the Realist and the Formalist. The realist approach attempts to copy h cardinalsty placing a great emphasis on location and mise-en-scene. The Formalist approach supports a style of film making which displays the directors sight of the world, greater emphasis is placed on distorting reality to create meaning. Sergei Eisenstein was a director that used this approach to film making and in this essay I will analyse his film The Batteship Potemkin (1925) according to his theory of collage and the Formalist film approach.The Formalist approach believes that structure of a film is in symbiosis with its medium, therefore changing the shot types and editing out of continuity seems to be the right thing to do. Although one could say the Formalism is related to expressionism be earn they both emphasize that film should not merely imitate events as they buy the farm in real life, but should produce edited version of reality (Fourie, 2001, 200).In his piece Beyond The Shot The Cinematographic Principle And The Ideogram Eisenstein explains the similarities between collage and hieroglyphs. He explains how when the symbols used in hieroglyphs are looked at on their own, they do not necessarily make much sense but when cardinal hieroglyphs are placed next to each other they are seen as a fatten up cipher. He gives the example of the representation of water and of an mettle signifies to weep (Eisenstein, 1929, 16). He explains how the combinations of hieroglyphs literally show what in film is called a montage. A single shot within a film does not claim any real meaning unless it is combined with another shot. He withal explains how in a h ai-kai each profligate helps to convey an entire image or feeling for example Ancient monastery. Cold moon. Wolf yawl (KIKKO, in Eisenstein, 1929, 17). In this example you can imagine each line on its own, but when they are put unitedly they create a full image, or a sequence or a complete meaning Eisenstein refers to them as montage phrases, montage lists (Eisenstein, 1929, 17)Montage has been established by the Soviet film as the nerve of cinema (Eisenstein, 1929, 140). Soviets developed the idea of a dialectical montage a constant hitting of one shot (the thesis) with another shot (the antithesis) to create a totally unfermented meaning (the synthesis). For Eisenstein the brick by brick method of montage made no sense, the collision of shots would evoke feelings and understanding in the audience as they would put the shots together themselves and therefore the meaning and understanding would be personal, even if the director implied a definite message, each viewer may read the sequence differently. Eisensteins suggestion of montage as a series of collisions to create meaning is support by the collision theory in particle science which states that the particles showtime have to collide, and only the collisions that have sufficient energy will cause a reaction..For the collisions to happen and for them to create meaning there had to be battle present. In another one of his essays, A Dialectical Approach To Film Form, Eisenstein states that Art is always in booking (Eisenstein, 1929, 138). Eisenstein was more interested in how, through and through the use of editing, composition, sound and perspective, conflict could be created within an image. He therefore came up with a list of possible conflicts within a shot, or conflicts between the colliding shots which are Graphic conflict, Conflict of planes, Conflict of volume, spacial conflict, light conflict and tempo conflict (Eisenstein, 1929, 144). By looking at the frame as the foundation of montage, Eisenstein was able to apply the values of montage to each seperate shot, and then create conflict between the shots to generate tidy emotional and intellectual reactions from the audience.In the film The Battleship Potemkin Eisenstein displays his view of montage as being a series of conflicting images, throughout the unscathed film. For example theIn The Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein creates a tense and aggressive cadence with thie theory of dialectic montage. Furthermore, he passes on a certain card of history to the audience through his editing. Taken as a hale the collision approach tries to signify the conflict and collision of history itself and at the same time the technique when applied to individual scenes impose certain emotional focus and response of the audience.Start analysing scences from the film after explaining the conflict thingThen talk about the manipulation of people through the use of montage editingPropagandaPassive audience Vs. Active audienceconclud e