I feel that in the prologue, the picture of Vertov standing on the camera is an effect formed by a editing technique similar to a mask in the later stage. It can be seen that Wiltoff's feet are slightly blurred and overlapped with the top edge of the camera. In addition, there is a scene in the prologue where the back of the chair flips down by itself, but no one moves the chair in the shot. I am very curious about how this shot was taken. There is even a picture in the back where four rows of chairs are flipped down at one time. Subtly coincides with the notes in the music.
In the first chapter, you can see the richness of the lens, there are large long-range shots of the entire city and buildings from the top down, there are also medium shots and close-up shots, such as shooting models in glass windows, and many more. Close-ups, such as a woman's wounded ring, a model's eyes. These scenes and other shots are transitioned very smoothly, such as the connection of a series of shots from close-up to close-up and then back to long-range. Also, there are several shots in this chapter that seem a little weird now, because the buildings in the shots appear to be slanted. Generally speaking, when we shoot buildings, we use a stable composition method, so that the building is presented in the center of the picture, and there are such shots in the film. But I think those angled shots are more eye-catching, and people can't help thinking why Vertov uses such an angle. Maybe he is already creating a new way of composition at this time, a bit similar to what we now call unstable composition. For example, there is a shot where the central axis of the building is the diagonal line of the picture, and the whole building gives the feeling that it is about to collapse.
In the first chapter, there is also a scene where the train drives towards a person. In the film, as the train gets closer to the person, the frequency of changes in the picture becomes higher and higher, and it is also edited with the scene where the woman is not sleeping well. The scene of the train swaying left and right and the scene of the woman turning her head from side to side overlapped, giving people the impression that the train hitting the person was a nightmare the woman was having. There are even two shots that are repeatedly edited together, reminiscent of the set of pictures on the steps inside the battleship Potemkin.
Vertov used close-up shots to capture the specific zooming process of the camera, combined with the opening and closing of the blinds behind and the blinking of a woman's eyes, I think he wanted to express the idea that the human eye is the camera.
From the second chapter, it can be seen that the film has a timeline. The first chapter is when everyone has not woken up, so there are very few people on the street, and the shops and factories have not yet opened. The end is also a picture of a woman taking a shower. And the name of the movie poster that appeared in the first chapter is also called "A Woman's Awakening". But in the second chapter, planes, trains, and buses all set off, and the street immediately became lively. In the car factory that appeared in the first chapter, some on-off valves and textile machines are all in operation. After the factory opened, some stores also opened. The models in the window in the first chapter also moved.
What caught my attention was the shot of the woman pushing the window open, repeated several times, and it felt like the action was shot from two or three angles and then edited together. Then in this chapter, I also saw large-angle panoramic shots and follow shots, as well as post-acceleration shots. These shots are also commonly used in today's shooting. It is hard to imagine that this is the first five-shot film in the Soviet Union. The film was filmed during the annual plan.
There is a section at the end of the second chapter where Vertov is in the car in front of him filming the other passengers, and then there is a camera behind him, which clearly shows us how some of the scenes in the film were shot. This is very special, very few people film the filming process and put it in the film. The last row of film can also illustrate the point.
If the second chapter is about shooting at the end, then starting from the third chapter, the film shows how the film is edited to the audience. The feeling is to select a still picture first, and then play down from this frame. There are a lot of cross-editing scenes in the film. In this chapter, the plots of marriage, divorce, childbirth and death are edited together. It feels like an early contrast montage, and it feels very good. shock.
In this chapter, there is also a method of shooting light and shadow, which shows the in and out of the building by shooting shadows.
At the end of this chapter, the rotation of the eyeball and the rotation of the picture are edited together. Wherever the eyes see, the picture will turn accordingly. The interspersed and edited are getting denser and faster, and the frequency is getting faster and faster. It's what the eyes see or what the camera captures. This clip is truly breathtaking.
The long sequence of shots at the beginning of Chapter 4 changes faster and faster with the acceleration of the music, until the end is dazzling, but I think Vertov is to highlight the busyness of people working in the Soviet Union at that time. and no time to stop.
From Chapter 4, the film highlights the existence of the filming and editing process, as well as the recurring images that appear in the camera footage. It can also be seen that the film has two lines, one is the line for shooting, and the other is the line for editing. First, he described the hardships of filming and the difficulty of site selection. He borrowed a lift to shoot on a galloping river, and then used amazing editing techniques to highlight the charm of editing. In the last clip, Vertov was flashing with the camera on his back, but when I tried to cut the shot where he overlapped with the factory background, I found that he flashed for a very short time, 1 second at a time. , and every time you pause in Vertov's frame, the background is completely black. This reminds me of blending modes in Photoshop, similar to the effect of Multiply.
The time point of the fifth chapter is after everyone gets off work. At this time, the rhythm of the film begins to slow down. From the second chapter to the fourth chapter is the scene where people go to work and work. The overall rhythm of these three chapters is very fast. The switching of music or screen is very fast. But by the fifth chapter, the music becomes soothing, and the camera changes are not very frequent. The film is also used in the post-production of some shots, such as doing exercises on the beach and performing magic tricks on the roadside, using what is now called the cross-dissolve effect. Looking at these aspects combined, the film wants to show the leisure and relaxation of people after get off work in this segment.
In terms of expressing sports, in the post-editing process, slow motion was used at the beginning to highlight every movement of the athletes. The audience's reactions and conversations are also interspersed in the clips of each movement, just like the performance of many programs now, and Vertov's avant-garde can be seen. In the final clip of Chapter 5, Vertov edits the movement of the ball together and draws the audience through the ball's path, which has the effect of diverting attention. Then, in a fast and slow motion mode, the scene of the goalkeeper throwing the ball is highlighted. This way of editing feels very modern.
The series of rapid camera shifts at the beginning of Chapter 6 are very steady, causing the audience to quickly divert their eyes. Then using the masked editing technique to give the feeling of magic, Vertoc is everywhere. He sets up equipment at the top of the building, he stands up in a wine glass.
There is a particularly well done transition here. As the drink gets more and more, the camera shakes more and more, and then the film constantly changes the scene depending on the rise and fall of the camera, just like the movement of people raising their heads and lowering their heads. , simple and effective.
In addition, Chapter 6 also uses several methods of upside down, such as posters are pasted from the ground to the wall, and the pieces are scattered to neat, giving people a visual feeling like magic. In the film, I gave a close-up of the cabinet where the film was placed, and there was a row of labels on it that was magic. I think it is probably referring to the film processed with the reverse technology.
At the end of the sixth chapter, a lot of cross-dissolving techniques are used, so that three or four pictures are intertwined, and combined with music, it produces a magical effect visually.
Seeing the end of the film, we can fully understand the structure of the film. The prologue talks about the preparations before the screening, chapters 1 to 6 talk about the content of the screening, and the epilogue talks about the audience's reaction.
When I saw the tripod and the camera case move on their own and start shooting, it felt like someone was manipulating it, and it felt like the camera had its own soul. The rest of the shots are more like a full bloom of technology, almost every shot is masked, and the shots are also switching back and forth between the content of the film and the reaction of the audience outside the film. The scene that surprised me the most was that the Capitol was divided into two parts, and the accelerated backward replay of the camera also made people feel like a revolving light to review the content of the entire film.
In the end, I still use the constantly switching lens of the eye and other lenses to express that the eye is the camera, and the pictures taken by the camera can also be seen by the eyes.
To sum up, the film uses a lot of masking, cross-dissolving, and other technical effects in post-editing to create a visual magic-like feeling. And a lot of montage techniques are used, such as cross montage, associative montage, and accelerated montage, to arbitrarily edit shots, and express the effect of accelerated tension in terms of vision and atmosphere. Just as the film begins with the introduction above, this film transforms visible phenomena into a cinematic form. After watching this film, I probably know why the teacher said in the film history class that Soviet films were very helpful to people's understanding of montage.
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