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Berlin: Filmic Models

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years ago

Experimental filmic models for

Berlin: City of Stones, Book One

Pags 1 and 2 (click for reference pages from the original)

 

Metric montage techniques:

 

Two-second edits

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Fibonacci arc

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Inverse fibonacci arc

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Interpretation:

 

The two "Fibonacci Arc" sequences are an attempt to give a form to the sequence that is arbitraty in its relationship to the panels but that still gives the sequence a formal progression. It is somewhat common in film for a sequence to change its editing rhythms as it progresses; perhaps most often, the editing accelerates throughout a sequence before finally slowing down for a final shot or two. We didn't want to impose a common filmic form on the sequence: it seemed more interesting to give the sequence a general temporal pattern and see how it worked with the shot scales and narrative progression of the sequence.

The proportional shot lengths of the sequences are 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-13-8-5-3-2-1-1 and 21-13-8-5-3-2-1-1-(0)-1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21; the two resultant rhythmic sequences (rising and falling or falling and rising in editing speed) are very influential in how the sequences comes across. This is especially true of the shots at the middles of the sequences; in the first sequence, the action builds up to its longest-held shot, which gives that shot a feeling of importance, while in the second sequence, the editing accelerates until it gets to the series of four rapidly-cut shots that form its core. These shots, too, feel like they are the most important of the sequence in which they occur. This seems to be an example of the primacy effect in action: if we are primed to expect shorter takes, a long one will stand out in comparison; if we are primed to expect long takes, rapid editing will seem to be "marked" as the exceptional (and thus more important) case.

That the panels in the sequence can be manipulated in this way attests to a key difference between the temporal construction of film and that of comics. Comics have their own ways of giving narrative or themaitic weight to particular panels. What we have done here is not so much isolate how comics do this as look at a way that films do it that comics, it seems, do not.

 

Two-second edits with dissolves

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Two-second edits with edge wipes

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Interpretation:

 

In the sequences built of two-second shots with dissolves and edge wipes, the length of the takes keeps it meter (we wanted to keep the experiment at least marginally controlled), but the transitions between the shots change. The metric montage with straight cuts, on its own, points out a temporal element that is missing if we just try to look at signifiers of time in the diegetic content of the panels. The two sequences under discussion are an attempt to "account for" the presence of the gutters between the panels (which are uniform in the print Berlin). Could the simple separation of the two images on the page, in and of itself, create a motivation for us to cognitively "reconnect" the two panels by inferring what must have or may have happened between them? If so, does a filmic correlate have a similar effect? Perhaps the comparison in inherently flawed (maybe attention called to representational gaps in moving images reads as more of an interruption than does a gap between two still images), and perhaps it is tainted by my own familiarity with the cinematic grammar (the dissolve, in particular, is loaded with associations and significations), but for some reason these two sequences are somehow compelling to me. They may not serve the sense of the original narrative so well--they seem to heavily inflect the sequence with a sensibility not necessarily there in the comic--but there is something about them that feels "right," and that's an interesting thing in itself.

 

Correspondence montage techniques:

 

Panel length

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Panel length with snare

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Interpretation:

 

It is unusual in film for attention to be drawn toward cutting rhythm; most film, in fact, works to obscure the edits that join shots. In that way, "Panel length with snare" might be seen as somewhat anti-filmic. However, the snare sound does draw attention to a kind of rhythm that is inherent to all edited film. This increased attention to form also helps us to think about the rhythms of the comic-book page, rhythms to which we are (normally) less-attuned even than we are to the editing rhythms of films.

The temporailty of the film does not seem to correspond to the assumed diegetic temporality. We can assume that everything that occurs in the sequence in the comic takes place in a small amount of time (perhaps as little as the 25 seconds of screen time), but the unfolding of events throughout the sequence do not always seem to fit the way we are inclined to imagine them when we see them on the comic page. Some moments, such as the three-shot sequence--the shortest in the film--in which the characters greet one another, seem to unfold at an intuitively understandable pace, but others feel stilted or "off." This seems to indicate that there is more that contributes to the rhythmic pacing of comics than just panel length--that we draw inferences about time from our comparisons of the representative content of the adjacent panels.

 

 

 

 

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