Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1014407
65 Q3 2018 / CINEMONTAGE script reading by an exhibitor/narrator, to fully formed on-screen stories told via the use of editing (circa 1907) are made clear. So too this book acknowledges the accomplishments of writers who excavated the secrets of early cinema, including Eileen Bowser, Charles Musser and Barry Salt, the last who argues that jump cuts appeared in films before 1908, and that optically printed freeze frames were used as early as 1923. Although the concepts of each theorist often overlap in actual edited results, each has its own ontology, terminology and justification. These range from the simple (Dmytryk's conviction that the most important way to edit is to find the one and only "scene, move or reaction which most effectively delivers its dramatic message," and Murch's idea — admittedly based on John Huston's insights — that shot changes mimic the blink of the human eye) to the Byzantine (Bordwell's deconstruction of the temporal order of narrative events into schemata that he deems either "fabula" or "syuzhet," terms that originated in the Russian Formalism school of literary criticism). Bordwell, a highly respected scholar and author of 15 books on cinema, bases his breakdown on Russian formalist literary theory, as exemplified in the collection Poetica Kino. One of the many values in Film and Video Editing Theory is that readers need not plow through all 15 Bordwell texts to get a sense of his perspective. Frierson has done that meticulous research for each theorist he dissects. He also provides helpful introductions to the lives and major works of each, which make clear the social and cultural contexts in which they worked. It is enlightening to learn that Bazin, co-founder of Cahiers du Cinéma and the major proponent of realist, long-take theory, sought to understand the thinking patterns of reptiles, and was deeply influenced by early 20th century philosopher Henri Bergson — a writer who attempted to define the way humans exist in an evolving experience of nature. Film and Video Editing Theory also has hundreds of fascinating footnotes, a short glossary and a clear guide to the photographs. Readers may recognize that many of the theories presented come intuitively to good editors, but reading or re-reading methods that describe, and sometimes quantify, this native intuition can be an almost reassuring validation of one's work. Publisher Focal Press unfortunately once again imposes a travesty on its author and its readers with the abysmal quality of the photographs. Studying editing via double exposure within the frame in Citizen Kane, which Frierson describes in his chapter on Bazin, is a dreadful disservice to everyone, not least the film's CUT / PRINT CONTINUED ON PAGE 70