Film Technique and Film Acting

The Cinema Writings of V.I. Pudovkin

Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin

• Publisher: Read & Co. Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781406705447, 9781443721394
• eBook ISBN: 9781446547359
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Film & Video

This vintage book contains two pioneering volumes on the subject of film making by V.I. Pudovkin. Considered two of the most valuable manuals of the practice and theory of film making ever written, these texts will prove invaluable for the student or film enthusiast, and are not to be missed by discerning collectors of such literature. The chapters of this volume include: 'The Film Scenario and Its Theory', 'Film Director and Film Material', 'Types Instead of Actors', 'Close-Ups in Time', 'Asynchronism as a Principle of Sound Film', 'Rhythmic Problems in my First Sound Film', 'Notes and Appendices', 'Film Acting', et cetera. Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin (1893 – 1953) was a Russian film director, screenwriter, and actor, famous for developing influential theories of montage. This volume is being republished now complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.

NOTES AND APPENDICES

A.—GLOSSARIAL NOTES

IN the discussion of any technical subject it is necessary to employ technical terms. Technical cinematographic terms afford wide opportunities for ambiguity and obscurity in two ways. In the first place, they are usually not invented words, but words in common use extended to embrace technical meanings, to the confusion of the layman. In the second place, they vary slightly owing to differing practices in differing countries, or even in different studios, to the confusion of the expert. It is therefore desirable to establish, by definition, the sense in which technical terms have been employed in the preceding essays.

The word Producer in the film world is properly applied only to the business man, financial organiser, managing director of a producing concern; the driving-force rather than the technical guidance behind any given production. Producer in the stage sense has become Director in the films. This terminology is American in origin, but is now universal in England also.

The word Scenario is loosely applied to almost any written matter relating to the story preparation of a film in any of its stages. The course of development is roughly as follows*: The Synopsis is an outline of three or four typewritten pages containing the barest summary of character and action. It is made for the convenience of the producer or scenario-chooser, who may be too busy or unwilling to study potential subjects at length. In the adaptation of a book or a play, the synopsis represents the first stage. In the case of an original film-story it may rather be a précis of the next stage following.

This is the Treatment. A treatment is more extensive, usually from twenty to fifty pages. Here, although still written throughout in purely narrative form, we have, already indicated by means of a certain degree of detail in pictorial description, the actual visual potentialities of the suggested action. The use of the word scenario for either of these documents is more common with the layman than with the technician. Credit for a treatment is given, on a title or in a technical publication, more often by the words “Story by” than by association with the scenario. The words “Scenario by” imply work on a yet later stage—the shooting-script.

The Shooting-script is the scenario in its final cinematograph form, with all its incidents and appearances broken up in numbered sequence into the separate images from which they will be later represented. These separate images are called Script-scenes, listed, in the typewritten abbreviation of a usual shooting-script, simply as Scenes—e.g. Scene 1, Scene 2, etc. The words appearing upon the screen are also listed, as Main-title (the name of the film, and credit-titles), Sub-titles (never “captions”—this is a layman’s term), Inserts, writings that are part of a scene, and Superimposed titles, a term carrying its own meaning.

It is evident from Pudovkin’s essay on the scenario that an intermediate stage, quite unusual in England or America, intervenes in U.S.S.R. between the purely narrative treatment and its complete cinematographic analysis, the shooting-script. In this stage the titles stand already numbered, so do the separate tiny incidents, but there is no indication yet of the images to be selected to compose them. Such an incident Pudovkin terms a “scene,” using the word almost in the sense in which it is used in a classical French play, to indicate not merely a change of place, but even a change of circumstance such as the entrance or exit of a player. To avoid confusion, the word scene has been avoided in this text, being rendered by “incident,” except in the example given of this stage of treatment.*

The Sequence is a convenient division, into a series of which the action naturally falls. The sequences are already feelable even in the purely narrative treatment, and may each contain numbers of incidents, or scenes (in the Pudovkin sense). The sequence of the stealing of the Princess embraces all the business of running away with her, possibly involving interactions at several different geographical points. The “scene” (Pudovkin’s sense) of the Princess being stolen probably covers only the actual carrying her out of her bedroom; dragging her down the stairs would be another “scene” (incident, in the phraseology I have employed). The separate parts that compose such a “scene,” the as yet further indivisible atoms of the film-structure,* are termed variously according to their function considered at the moment. In their philosophic function we term them separate images; materially, separate pieces of celluloid; functionally, in the shooting-script, script-scenes (abb. scenes); as separate tasks upon the floor of the studio, or as separate parts of a finished, edited film, Shots; while in the cutting-room we find that each is represented by several subsimilar pieces, varying in numb...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Introduction to the German Edition
• I. The Film Scenario and its Theory
• II. Film Director and Film Material
• III. Types Instead of Actors
• IV. Close-ups in Time
• V. Asynchronism as a Principle of Sound Film
• VI. Rhythmic Problems in My First Sound Film
• VII. Notes and Appendices
• Contents
• I. The Theatre and the Cinema
• II. The Basic Contradiction of the Actor’s Work
• III. Discontinuity in the Actor’S Work in the Cinema
• IV. Theoretical Postulates of Discontinuity
• V. Rehearsal Work
• VI. The Editing Image
• VII. Dialogue
• VIII. Dual Rhythm of Sound and Image
• IX. Intonation, Make-Up, Gesture
• X. Realism of the Acted Image
• XI. Work With Non-Actors
• XII. Casting
• XIII. The Creative Collective
• XIV. Personal Experiences
• XV. Conclusions