Dog Star Man's Films and Theorems

look forward to seeing your film

Very interesting, it made me

Oh man, the transubstantiation of punctuation to editing is inspired to say the least. Also, I am expecting great things of this fabled "Tri-Montage".

10/10

What does one mean by “Building a Directorial Lexicon”? What is the question in and of itself? And why is it important? The simple answer to all these queries is cinematic progression. Ultimately, it is the questions any reasonable director asks him or herself if they wish to transcend film to its highest possible level. I am of the belief that, like any art form, there is no peak to film; however, film is in a state of stagnation. How do we as film makers rise above this stagnation? Outside asking the questions above, we must engage in the film process through the means of the scientific method. The very being of film came as a result from a scientific method; one recalls Eadweard Muybridge’s galloping horse experiment:


Much of early film relied on experimentation, which ultimately lead to what we know of today as “film grammar”. There were many contributors to this world wide, but some of the most important examples are Porter, Griffith, and the Soviet schools of film studies. However, the most significant of these examples were the latter, the Soviet schools. As I illustrated above with a brief picture, the Kuleshov effect has had an enormous impact on the way we view films today. Through the Soviet schools, and Eisenstein in particular, we have come to a certain understanding of the edit and montage and their effects on the audience themselves. What is so crucial about this era of film making, and what we should learn from it, is that the film makers involved within this epoch and place yielded to the nature of what was Hollywood and opted instead, for the greater good, what provided the synthesis in cinema through all its shared and individualist art forms. But what made their discoveries so significant over modern day, or even their yesteryear, films? They simply applied the means that created the very form itself, the scientific method.


One scientific method of a scientific inquiry consists of four essential elements which form a paradigm of iterations, [repeating]; recursions, [defining the function in question]; interleavings, [arranging data in a non-contiguous way]; and orderings, [sequencing and arranging elements in the set], of the following:

1. Characterization, (Ex: What makes the audience react certain ways when presented with a certain set stimulus?)
2. Hypothesis, (Ex: The Soviets examine a film such as Griffith’s Intolerance until they think they’ve come up with a theory and explaination for the reaction.)
3. Prediction, (Ex: The Soviets examine even closer their hypothesis, and with any luck, they will come up with some sort of logical deduction. If not, and uncertainty or error arises, they come back to the drawing board until they believe their deductions are sound. In their case, they believed juxtapositions between edits determined mood and state within film; and therefore, by their conclusion, film becomes a editing medium, rather than a mise-en-scene one.)
4. Experiments, (Ex: Finally, the Soviets test their collected characterizations, hypothesis’, and predictions; and with any luck, their tests will result in favor of their hypothesis. If not, they again have to go back to the drawing board. But in the case of the Soviet school of thought, their hypothesis of what came to be known as “The Kuleshov Effect” turned out to be accurate.)

There is also the “Pragmatic” paradigm:

1. Define Question
2. Gather Information and Resources, [Observe]
3. Form Hypothesis
4. Perform Experiment and Collect Data
5. Analyze Data
6. Interpret Data and Draw Conclusions that Serve as a Starting Point for a New Hypothesis
7. Publish Results
8. Retest, [Done by Others, (film makers), Most Often]

And yet another form of method which is the “Operational” paradigm:

1. Operation, (The action, or in this case the reaction, that is being done.)
2. Observation, (What happens when the operation is done, [to the viewer]?)
3. Model, (A fact, hypothesis, theory, or the phenomenon itself at a certain moment.)
4. Utility of Function, (The measure of the usefulness of the model, [facts, hypothesis', and theories]; to explain the phenomenon, [in the case of the Soviets, explain the reasons behind "The Kuleshov Effect" and how it functions.]; predict, [in the case of the Soviets, they must explain why the juxtaposition between certain shots and other shots have certain effects on the audience. They must also predict ahead of time, through this discovery, what an audiences reaction would be when they juxtaposed shots with other shots]; and control [in any case of our phenomenon, how does the examiner, (or in our case film maker), utilize this concept? In the case of Eisenstein, he controlled the phenomenon's aspects and theories to create montage; a practice by which thesis is juxtaposed with anti-thesis and begets a synthesis, this synthesis becomes our new thesis and the process continues.]; and of the cost of the use of it, [in this case, the phenomenon itself must be examined thoroughly with a conscience. What are the consequences, for example, of too much montage? Is editing in itself a faux, and therefore wrong, manipulation of our emotional expenditure? If so, what does a film maker do to relieve him or herself from these confines? What are the costs and benefits to audience manipulation? It is up to the film maker, who utilizes this scientific method, to find out.].

Each of the three methods have their advantages and disadvantages, what also should be noted as a key factor is the subject of “Peer Review” as one breaks conventions. It is important that the film maker never lose sight of his intended goal until they have completed and proved to others what they set out to affirm.


At the end of the day, a film maker does not need a high end camera, or even a budget in this time and era to experiment with film. Which is extremely liberating. Also what is extremely liberating is that we, as film makers, have a little over one hundred years of films at our disposal and their collective techniques to choose from. The Soviets in their time had the freedom, (though sort lived), to experiment with the psychological/emotional responses from their subjects and create grand theories which we still apply to this day, but they were limited to twenty years, (if that), of cinematic achievements. We have come a long way… now we must push ourselves ever forward. We must learn from our past to create a better future, this can be applied for any subject, but in this case, we are dealing with the cinematic arts. We absolutely must come to terms with what made certain epochs in art and cinema history so successful, and in the case of the Soviets, it was utilizing the scientific method to illustrate their points and fearlessly push cinema into realms no one thought imaginable.


So to return, what does the director do to “Build a Directorial Lexicon” and why is it so important? The answer to this is two fold:

1. The Director Must Spent Time and Take Heed to Cinematic Techniques: The director is not allowed for one moment to be lazy about their craft, their search for techniques and the creation of their own should, throughout their careers, be a never ending expedition. Any film maker worth their salt left the harbor of stagnant cinematic concepts to take on the radical and unpredictable, but ultimately adventurous and rewarding, sea of cinematic progression… those who lack the “persistence of vision”, in its otherwise cinematic context, will sink without hope of resurrection. This insight of sink or swim should be a directors mentality as they transverse through waters, ideals, most men dare not go.
2. The Director Must Utilize Their Lexicon of Techniques to Advance the Cinematic Society: This answer is also two fold, not only does this type of utilization build film society in general, but it also builds the directors individual understanding of their own craft to unprecedented levels. Say a director is keeping tabs on several types of techniques, and through the scientific method, they develop and test concepts which may offer grander insight into what certain techniques do to the individual, or mass, experience. Their insights not only become invaluable to the cinematic community, but also more invaluable to the film maker who discovered them. What ultimately is the impact and response to the concluding synthesis. This is something the director, as artistic scientist, must find out.

I’ve been discussing how a director utilizes techniques through the scientific method to uncover the reactions of the individual and mass audience… but what if we utilize entire styles of film making? What I mean to say by this is that say for example you want to examine what goes into the mind of the viewer with a Robert Bresson style of film making. One may create/film their own brief illustration of this, (which I think I’d advise more because it allows the director themselves to experiment with different types of styles and see if it works for them), or they can show an example from an authentic Bresson film and receive feedback. Either way, we are are now no longer experimenting with mere techniques, rather we are experimenting on a much grander scale with styles of other directors and their relationship with the audience themselves. Through this, the film maker comes to a profound understanding of the reactions the individual and the mass express to the cinematic inquirer who seeks nothing more than a large-scale understanding of the craft itself and what makes it tick. Subsequently, they will find and come to terms with concepts desirable not only to themselves, but to the cinematic society in general.


There is no conclusion for the true cinematic director other than death itself. Cinema in the scope of artistic history has only begun, it is in mere infancy, but it takes a loving parent to nurture it properly into adulthood. For those willing to take on the task, this is a huge responsibility, but a necessary one. The majority of society is not educated enough on films to provide us with liberation from what I’ve been referring to as stagnation. Stagnation from script to mass release. The only way to rid ourselves of this is by leaving that metaphorical harbor I referred to, crossing the turbulent sea of cinematic progress, finding the shores which lay waste to the endless treasures of cinematic knowledge and understanding, and returning home with our riches. It is up to the film maker now to take on the responsibility of reinvigorating film and pushing it to levels in which the Soviet schools would envy, and might even consider infinity daring… only one can find out, and that is to do.