Guy Debord: A User's Guide to Detournement

As a barely educated designer/artist I love learning how many techniques are not just happenstance, but are techniques that have been studies and defined.

I have always found it mesmerizing when art, advertisements, and cinema reference works or events in pop culture, not to justify their work but to enhance it by adding extra levels of meaning. Little did I know that this is called detournement. Guy Debord encourages artist to take elements from anywhere to make new works. He is not encouraging plagiarism or mere remixing but to use the borrowed material in a new way to elevate your designs.

In the reading it seems as detournment was a popular tool for propaganda.  In modern times I witness detournment in music cinema, television and printed materials. In a sense it could be viewed as propaganda as detournment is a way for the artist to propel their message further.  Personally, as I learn the definitions of detournment, I see it as a subjective tool as well.  For example, with deceptive detournment we are relying on the viewer to  know the work we are referencing, and we are relying that their  interpretation of the referenced work is the same as ours.  That subjective ambiguity allows for viewer to ponder the meaning of the work at hand thus making it more interesting.

A User’s Guide to Détournement - Samuel Gallardo

Ok so my understanding of this topic isn't to great if i'm completely honest. In my opinion it is OK to take something already made and continue to add on it in order to achieve a goal. The goal should be to either make the piece better or to make alterations to make it have a different meaning / story.
Simply taking someones work and not giving credit isn't just wrong but can lead to big negative actions taken against you. And if you are inspired by a piece than justify where your intentions came from and not just say here's my work now take it.

Rich but poor. my sec project.

rich but poor

Detournement

Detournement which is a french word means, avoiding, changing ways, or something like, running away from something. for example, while filming, something that we didn't plan comes on and what to do is to try to avoid. we call it detourner.  what i understand from the reading is, sometimes while making detournement, we come across interesting things.

Narrative

To me, it's most interesting story. old or new.  i love my narrative stories. and i always think of making a movie using them. in africa for example; people live according to narrative stories. through them, they learn from old one's mistakes and on...

Metaphor of vision

The reading is to make filmmakers understand how to think and view in a new way. what i really liked was the way stan explains explains a way of how to become inspired just by modifying another one's idea. which is somehow plagiarism lol

kino eye

The camera plays a huge role here. it's like a mechanical eye. it's showing and records things that a human eye can not. using tech, it's can be positioned in different angles to show the scene. 

Détournement as a philosophy and artistic style

By Nancy C. Harris

Based on the four basic principles of détournement, as proposed by Guy Debord & Gil Wolman in their text “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (originally published in the Belgian surrealist journal Les Lèvres Nues #8. May, 1956), this style could represent the most meaningful vehicle of proletarian artistic education thanks to its applications and the wide range of elements of which it can make use.

Translated from French, détournement means deflection, diversion, rerouting, distortion, misuse, misappropriation, hijacking or otherwise turning something aside from its normal cause or purpose. This connotation roughly explains this artistic style that doubles as a philosophy that pursues a change of paradigms in a primarily capitalist world.  

In order to produce a piece through détournement, “it is necessary to eliminate all remnants of the notion of personal property,” which allows the use of materials or elements from other authors to create new combinations that “alter the meaning of those fragments in any appropriate way.”

According to Debord & Wolman,” there are two types of détournement elements: Minor détournement and Deceptive détournement.

Minor détournement is the manipulation of an object that by itself has no relevance and, therefore, draws a whole different meaning based on the new context in which it has been placed, for instance, a picture of a politician on a toilet lid cover.

Deceptive détournement is the use of an “intrinsically significant element”, which derives a completely diverse connotation drawn from the new context, for example, when you employ St. Francis of Assisi’s Prayer as a background for a film that reenacts the crusades from the 13^th century.

“A User’s Guide to Détournement” also identifies the following four basic principles:

1)      It is the most distant détournement element which contributes to most sharply to the overall impression, and not the elements that directly determine the nature of this impression.

2)      The distortions introduced in the detourned elements must be as simplified as possible, since the main impact of a détournement is directly related to the conscious or semiconscious recollection of the original contexts of the elements.

3)      Détournement is less effective the more it approaches a rational reply.

4)      Détournement by simply reversal is always the most direct and the least effective.

It is worth mentioning that the authors of this text had a very passionate pursuit for equality, and their philosophical efforts were inclined towards the strengthening of communism, or socialism. It was their belief that the spread of détournement would have propagandistic benefits and eventually would develop into an enlightened society where art, intellectualism, and philosophy were all part of a dialogue in which all individuals are engaged.

Debord & Wolman also think that, from all forms of art, cinema is the discipline that would profit better from détournement and achieve its greatest beauty, due to the endless possibilities that the combination of its elements has to offer. In my opinion, these thinkers were strongly ahead of their time when they came to that conclusion, considering that the introduction of digital video added a whole new layer of complexity to détournement in films.

* “A User’s Guide to Détournement.” Translation by Ken Knabb from the Situationist International Anthology (Revised and Expanded Edition, 2006) No copyright.

User's guide to detournement

Detournement, while slightly avoid the direct meaning, can lead to new discovery. However, detournement should not be vaguely used. 

User's guide to detournement_ Felix Kreidel

One must determine one's public before devising detournement. Détournement not only leads to the discovery of new aspects of talent; in addition, clashing head-on with all social and legal conventions, it cannot fail to be a powerful cultural weapon in the service of a real class struggle.

Metaphors on Vison - Serena Milan

This excerpt has an interesting perspective.  It reminds me that we are limited by our experiences.  With vision for example, from the moment we are born, we are learning things (composition, good, bad, ugly, nice). These lessons limit our vision as well remove our innocence or naivety. This article resonates with me  because I would like to have a Kino-Eye, an eye that moves without the restriction of what we are used to seeing or have learned to see, an eye that perceives things in a unique way.  I realize that when I think of filming, I feel limited to recording things in the way I am used to seeing them, which is not necessarily the best way. I agree with the writer "after the loss of innocence, only ultimate knowledge can balance the wobbling pivot point." To me this means that after the world has affected the way to perceive things, having ultimate knowledge brings an awareness of our skewed perceptions. We can follow all the rules that we have learned or we can break them on purpose, an option only education can bring.

Metaphors of Vision - Trang Pham

Ever since the human learned about rules and restrictions in a society, they subtly restrict themselves in every action to fit in the norm of what a good society looks like. We bounded ourselves in a box, only do what we're told or seen, define things that already be given, completely forgot about the choice to be freely express how we can observe things. By understanding and knowing that you have to let yourself out of the prison of limitation, we can let our's consciousness roam freely in the realm of imagination, and see things that simple but holds the deeper but beautiful meaning hide within it.

Metaphors of Vision - Samuel Gallardo

This brief reading is a way for one's understaing of how to think and view our surroundings in a new way. What really gets to me is how Stan explains a process or in better words gives knowledge on how to become inspired just by changeing one's self perception. As the reading ends Stan suggests that a good way of doing this is by letting go of what your mind already processes and to go further back to a simpler time in which one's mind was pure and had an underdemanding mind set. Futhermore giving more creativity to any work this pertains to.

Stan Brakhage and the artist’s crusade to redefine imagery

Cover of Metaphors on Vision by Stan Brakhage

By Nancy Cantu Harris
 
In the same way that Umberto Eco made explaining the world through semiotics his very own lifelong apostolate, Stan Brakhage, in the 1960’s, set himself out on the mission of using moving picture images to create an artistic language that would allow us, in time, to understand abstract and complex concepts such as birth, death, sex and the search for God.

The dissertation that titles the book, Metaphors on Vision, (Film Culture Inc. U.S.A., 1963) opens asking the reader to defy all preconceptions acquired through our eyesight, and to challenge our common need for labeling and organizing everything we see in a logical way.

What would we “see” in our minds if we didn’t have a prior idea of what an object looks like? How wide and deep our imagination would go without being restricted by our prior knowledge of the world?

When I read the premise proposed by the director of Window Water Baby Moving, I remembered a conversation I had with a congenitally blind man who worked as a Braille teacher at the now extinct School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico.

In order to better understand the way someone without eyesight goes about his everyday life, I asked him how he chose his clothes in the morning, and he revealed to me that he could “tell” colors, he could not elaborate what the different colors looked like in his mind (that’s a hard thing to do even for those of us blessed with the sense of vision) but he said “I can tell you that the shirt I’m wearing is blue, I cannot put in words what the color blue looks like but I can feel it, it just feels different, and it’s my favorite color.”

Needless to say, that exchange was permanently archived in my mind, and reading Stan Brakhage’s text made me draw some similarities between a congenitally blind person, who has no preconceived images of the world around him, and a visual artist who uses cinema to explain, in a non-literal way, his vision of the profound concepts that concern him, since they both disregard conventional imagery to express themselves in a way that others, whose imagination is restricted by their eyesight, simply can’t.

Metaphors on Vision _ Felix Kreidel

To see is to behold now an eye that is unruled by manmade laws is free to know each object encountered in life instead of just the name of each object. Letting go gives you personal freedom like that of the innocence of a baby's eye.

Narrative

The one thing that I would like to talk about in this blogger is the concept of "A movie does not start it begins." 


I find this interesting because it goes back to the continuity of scenes.  There has to be a natural flow for the viewer in order for him/her to enjoy what they are watching without getting confused. 


The idea of a movie having a beginning establishes in the viewers mind a developing story.  The art of this idea is that it captures the attention of the viewer as well as it creates suspense through out the film leading the viewer to want more of the story and to anxious for the ending.


For some reason this reminds me of a clock - not really sure why.  Maybe because time is a story, one that we all share to some degree.

Narrative - Paul Carter

I found this reading very informative. I liked learning about how plot is the information we learn in the story. However I must deduct a few points from my overall grade because when the writer got to the point when he was explaining about narration done by a narrator he failed to mention possibly one of the greatest narrations of all time. I am talking about the one from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This narration was used in the original radio broadcast, the BBC television series and lastly in the movie itself by the marvelous Stephen Fry. Here's an example from the trailer from the movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbGNcoB2Y4I

Narrative - Trang Pham

When discussing plot and story, I have to agree that there's a very blurry line between them. However, plot and story are not things that when we look in and distinguish them, the two contribute to each other really well. Plot is almost aways more complicated and long winded than story, but without it, there's no meaning to the story, just like a guide but without directions.

In films, the angle of the camera plays a large role in setting the story as the viewers need the sense of time and space. Later on, the character and series of actions and events contribute the plot to the story. Developing a story for a film required extra attention as stated above, angles of a camera and lighting create differents emotion to the scene. Loosely use of the time and space to introduce the plot, the whole story will become vague and has no appeal to the audiences

Narrative

It is interesting how stories are so much a part of our lives in ways that are often not thought about. Whether it be telling a friend about what happened at work earlier, or recalling a dream, its presented as a story where there are characters and events that happen with causes and effects and is usually a sequence of events.

Narrative As a Formal System

As a person who doesn't watch film a lot, i never knew how stories from novels differ from stroies off a movie. There are certainly different techniques used thoughout movies. You can tell when putting very close attention to the finner details in a film. It is basically the way the director protrays the film, how he interprets its meaning, and how he sets up the scene.

When Setting up shots it's important that angles, lighting, and everything else creates a mood. But using all of these techniques won't really help a lot if the proper storytelling isn't being told. Either it could be linier or might just jump around, but if placed well together it comes out to be a great narrative film.

This long reading helps understand how a film's story is set up and made for a person to be entertained while watching a movie.

Kino Eye - Tippi Carter

The Kino Eye is a representation of the camera and it is used to capture a certain vision to evoke a certain emotion from its audience. 

It is the builder, It is the creator of all things good or evil. It captures what the eye can not see and then perfects in a way that is unforgettable.

A few great examples of how the Kino Eye is brilliantly used is in the movies The Usual Suspects and Sixth Sense.  What the camera captured and then how it is edited together was just wonderful to watch.

Narrative on film: The many layers of the story

By Nancy Cantu Harris

Think of the most compelling movie you have seen recently. Can you pinpoint what made it so poignant? Was the situation that the characters faced relatable to you, or was the way in which the events were told what kept you drawn into their lives?

Throughout the history of humanity, stories are prevalent in our understanding of the world. We communicate and relate to each other by sharing experiences; therefore, we tend to see the narrative as the backbone of films.

On their book, Film History: An Introduction, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson deconstruct this key element of a movie production, starting from the definition of narrative as “a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space.” (1) Its components are: causality, time, and space.

The authors also explain that, although closely related, story and plot are not the same. While the story is the set of all the events (explicit and inferred) in a narrative; the plot is everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us. Narrative is where the worlds of diegesis (the total world of the story action) and nondiegetic elements (like music and credits) collide.

Story and plot are closely related and overlap.

But what exactly are the explicit and inferred events? Imagine that you are people watching at Starbucks, and you see a couple sitting across from each other, holding hands and having what appears to be an intimate conversation. The explicit event in this situation is the scene which we are witnessing; the inferred event would be the fact, that based on their attitude and behavior, we assume that they are romantically involved. If they suddenly break apart, we may infer that they are having a disagreement.

The same example applies to the nature of the events from a movie: actions that we see on the screen are explicit, those that we don’t see but can interpret from the performed scenes are inferred. These two constitute the story.

The plot, on the other hand, includes all the events directly depicted in the film, as well as material extraneous to the story world, what we call nondiegetic, like the music that intensifies the suspense in some scenes, or the titles that help the viewer identify the city or place where the action is taking place.

Further in their effort to define the elements of narrative, Bordwell and Thompson explain cause and effect. Characters are usually the force that drives the development of actions. By triggering and reacting to events, they play roles within the film’s formal system.

It is through this constant of cause and effect that the narrative unfolds in a movie. Through watching the characters face adversity in their pursuit of a goal, we feel sympathetic towards the protagonists’ cause and stay put to see them either succeed or fail.

In the realm of cinema, “time shapes our understanding of narrative action.” (2) Unconsciously, we try to order the events presented in a chronological sequence in order to make sense of what is happening on the screen.

Time as an element of narrative can be broken down in three categories: temporal order (even if presented in the middle of the movie, flashbacks are always ordered in our mind as belonging to the past of the characters), temporal duration (the story duration, plot duration, and screen time or screen duration), and temporal frequency (when a specific event is presented more than once during the movie, for instance, when a movie opens with a crime scene and goes back in time to solve the mystery of the murder, in order to end up at the start with the crime scene coming full circle.)

According to Bordwell and Thompson, a film does not just start, it begins. This opening sets out the premise for what we expect to happen next and initiates us into the narrative, and we refer to this part of the plot as exposition.

There are a few common general plot patterns that are widespread on films, like the change in knowledge (where the characters are about to uncover some information what will change the direction of their lives), goal-oriented, and, in some cases, space can become the basis for a plot. A classic example of this one is The Wizard of Oz, where the whole movie revolves around Dorothy trying to leave Oz in order to get back to Kansas.

Since “a film does not simply stop; it ends” (3), the narrative will typically resolve its causal issues by bringing closure to the protagonist’s pursuit. 

The plot’s way of distributing story information in order to achieve specific effects is called narration. Depending on the range of narration, a film may make use of omniscient narration, where the viewer has access to different points of view, or restricted narration, where our knowledge is limited to that of the protagonist.

As a side note, the authors describe the Classical Hollywood Cinema as a conventional narrative mode that depends on the assumption that the action will derive primarily from individual characters who are the causal agents, and there is always a desire, or goal, which sets the plot into motion.

At the end of this dissertation about narrative as a formal system, Bordwell and Thompson dissect the movie Citizen Kane applying the concepts and terminology previously explained, so that the reader can better understand how those elements come together to bring a story to life on the screen, in the same way that all the instruments in an orchestra play an important and vital part in a symphony.

I remember watching Citizen Kane once a few years ago. Of course, by the time I saw it, I knew that this piece of American cinema is considered one of the most relevant works in the history of film, and yet, it failed to impress me.

I suppose that my reading of this title was just not fair considering that, as a viewer, I am used to seeing movies that have been made with much more functional technology and resources that were available in 1941, when it was released. Also, influenced by the Classical Hollywood Cinema, I am accustomed to more linear ways of story-telling.

After reading the examination of Citizen Kane made by the authors, I have reconsidered my opinion about Orson Wells’ masterpiece. This is a movie that broke paradigms in its era, and the development of the plot certainly challenges the viewer into exploring a character’s passions and tribulations without the obvious pursuit of a goal. It should be read or analyzed in its context more than compared to current works of cinema. And that’s exactly what I’ll do next time I get it from the library.

1)      Film History: An Introduction. David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson. McGraw-Hill, 2009. Page 60.

2)      Film History: An Introduction. David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson. McGraw-Hill, 2009. Page 66.

3)      Film History: An Introduction. David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson. McGraw-Hill, 2009. Page 69.

Narrative Form - Felix Kreidel

The narrative form has primary components consisting of causality, time and space. Without the narrative form plots and stories would leave the audience baffled as to the point of the film.

Kino Eye- Samuel Gallardo

For me I translate it into him saying that a camera can not just be another extension of your eye. It is a piece of equipment that has to be manipulated into creating a scene. Basically there has to be a natural eye flow and not just a static picture. All in all it's pretty easy to understand what he is trying to interpret, his examples are well explained and can be helpful in any way of using a person's creative purpose. 

Kino-eye - Austin Smith

When I was reading this it made me think of Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I even read it in his voice haha  I found this interesting and after I read it as I left the computer I was imagining I was a camera and everything I saw was being shot in film, also how a a picture and make something boring so much more interesting because it is from a angle we might not be able to see.

Kino-Eye Eric Barron

The camera is a mechanical eye that can show perspectives that the human eye is unable to record. It can be positioned in places and angles not normally seen with the human eye and when a scene is recorded from multiple clips and placed in a compilation, it can portray meaning in a very unique way.

Kino-eye - Serena Milan

I found this excerpt by Dziga Vertov fascinating. When he mentions that "the use of the camera as a kino-eye; more perfect than the human eye.." I don't think he means in the eye is flawed or is less in value to a camera,  he means that when you pair an artistic eye and liberate the constraints of replicating things the way you normally see them extraordinary things can happen. I take from the excerpt, that in ukraine/russia in 1919, people who shoot video were merely recording things the way the are used to seeing them.  Kino-eye is a call to have freedom of expression by using the camera to record things in ways never imagined and to witness how the camera can change and enhance things.  We all  know a Hollywood bomb explosion doesn't look as cool in real life. I am almost positive that before kino-eye, recordings of bombs exploding were pretty boring. I love that Vertov is challenging the way things had been done for so long. He strives to no longer replicate life through a recording of it, but enhance life through the freedom of recording it experimentally.

Serena Milan

Kino Eye - Trang Pham

I have read Kino Eye and I believe through the Kino eye, the author want to use it as a tool to create a perspective, an angle behind the kino eye that no other have seen before. Each aspect of thing around us, from shape to size, from people to other, each perspective is hidden with a meaning that viewing from one angle can not convey the entire definition of it. Through the kino eye, cutting and editing to create a passage, a word from the author to the viewers through visuals, just like how a storyteller deliver a story to a kid through his/her voice.

Nowadays, movies and videos are highly demanding in CGI and the effect artist to create colorful flashing effect to entertain the viewer, rather than focus on the hidden meaning that the author, through the kino eye, trying to deliver. Take one of my favorite movie "Requiem for a Dream" for an example: The movie is not category with horror, but through the repetition sequences of popping drug, dilated eye pupil, action of putting drug into the body..., it gives the chill to the viewers that haunt them without using the CGI effects of blood and gore in today generic horror movies. And what we understand from that repetition sequence is drugs give the body those effects, but through the close up shot through the kino eye, it creates the scary feeling rather than entertaining effects it gives.   

Kino Eye - P. Carter

     Ok, so I have read, and re-read, Kino-Eye on three separate occasions trying to the best of my abilities to fully comprehend the arguments presented by the author of this piece. I must admit that it was a bit difficult for me personally to follow what the author was trying to say. That being said, I will make my best attempt to explain what I took from the excerpt.

     It is mentioned early on that the camera is better at capturing images than the human eye, and while yes I will agree that technically a modern camera can capture more information than the human eye can process, I personally disagree that the camera is in any way superior to the eye of an artist. For example, we have all grown fully accustomed to the ever watchful eyes of security cameras posted nearly everywhere in our everyday lives. If any one of us were to sit and watch a video feed from one of the aforementioned security cameras we would soon find ourselves bored with even the highest resolution of this type of static footage. However, take this same camera and place it in the hands of a skilled artist and there is a chance of magic being created from an artist's touch. Therefore, from my personal perspective, the technical superiority of the camera is nothing without the human eye of the artist.

     Later on in this piece the author sites an example of, "shooting a boxing match not from the point of view of the spectator present, but shooting the successive movements (the blows) of the contenders." As I read this I could not help but to think of a scene from "Raging Bull" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wwItkoapuA . In this scene we see both types of shots, from both inside and out of the ring, merged together to form a narrative. In my opinion the use of theses shots together add to the dramatic tension of this scene.

     Perhaps if the author wrote this piece during the modern era of filmmaking he might have a different stance. Today we can shoot first person point of view shots (POV) with an off the shelf Go Pro camera. I have noticed a growing trend in the use of first person POV in modern media that rivals that of the "Shaky Cam," from not long ago. Here's a movie trailer from Hardcore Henry demonstrating my point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv33e0TyL6M .

     For me personally the current trend of over using  POV filmmaking like the over use  the shaky cam craze before have diminished the art of cinematography. To me a skilled artist knows when and what tool to use when telling his tale. For example, in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg expertly uses both steady shots and handheld camera (not to be confused with "shaky cam") to draw us into his narrative. Through his use of camera techniques we can clearly see the action that is taking place AND we feel like we are there storming the beach with the rest of the soldiers. Sadly this seems to be a dying art form that is grossly being replaced by overly kinetic camera movements and filmmaking is suffering for it.   

Kino Eye - Felix Kreidel

I feel the story was about the difference in the human eye to the kino eye. Using the kino eye, more perfect than the human eye, for the exploration of the chaos of visual phenomena that fills space he was able to direct the audience to what he wanted them to see and not what they wanted to look at first. I feel this is used a lot in some modern techniques in filming.

I look forward to creating memories through the lens of the camera.  I look forward to creating stories that future generations can look at and be inspired.  I look forward to conveying a message of hope that my generation will embrace and be encouraged through it.  I look forward to seeing, writing and editing a colorful vision through the mechanical eye.

I found the information below from: http://kino-eye.com/about/kino-eye/

Why the name Kino-Eye?

I’m often asked about the name kino-eye. It is a term with many meanings and interpretations. Dziga Vertov, a filmmaker best known for the classic A Man With A Movie Camera, used the term in a 1923 manifesto,

I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it.

In 1929 Dziga Vertov explained the meaning in “From Kino-Eye to Radio-Eye,” (an essay that appears in Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov)

Kino-eye = kino-seeing (I see through the camera) + kino-writing (I write on film with the camera) + kino-organization (I edit).” … “Kino-Eye means the conquest of space, the visual linkage of people throughout the entire world based on the continuous exchange of visible fact” … “Kino-Eye is the possibility of seeing life processes in any temporal order or at any speed” … “Kino-Eye uses every possible means in montage, comparing and linking all points of the universe in any temporal order, breaking, when necessary, all the laws and conventions of film construction.

Joseph Schaub wrote in “ Presenting the Cyborg’s Futurist Past: An Analysis of Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Eye“,

…Kino-eye, then, is a cyborg construction that contains multiple positions for the production of film meaning.

The confluence of new and old media technologies are expanding our knowledge of the world and helping us see from perspectives that we could not have seen otherwise. Vertov’s films and writings were prescient and inspire an interest in media technology of the past, present, and future.

Dziga Vertov: Creating reality as we want to see it.

By Nancy Cantu Harris

Just as explained by Alfred Hitchcock, editing is more than cutting, it is assembling; and from the words and work of Dziga Vertov we realize that in order to convey a message through film, the way we connect one image to the next one is as relevant for the story as the music, lighting, and dialogues.

Original film poster of
Man with a Movie Camera

Pioneer of the documentary genre, Vertov reveals that, as determined as he was to capture and present reality on film, the editing process allows for the filmmaker to “amend” the truth in the way that best suits his or her intentions, either for technical convenience –for example, one scene that occurs later in the plot could be filmed earlier during principal photography due to weather conditions or location availability, or because it adds to the impact that the story wants to achieve –“such structuring of the film-object enables one to develop any given theme, be it comic, tragic, one of special effects, or some other type.¹”

Film editing or, for our purposes in class, video editing, is no different than editing a text. One can acknowledge that, in writing, words can lead the reader to perceive the characters according to the intentions of the author.

For instance, when telling a news story, the reporter might use adjectives or nuances that will cause a subject to be portrayed in a manner that will evoke either sympathy or rejection. We all do this “editing” of reality to favor our purposes. 

Let’s pretend for a moment that we are describing the appearance of someone we like; it is not the same to call someone “beautiful” as to say he or she is “striking,” even if our concept of beauty is always personal, we all would be inclined to think that someone “striking” is a little higher in the “looks” scale than someone who is simply “beautiful.”

The same thing happens when editing film. Even if the images we have filmed for a documentary are a true reflection of reality, the order in which we present them can project a constructed “reality” according to the way we see it. “I make the viewer see in the manner best suited to my presentation²”, explains the director of Man with a Movie Camera.

As someone who doesn’t feel that belongs in the realm of creativity, I feel a great amount of respect for the way Vertov used film to convey his vision of reality. “My path leads to the creation of a fresh perception of the world. I decipher in a new way a world unknown to you³,” he stated, and he certainly did.

(1) Vertov, Dziga, 1896. Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (1984) University of California Press. Page 20.

(2) Vertov, Dziga, 1896. Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (1984) University of California Press. Page 16.

(3) Vertov, Dziga, 1896. Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (1984) University of California Press. Page 18.

Welcome to Digital Video + Advanced Digital Video at Richland College!

This blog is where we will discuss theoretical and historical readings assigned in class. Whenever the syllabus reads "Blog Post Due:", it means you are to create a new post here with your response. What I'm looking for in your responses is for you to show me how you're thinking about and integrating the reading. Don't tell me what it says, I already know. I want you to tell me, or show me, what it made you think about. This will be an aid to our conversation about the text in class. If you are having trouble thinking about what to make in your projects, these readings are meant to get you thinking about how other people have approached the subjects we will be covering. Please take these readings seriously! Looking forward to a great semester with all of you.