Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 01:50:59 +1000
From: mmcmahon-AT-extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Melissa McMahon)
Subject: Re: Montage?


re Jay:
I think the disagreement is that I see the three levels as fundamentally
conceptual distinctions, which then have a certain freedom in what material
aspects of the film they apply to, while retaining their conceptual
distinctness.
Your definition:
>The first level is
>basically the frame.  The second is the shot.  The third is the whole.
strikes me as strange because while you define the first two levels as
referring to technical categories in film, the third is defined as a
concept ('the whole'). My functional/conceptual definition of the levels
would be that the first refers to the 'parties' of the movement, which
could just as well be an object as the frame, or even the shot, the second
as that which delimits a given movement (mobile section or ensemble), which
again could be the frame or shot, or even the whole film.The third level,
the whole, is just the concrete duration that this movement takes place in,
what prevents the ensemble from being closed upon itself, as it is what
refers whatever is given to us, in terms of movement in space, to the
qualitative change which it expresses and which is never given (only it's
'image' as image of time).

That's how I understand it: parts, ensembles, the whole are conceptual and
functional distinctions, not material ones, or nor derived from material
ones (in the same way that faciality and the close-up in film does not have
to be of a face nor even close up). It would follow from this that a given
film will have different montage 'series' running through it (eg. what
plays the role of a part on one level may be an ensemble on another), but
this just suggests complexity to me rather than lack of precision.

- Melissa






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