I'm trying to remember the word -- it might have been a recent neology, maybe a portmanteau word -- for those lightning fast video montages that are so popular these days in movie trailers and on MTV.
I thought I saw it at Wordsmith.org, so I trawled through the archives but, no joy.
Anyone's memory better than mine? What was that damn word?
I didn't even know the concept had a name! Thanks for bringing it up, ullrich -- I hope someone can tell us.
I've just heard it called
MTV-style or rapid cutting. The older style of montage was called (perhaps still is) vorkapich after its inventor Slavko Vorkapich, who worked in Hollywood and taught at USC Film School. The article on montage at Wikipedia has a cross reference to
hip hop montage, but I'm not sure that that's what you mean either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavko_Vorkapichhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montage[Fixed spooneristic eponymous proper noun.]
> called (perhaps still is) vorkapich after its inventor Slavko Porkavich,
vorkapich = Porkavich
spoonerism?
My first online, unintentional spoonerism. Moday I am a tan.
My first online, unintentional spoonerism. Don't worry--it's Anna's fault, clearly, for starting that thread! (hee, hee)
Jean-Luc Godard pioneered the 'jump cut' in the 60s which is now used excessively in MTV vids, television in general, and in Hollywood movies, but this (I think) refers more specifically to cuts made to a single scene to sped it up.. so a man walks slowly along the street towards his house ... they cut, usually increasingly more rapidly .. so that the man disappears into the house in a flash of jerky pictures. It has become a means battling impatience in the viewer - especially when the content is trite, I think. There are a handful of directors out there who use the technique very well though, like Michel Gondry.
Aside: Interestingly, a lot of the musics videos on MTV by the likes of 50 cent feature fairly slow beats and sparse music, with little instrumentation or tune. Yet the videos are usually just the opposite: a deluge of sweeping camera shots of dancers busting a groove and outrageously dressed MCs with sparkling jewellery standing in front of brightly-lit casinos. Well odd.
The jump cut existed before Godard . It was (and still is according to some prescriptivist film grammarians) a pejorative term and a thing to be avoided (along with sun flares, shaky hand-held, etc.). What Godard did was to popularize jump cuts by featuring them prominently in his first feature film. I read an interview with Godard recently where he said that the original cut of A bout de souffle was too long, and he simply went in a removed frames from shot sequences to shorten it. Interestingly, he didn't really use jump cuts in his subsequent films. It shows up in pop promo films because film school and commercial ads filmmakers are constantly raiding history for "new" film gimmicks (or artistic devices).
And speaking of sun flares: they were studiously avoided until the release and instant box office boffo of Easy Rider. Execs in Hollywood looked at the film and decided it must be the sun flares that made the young ones go to see it. After that sun flares galore in the usual dreck.
Moday I am a tan.
Monday you ate a man?
Moday I am a tan
...Isn't that the author of The Joy Luck Club ?
(But I digress.)
> What Godard did was to popularize jump cuts by featuring them prominently in his first feature film.
popularised ... pioneered ...whatever, he came up with the term, AFAIK.
Re. sun flares
I think they are great in film when used well (e.g. Beck's 'Where it's at'), it is, after all, not uncommon that our own eyes are over-exposed by the sun. I noticed before that you get a six-pronged star with video footage and, I think, a four-pronged one with film. I'm sure there's a reason for that, but I can't remember what it might be. It's interesting that depending on the amount of light you let into your eye the different 'sparkle' effect you can get out of it. When you think about there are whole industries devoted to satisfying the human love of sparkles - Christmas lights, fireworks, etc.
> human love of sparkles - Christmas lights
one of the few good things about wearing glasses is taking them off and looking at the Christmas tree...
>> one of the few good things about wearing glasses is taking them off and looking at the Christmas tree...
"as silk the faded leinwand goddess
so gives my naked eye my love
the pearl of her youth's bodice"
-- author (thankfully) unknown