An interesting silent documentary that used an immense variety of film techniques was “Man With A Movie Camera”, directed by Dziga Vertov. The most intriguing aspect of this movie, was the fact that it was a documentary that was made in 1929, yet it had so many groundbreaking film techniques that can be seen anywhere in television or movies today. These were all real events that were taking place right before the director. He captured humanity in its true essence; in motion. This made me realize that we pay homage to actors even though all they are really doing is portraying real live events that happen every day. It shows people in many sequences of motions. The music is very weird and sets a very mundane or even sad tone. The filming was sometimes very shaky camera and things appeared in dull lighting. This was probably due to film stocks of the time and likely nothing was lit other than natural light. The Russian population, wildlife, weather, was captured using a lot of depth of perception.
I believe this film helps to see life in plain light which can be emulated through the black and white aura of the film. Sometimes it captures normality such as people working, lying around, or cleaning themselves; nothing spectacular. This film is very experimental, but it kept my attention the entire time because the settings and the film techniques kept changing. It used a lot of different camera speeds, dissolves, split-screens , and prismatic lenses. This film had very reflexive filmmaking; part of its story was about the making of the film. The director was very hands on in climbing up smoke stacks and bridges to get certain camera angles. That was very commendable because I feel like directors now are very pampered and feel like they should get recognition for filming techniques that were already around during this time. It would be a rare director today who could make this film, no matter what techniques they used.
I thought it was very interesting when he showed machinery and cogs moving constantly. I thought that this is what the film felt like, machinery, a very fixed mechanism that could present different results; that is life. The man is shown walking around with a tripod by himself and even cleaning himself at the beach wearing a swimsuit after filming. Two film techniques that are used in this film are fast and slow motion. I did not know that slow motion had been invented so early. What amazes me even more is the sped up version of regular filming. I always thought that was just a method used in all silent and black and white films because they were so primitive in filming. These are really amazing in the sports clips that he shows. These techniques are still used today and I was in awe of how precise these images were even though they were probably just invented. The scenes that showed trolleys moving in a split screen mirror image helped to show a lot of conflicting paths of motion. He uses many jump cuts like cutting from blinds shutting to a woman or an even more intense sequence of the camera shutter to an eye, which made it seem as if the eye is in the shutter. These were very strange and it was very exciting to see that someone could have such a brilliant imagination at such an early time era.
The director shows footage of a woman cutting and editing film. This helps to show the behind the scenes aspect of filmmaking. There are freeze frames that show people like children. Then, the frame is animated into motion as if the film was edited and finalized directly in front of my eyes. He works very differently with camera angles. One angle that caught my eye was a view looking up the side of a building but it looked like it was a flat surface, like a pathway going into the horizon. A familiar method that I saw was the use of tracking shots. In one scene, he is in what looks like a moving car filming a woman in a car that is driving adjacent to his. He is also filming while standing up which seemed kind of dangerous now that I think about it. There is also a tracking shot of him filming firemen in their truck moving while they seem unaware. This proves that this director was on the cutting edge of filming and these methods were truly amazing to see. I did not really mind that they were cut so randomly. I enjoyed seeing life take place right in front of me instead of a staged and carefully edited film for once. It was very refreshing. Its editing techniques and constructions are complex, very well designed, and often put right on screen for us to see. The mark of good editing is how seamless and invisible it is - once you feel you are watching an edited film, you lose something. That never happens in this film, even though we are constantly reminded of her editing techniques.
