After we had discussed the history of the cinema at the lesson, I just think about the unification of economic, industrial and technologic realities of cinema. By these developments, nobody focus on works and authors’ as much as latter works. The result of the financial and technological factors, these changes still effects and it seems that it will affect the future of cinema history.
Technology develops rapidly and at the each period of it, we use different equipments and styles for each of them (cameras, lenses, new techniques…). So, here is the question that how can we know the resistance of a technical device to time? Will it be resist to change or demise for ever?
By the technological change the succession of financing films may not be acceptable. I want to give an example that I saw in a music &film market a few weeks ago. A guy and his girlfriend asked to the salesperson of the shop, a movie that they could watch. He gave some CD to them then asked them in which media will they watch the movies. But it does not any meaning for them because they only wanted to watch it. Salesperson told them the CD is in HD quality and they could not watch them with high visual quality at DVD players. However, it again does not matter for them and they said “we only want to watch it, visual quality is unnecessary”. So, here I ask, where are these technological developments going for these kinds of people? Or, do they protest the technology to watch films at low prices? Therefore, it can be said that the economic processes are also important for cinema as technology.
The architectures and decorations of cinema halls had been changed, according to these changes; the ticket prices increased. Additionally, if we add the financial film price which has high technological devised at the production, we can ask: who will watch those films at cinemas. There is a cinema culture in our society. Some movies should be watched at the cinema saloon for the fans of films, but who will pay these high prices that are the results of the economic and technological factors or for whom are those films made for? In which class of people do producers produce those films, do they classify people according to their many by using the technology?
Also by these developments in technology, cinema always takes the benefits of it. I don’t think that people try to develop technological devises for cinema, I believe it develops and cinema affects from it.
However, by these developments, I just ask “for whom” for prices and now I am asking again it for the technological products. Technology develops very rapidly and the progress of the humanity has some difficulties to catch those developments in some cases. It changes every day in fact every minute. But do viewers intelligent enough to understand them as quick as it do. I believe a time period need for the people to understand what does it for and what it is describe.
I think the savior of the cinema technology is sound technology. It takes some of the loads on the viewer from some misunderstandings about the film and raises the intelligibility.
As a conclusion, I just criticized the economical and technological changes on cinema. But do not misunderstand me that I did not say technology is not necessary and nobody knows its worth. I believe technology add many technical data to cinema industry. I just discussed and ask do this industry make classification on people by playing their money.
Pelin Gezginer
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25 Ekim 2009 Pazar
Godard’s signifiers
Gönderen
Film and Genre
I want to start with a quotation from the text “Godard, Cinema, (Hi)stories” ;
“History is a mode of shared experience where all experiences are equivalent and where the signs of any one experience are capable of expressing all the others. Novalis succinctly summed up the poetics of the age of history in his famous dictum:”everything speaks”.
What does “everything speaks” mean though? And what are its connections to the cinema are main questions of following paragraphs.
First of all we can remember the Saussure’s semiology and its definitions of sing, signifier and the signified. We all read his text so I do not want to rediscover America, instead, I want to point out my ideas about what is this speaking of everything in Saussure’s terminology.
The “everything” in the motto-like sentence is, although it seems like it is commuting with “the sign”, this every thing in actually “the signifier” in cinema. I believe that the sentence can be reread as “signifiers are constantly creating each other”.
As an example lets consider any single image in Godard’s documentary. Every single shot signifies something in our mind, because of our personal experiences and the social conditions of ours(actually Hall explains in his encoding/decoding how complicated is this ‘because of’). And the sign lets say the table becomes a signifier which creates its meaning through the movie again and again.
My first claim is that: there exist no sign in a movie like Godard’s. Every single image perceived in our brain with its whole bunch of connections in our mind. I know this sentence seems a bit provocative, but lets focus more. In a movie with continuous narrative the images can be signs, which become(or not) a signifier later on. And again the process works; the thing finds its meaning again and again through the movie. Lets consider the ear in one of the very first scene of Blue Velvet. First it is pure ear but than, our mind tries to find the signifier. And this signifier change again and again till the end of the movie. If we think of the ear at the end of the move, it doesnt have the same signifier in our brain as it had in the beginning. Therefore, what a the time in the move makes is to lead us to change the signifier of images that it is showing to us.
For Lynch, I believe this process works in a very obvious way. I do not remember the source(maybe one of our readings), it was talking about a exposition in France, in which different objects from Lynch movies are gathered together. It is meaningful and possible to do such a exposition for Lynch because it plays with the signifiers of certain object through all the movie.
So what is going on is “everything” which is firstly a sign that immediately a signifier, talks, changes its connections, through the movie.
Now, lets turn back to Godard and my pretentious claim. There is no sign but a constant and powerfull change of signifiers in Godards documentery. Only sign is maybe the written words, or sentences in the documentary.
What Godard is trying to do is let the signifiers to change. He shows images one after the other, even sometimes we can not find the time to “understand” the image, but to see it. Sign become the signifier, and he plays with its meanings.
The narration in Godards documentary is this “talk” of signifiers and their fabulous dance of changing the meanings of the ones before.
In the Godards documentary every scene falls on the others. You can not think of any single image without the others; it includes all the images before and after. Therefore I am feeling something magnificent in this process. The scene in the 3th minute of the documentary is actually carries the one in the end. Some kind of future in the moment. Because Godard plays with the signifiers. You can not talk about his documentary in a time line like first this happened and than this and that. But what you can talk about is the movie whole. There is no separate image than the others, no lines no borders but kind of loops, and flows of meanings.
In the documentary of Godard everything speaks with us and with eachother.
Ozan Kamiloğlu
“History is a mode of shared experience where all experiences are equivalent and where the signs of any one experience are capable of expressing all the others. Novalis succinctly summed up the poetics of the age of history in his famous dictum:”everything speaks”.
What does “everything speaks” mean though? And what are its connections to the cinema are main questions of following paragraphs.
First of all we can remember the Saussure’s semiology and its definitions of sing, signifier and the signified. We all read his text so I do not want to rediscover America, instead, I want to point out my ideas about what is this speaking of everything in Saussure’s terminology.
The “everything” in the motto-like sentence is, although it seems like it is commuting with “the sign”, this every thing in actually “the signifier” in cinema. I believe that the sentence can be reread as “signifiers are constantly creating each other”.
As an example lets consider any single image in Godard’s documentary. Every single shot signifies something in our mind, because of our personal experiences and the social conditions of ours(actually Hall explains in his encoding/decoding how complicated is this ‘because of’). And the sign lets say the table becomes a signifier which creates its meaning through the movie again and again.
My first claim is that: there exist no sign in a movie like Godard’s. Every single image perceived in our brain with its whole bunch of connections in our mind. I know this sentence seems a bit provocative, but lets focus more. In a movie with continuous narrative the images can be signs, which become(or not) a signifier later on. And again the process works; the thing finds its meaning again and again through the movie. Lets consider the ear in one of the very first scene of Blue Velvet. First it is pure ear but than, our mind tries to find the signifier. And this signifier change again and again till the end of the movie. If we think of the ear at the end of the move, it doesnt have the same signifier in our brain as it had in the beginning. Therefore, what a the time in the move makes is to lead us to change the signifier of images that it is showing to us.
For Lynch, I believe this process works in a very obvious way. I do not remember the source(maybe one of our readings), it was talking about a exposition in France, in which different objects from Lynch movies are gathered together. It is meaningful and possible to do such a exposition for Lynch because it plays with the signifiers of certain object through all the movie.
So what is going on is “everything” which is firstly a sign that immediately a signifier, talks, changes its connections, through the movie.
Now, lets turn back to Godard and my pretentious claim. There is no sign but a constant and powerfull change of signifiers in Godards documentery. Only sign is maybe the written words, or sentences in the documentary.
What Godard is trying to do is let the signifiers to change. He shows images one after the other, even sometimes we can not find the time to “understand” the image, but to see it. Sign become the signifier, and he plays with its meanings.
The narration in Godards documentary is this “talk” of signifiers and their fabulous dance of changing the meanings of the ones before.
In the Godards documentary every scene falls on the others. You can not think of any single image without the others; it includes all the images before and after. Therefore I am feeling something magnificent in this process. The scene in the 3th minute of the documentary is actually carries the one in the end. Some kind of future in the moment. Because Godard plays with the signifiers. You can not talk about his documentary in a time line like first this happened and than this and that. But what you can talk about is the movie whole. There is no separate image than the others, no lines no borders but kind of loops, and flows of meanings.
In the documentary of Godard everything speaks with us and with eachother.
Ozan Kamiloğlu