Eisentein and Lotman Reading Response

Lotman -

Semiotics was a big part of MTD1, almost everything revolved around it and came back to semiotics. Out of the two articles, this was the one that I was able to understand and grasp the most. Both were good, but I enjoyed this one more. I fully agree that semiotics can be applied to film, heck it can be applied to anything. Film is basically just a bunch of still images moving through a projector at however-so-many frames per second. Also, film can be a much stronger medium as opposed to pictures because, as Lotman said in his article, "images may be augmented by additional means...lighting, montage...change of speed may impart to the objects additional meanings." In other words, the creator has more to work with to convey wants he wants to convey. The part of the reading in which Lotman describes the multi-layered film was interesting. I expirenced this first hand with the movie Shrek. I watched it a lot when I was younger and laughed and had a good time. I watched it again when I was older and more developed, and I caught all the little sexual innuendos that was in the movie and the more adult oriented jokes and references.

Eisenstein -

This article was a little bit muddled for me. I did not grasp it fully, but I think I got an idea of what his theory entailed. When I think "montage," I think slide show; a bunch of images strung together to form some meaning. When talking about collisions and conflicts that must be a part of these montages, I understood the basic idea of that. A few little slide shows / movies that I have made for fun have often had ominous music or calming, relaxing music to images or footage of war and gunfights to create that conflict that Eisenstein was talking about. So having done those little projects, I can relate to that a little bit. In the latter section of the article, when Eisenstein re-vamped his theory into one of a fusion of ideas, that seemed more of what I would consider a montage, "cutting up images...to create emotional responses in people. And these responses are connected to things, which are the foundation of our sensations, emotions, and ideas."