madnovel Chapter 121 Movies are a lie from the very beginning.
Chapter 121 Movies are a lie from the very beginning.
The guy with glasses was completely unaware that the person was talking about him, and he was still looking down at his phone when his classmate next to him nudged him hard with his elbow.
Only then did Ling realize what was happening. She frantically shoved her phone under the table, forcing a smile that looked more like a grimace: "T-Teacher, I...I was taking notes!"
"Taking notes?" Mu Yuan raised an eyebrow slightly, his smile deepening. "What did you write down?"
The guy with glasses opened his mouth, then looked down at the open notebook in front of him... It was completely blank, with nothing on it.
He swallowed hard, his brain working at full speed, and then managed to squeeze out a sentence:
"I... I was just looking up some information. You mentioned montage, so I looked up Eisenstein's representative work, um... Battleship Potemkin. It's an... old film."
The whole class laughed again.
Jingyang covered his mouth in the corner, his shoulders shaking.
Yang Yi lowered his head, his ears already turning red.
Mu Yuan nodded, his expression unchanged: "Yeah, an old movie. So tell me, what's the most classic scene in 'Battleship Potemkin'?"
The guy with glasses' face changed from white to gray, then from gray to green, like a traffic light that had come to life.
He stammered for a while, then gritted his teeth, took his phone out of the desk drawer, and started searching on Baidu with his head down.
The classroom was so quiet that you could hear his fingers tapping on the screen.
After several seconds, the guy with glasses looked up, his expression as if he had grasped at a lifeline:
"O...Odessa Steps! Odessa Steps! That...that massacre on those steps! Yes! The massacre!"
After saying that, he let out a sigh of relief, as if he had just finished a physical fitness test.
Mu Yuan paused for two seconds, then nodded: "Not bad. The Odessa Steps. Now tell me, what montage techniques were used in this scene? What was the effect?"
The smile on the bespectacled guy's face froze instantly. He looked down at his phone, then started frantically tapping the screen again.
But this time, Baidu didn't seem to give him an answer that he could read aloud on the spot.
He poked around for a long time, then finally looked up, his eyes almost red: "Teacher... I... I can't find it... This page... won't load..."
The classroom erupted in laughter. Several girls were laughing so hard they were doubled over, and even Yun Yiyi in the corner had a slight smile on her face.
Mu Yuan pushed up his reading glasses and sighed:
"Alright, stop checking. Your phone screen brightness is so high, it looks like a searchlight from the podium. You think you're looking up information, but I think you want the whole class to see your screen...are you playing games?"
"When I was lecturing just now, the frequency with which you tapped the screen was much faster than you were typing; it was quite rhythmic."
The guy with glasses blushed instantly, as red as a freshly cooked spicy crayfish. He opened his mouth, wanting to explain, but couldn't utter a single word.
"What's your name?" Mu Yuan asked.
"Zhao... Zhao Xiaoshan."
"Zhao Xiaoshan." Mu Yuan walked to his desk, glanced down at the blank notebook in front of him,
"You just said you were researching Eisenstein? Okay, then let me tell you... The Odessa Steps scene, six minutes long, more than 150 shots, each shot averaging less than three seconds, rapid editing, the pace gets faster and faster, more and more fragmented, pushing the audience's nerves to the limit."
This is Eisenstein's "stunt montage"...using fragmented, conflicting shots to bombard the viewer's senses, making you not just watch a massacre, but feel like you are being massacred.
Mu Yuan's voice deepened:
"This technique has been around for a hundred years. A hundred years later, the short videos on your phone are still using the same thing. Fragmented editing, emotional bombardment, making your fingers unable to stop."
The way you were scrolling through your phone just now was exactly the same reaction as the first audience members who saw "Battleship Potemkin" a hundred years ago... completely swept along, completely losing the ability to think.
The whole class fell silent.
The guy with glasses lowered his head and silently turned off his phone.
Mu Yuan patted him on the shoulder, his tone softening slightly: "Next time in class, don't play games. With your positioning, you can't even beat the bots. If you want to learn positioning, come to my class... Eisenstein will teach you what real positioning is."
The classroom erupted in laughter again. Even the guy with glasses couldn't hold back and burst out laughing, his face turning red.
Mu Yuan turned around and walked back to the podium to continue lecturing.
Shen Li leaned back in her chair, watching this scene with a sense of wonder.
This teacher, Ms. Mu, first woke people up by saying she "glows," then gave them a way out by saying she was "looking up information."
Then, following the lead of "Battleship Potemkin," the game criticizes the fragmentation of short videos, criticizes the poor positioning in gaming, and finally pats someone on the shoulder and offers a way out...
The entire process was smooth and efficient, combining both gentle and firm approaches, like slapping someone and then kneading them three times.
He insulted two students in one class, calling one "a ghost" and the other "bad at positioning than a bot." After insulting them, you still felt that what he said made sense and wanted to applaud him on the spot.
"Wow, that's impressive," Shen Li thought to herself.
"This is what you call education. They taught film history, how to be a person, and even threw in a bit of playful mockery. Hua Fengyi is sharp-tongued and ruthless, while Mu Yuan is all bark and no bite. These old teachers at the Beijing Film Academy are all incredibly shrewd."
In the next lesson, Mu Yuan talked about Méliès's "A Trip to the Moon".
The story goes that this guy was originally a magician. After watching Lumière's films, he wanted to buy a camera to make his own, but Lumière wouldn't sell it to him. In a fit of anger, he built one himself.
Later, he directed the first science fiction film in human history, and he figured out all the special effects himself...
Stopping the camera and reshooting, multiple exposures, fade-in and fade-out... these are all magicians' old tricks.
"Therefore," Mu Yuan concluded.
"Movies are a deception from the very beginning. Lumière fooled audiences with trains, and Méliès fooled audiences with the moon."
The director is a professional conman, and the actors are his accomplices. You acting students, frankly speaking, are learning how to be accomplices. If you do it well, it's called acting. If you don't…”
He glanced at the boy in the blue hoodie who had just been "haunted," and said, "...It's called haunted."
The whole class burst into laughter again.
The boy let out a wail, pulled up the hood of his hoodie, and curled up into a ball.
When the bell rang, Mu Yuan threw the chalk into the chalk box, dusted off his hands, and said:
"Next class is about the New Wave. Watch two Godard films beforehand, don't come here and tell me you've never heard of them. If you want to sleep, say so now, I have a limited stock of 'ghostly' jokes. get out of class dismissed."
Amidst laughter, Shen Li packed her things, preparing to slip away.
As Shen Li approached the door, Mu Yuan was organizing his lesson plans. She hesitated for a moment, then walked over and bowed, saying, "Teacher Mu, I've learned a great deal from today's lesson."
Mu Yuan looked up at Shen Li, adjusted his reading glasses, and smiled slightly: "Change your hat next class. That black one is too conspicuous."
Shen Li was taken aback for a moment, then grinned and said, "Okay. Thank you, Teacher Mu."