Montage Simply, Editing. More Particularly: Eisenstein's Idea That

Montage Simply, editing. More particularly: Eisenstein's idea that adjacent shots should relate to each other in such a way that A and B combine to produce another meaning, C, which is not actually recorded on the film.

Mise-en Scene The term usually used to denote that part of the cinematic process that takes place on the set, as opposed to editing, which takes place afterwards. Literally, the "putting-in- the-scene":

• the direction of actors • placement of cameras • choice of lenses etc

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a French word literally meaning "editing", "putting together" or "assembling shots"; refers to a filming technique, editing style, or form of movie collage consisting of a series of short shots or images that are rapidly put together into a coherent sequence to create a composite picture, or to suggest meaning or a larger idea; in Examples: the famous simple terms, the structure of editing 'breakfast' montage scene within a film; a montage is usually not inCitizen Kane (1941) - accompanied with that dramatized the dialogue; dissolves, cuts, fades, super- deterioration of Kane's first impositions, and wipes are often used marriage; the ambush to link the images in a montage scene in Bonnie and Clyde sequence; an accelerated montage is (1967), the 45 second composed of shots of increasingly- montage shower scene in Psycho shorter lengths; contrast to mise-en- (1960) - with between 71- scene 78 camera set-ups for the shooting of the scene and 50splices (where two pieces of film are joined); or the 'Odessa Steps' montage in Sergei Eisenstein'sBattleship Potemkin (1925) including three successive shots of stone lions in various positions - filmed to look as though they were one lion rising to its feet and roaring in fury and anger at the massacre ****************************************************************************** Montage

By definition, a montage is "a single pictorial composition made by juxtaposing or superimposing many pictures or designs." In filmmaking, a montage is an editing technique in which shots are juxtaposed in an often fast-paced fashion that compresses time and conveys a lot of information in a relatively short period.

Two Contrasting Examples

The two clips below epitomize what a montage consists of. I chose these particular examples because they are from major motion pictures, and both illustrate the same topic – a trip – but in two extremely contrasting ways.

The montage from 1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid shows a trip from New York City to Bolivia that occurred in the beginning of the century. The second montage is from the 2002 The Rules of Attraction, which narrates a journey across many countries in Europe.

The 33-year time gap between both movies is evidence of how styles change over time, especially as they tell stories that took place a hundred years apart (Butch Cassidy traveled to South American in 1901.)

They used:

• Still pictures • Sepia tone • Slow-paced editing • Orchestral music • No dialogue

They used:

• Video footage (digital) • Fast-paced editing (quick shots, many cuts) • House music • Narration

What to Avoid

Montages cannot create strong emotions. Ergo, they are not used to make the audience feel, rather they make the audience know. Montages inform.

This is so true that the message inherent to some montages could be replaced by simple text cards. However, this alternative is far less exciting and stimulating… far less cinematic. Think of Rocky (1976) and the now famous training montage. That whole sequence could be replaced by a title card reading "After weeks of training, Rocky improved his stamina and perfected his boxing skills." This short sentence essentially summarizes that 3- minute montage… but which one do you think is more cinematic? Which one would make you have goose bumps?

For this reason, it is often said that characters cannot fall in love during montages. The courtship and romance would be too bland or dull. Love deserves a better treatment.

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Quarter 1 take home project.

What is a montage? Montage is the technique of selecting, editing and piecing together separate sections of film to form a continuous whole. It is the basis of creating a film sequence. It is how film makers compose their work. Many filmmakers define it as: “A quick succession of sounds and images designed to condense a lot of material into a brief amount of screen time. For example, a montage dramatizing a winning baseball season might be communicated in a rapid fire succession of shots showing hitters, scoreboards, umpires signaling “safe” and so on, inter cut with repeated newspaper headlines announcing team wins, pages flying off a desk calendar, and shots of the team bus traveling to on game after another. “ (Jim Stinson) Many modern, popular and formulaic Hollywood films have a music montage that is inserting somewhere in the 2nd act. Contemporary film makers usually refer to the music montage as montage even though by strict definition is is simply assembling various shots to tell a story using film.

Montage gives us the element of TIME in our films. Montage is used in films to compress a long period of time into a short period of time. To give a feel for the childhood of a character, you might group a collection of rapidly moving shots from the characters childhood.

Russian filmmakers, Sergie Eisenstein, Lev Kulshov, Dziga Vertov and Vsevolod Pudovkin from the early Soviet era, pioneered and developed theories on montage. For them a montage was the "collision" of two separate shots that when placed together created a new meaning for the audience. When a face is viewed independently it is only a face, however when we insert another shot, for example, a car speeding by, we set up a new meaning. We create a character who is watching a car, or we create a character who sees the person he has been waiting for arrive. If we show a shot of a pizza, a new meaning is implied. Our character is about to eat a slice of pizza or our character is thinking about lunch. If we show the face, the car and the pizza, our lunch has been delivered.

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A Guide to Montage Editing By Russell Evans

Montage is so interesting because it’s the editing style itself that is telling a lot of the meaning of the movie, as much as the actual stuff you shot. It’s what music has been doing for decades, since sampling and hip-hop kicked off. In old-school sampled hip-hop (Grandmaster Flash, et al.) it was the way you assembled sounds together, the way they collide and join up, that makes it fun. The lyrics weren’t always too important. And another thing that makes hip-hop so similar to montage is the way it uses these collisions. You get completely unlikely sounds and put them together—like a clip from a 1950s air raid information film, over the theme from Sesame Street, followed by a line from a Malcolm X speech. That’s sampling—playfully roaming freely across the world of culture and history, and always unexpected. With this kind of music and this style of movie editing it’s the way you say it that is important, not always what you say.

photo by: Mary-Lynn

Adding, Not Taking Away

People say that continuity editing is about taking shots away, while montage is about adding shots in. There’s some truth in this simple idea—we sometimes call montage additive editing, while continuity editing might be called reductive editing. When creating montage, always go for adding shots in rather than taking them out. You might need to make each shot shorter and faster, but that helps to disorientate the viewer.

Disorientate

The aim of montage editing is the opposite of continuity. Now you need to try everything you can to throw us off balance, to disorientate us and unsettle us. We get confused and disturbed. Weirdly, this doesn’t mean we disconnect from the movie; instead we get more involved, like a puzzle you can’t figure out, like Alice following the rabbit down the hole. You keep watching and following the movie because you need to make it add up somehow. The more opposite the images that clash against each other, the more disorientated we’ll be. Dreams

In dreams we tend to see a mix of our authentic, real lives with small but crucial bits of weirdness. It gives this weirdness a context and makes it stand out. If your dreams were movies, they’d seem to have no rhythm, and they change suddenly without warning. People change places, change shape, outfits, expressions. The weather alters like you flicked a switch; time speeds up and slows down. In fact, just about everything that we do in continuity editing is turned on its head.

Use Symbols

Symbols are a neat way to get across ideas without having to shout them out. Lay the clips on the timeline on your editing app and scan through them to look for connections or threads, such as objects, colors or shapes, anything that can link together two shots. Look for any shot that reminds you of another shot, and start pairing them up. Try Nic Roeg’s opening montage from Don’t Look Now for an example of this—two places become linked by the connections in what happens in the countdown to a girl’s death. Lose Control

Editing in the Hollywood continuity style means being totally in control all the time. Nothing should creep in that could derail the straight path of the freight train that is the plot. Not so in montage. Montage asks that you lose control and trust your instincts; you don’t need to know why you like a certain shot and you don’t need to explain it. You like it and it feels right, so move on. Mix Close-ups and Deep Shots

Montage works by keeping you guessing, by throwing you off-balance because you just don’t know what is coming next. But you don’t always need to place two totally random clips side by side. Terry Gilliam creates a similar effect in the viewer’s mind by putting shots that constantly alter depth on screen. You’ve got a dramatic close-up and then a long, wide shot, then both together as a part of the image enters the frame close by. Surrealist painters like Dali used this to confuse height and depth and produce a kind of horizontal vertigo.

Use Color and Tone

The only problem with montage is that it can get a little out of hand, sometimes too crazy. So rein it in with a use of color (or black and white) which stays the same throughout the whole sequence. If your sequence looks too diverse, give it a color that carries through every clip. Or try increasing or decreasing color saturation by a small amount (maybe 15 percent), or boost contrast dramatically so every clip looks similar. Use Music

Use music to enhance the montage. If two images can collide with each other to create other ideas, then music can add to the battle even further. Music that seems out of place, or contradicts what we see, can be really effective. Even regular continuity editing benefits from this now and then.

Finally, two other types of montage useful for movies which use continuity editing:

Parallel montage is when you cut quickly between two separate locations, to show simultaneous events going on. They can be related or unrelated—either way we’ll make connections and get some interesting ideas out of it.

Accelerated montage is where you use faster and faster cuts to create a turbulent stream of images that the viewer just can’t process fast enough to keep up.

The result is a big disorientating overload, but if the images relate somehow it should add up to an overwhelming theme or feeling. Cuts should be shorter than two frames, preferably ten frames long.

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