Montage Theory

Montage Theory
What is Montage
In the infancy of film and later television editing was not part of film
making. It was staged like a piece of theatre where everything was one
long take. The Lumires brothers for example worked with only one
take to illustrate various stories. As the cinema evolved and more people
began to create films new ideas emerged such as using different lenses.
As films broke the idea of splicing film together to tell a story evolved
until Sergei Eisenstein among many other editors began to explore
Montage Theory.

Montage literally translated from French is assembly, the process by

which an editor takes two pieces of film of tape and combines them to
emphasise their meaning. It is a method by which through two unrelated
shots we may create a third and different meaning. Visualize for example
shot a which is a pumpkin and shot b which is a hammer going down.
Mix both shots together and you get meaning C. Mixing the two shots
together insinuates that the pumpkin will be destroyed by the hammer.
In the Soviet Union directly after the October revolution Soviet editors
such as Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein developed a very individual
style of editing. Whilst films in America where only around three
hundred or more shots a film we find that soviet films had over a
thousand shots. The pacing was much faster and they were pushing the
limits of comprehension of the audience at the time. In Sergei
Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible we find really good examples of this with
the fight between the Russians and the Teutonic nights. There are a very
wide variety of shots and the action is really alive flashing from one shot
to another in quick successions.

Sergei Eisenstein is an important individual within the world of editing

because he developed "The Film Sense" with fast editing and
juxtaposition. The school of thought at the time was that shots
complemented each other. If you show a person walking then the next
shot should help continue the action. Eisenstein developed the idea of
Montage Theory

juxtaposition. Juxtaposition is the process of showing one thing and

another which are unrelated and through combining the two they create a
new meaning. Imagine that you are creating a documentary about the
night life of students in a pub. You have two shots, A which is a shaker
being filled to create a cocktail and shot B is someone dancing. If both
shots are juxtaposed then it leads us to believe that although the two
shots were unrelated in time and space the student whom we see after
the shaker has had his head filled with alcohol which is why he's
behaving that way.

Editing
From montage theory we will now take a look at editing in general.
Editing is one of the most important parts of modern television because
without it modern television would cease to exist. Whenever we watch a
film or program on television we notice that each program is different.
Adverts for example are very short, around 30 seconds whilst programs
last 25 minutes and films may last up to four hours and more.

Creating the story

The first stage for the producer and editor is to know what is the story
they are trying to tell. The story is the skeleton of the edit and helps
organize the edit into chapters and topics much as in writing. In writing
this document for example I begin with the general concept of editing
and Montage, I then need to create an outline for the story and as the
framework is created I can then add elements as the process is
happening. Over a period of time a story will begin to emerge in the
form of a rough cut.

Rhythm and Pacing

Rhythm and pacing are very important within edits because if we are
editing a news story then it must be very fast with shots not lasting more
than around 3 seconds. In documentaries though there is luxury to play
around with the pacing of an edit. If we look at "War Photographer" for
example we are introduced inside James Nachtway's world. The way in
which the film is edited deeply affects the way in which we perceive the
person whom is being shown. It takes ten minutes for us to hear James
Montage Theory

Nacthway speaking for the first time. It is feature length so we are given
the luxury of watching the way in which this interesting photographer
works and lives. If we take the feature film and look at it's basic
structure then we may be able to edit the project down to around 25
minutes to fit within television schedules. The pacing will be much
faster and more information will be given. If it is edited properly then
the viewer should have the same feeling seeing a half hour version as for
a 1hr 36 minutes version.

When watching an action film such as Die Another Day we expect the
cutting to be very fast, many shots to show various angles and to extend
the action as far as possible to amaze the audience and in parts to
contribute a little humor. In contrast if we were to watch Pride and
Prejudice we would see far longer shots with a lower variety of shot
sizes and elements.

With sequences such as the helicopter sequence from Apocalypse now

with the music and the huey helicopters and the firing of weapons and
feeling we have right from the beginning of the film we can't help but be
amazed at the beauty of the helicopter sequence. In the same way
Blackhawk Down is a beautifully edited film with the descent from the
helicopters into Mogadishu, the succession of shots showing the
situation and the people within this situation so that we really feel
something for the soldiers.

Juxtaposition
One sequence which I remember well is from the series "Spaced" which
aired on British television where a couple are having an argument and
we see shots of the two people arguing and this is intercut with scenes
from Streetfighter and each time the girl scores a victory her avatar on
the game wins, everytime the guy wins his avatar is holding the
upperhand. The sequence really contributes to the audience's enjoyment
of the scene.
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Montage
(French for putting together)

The Soviet Montage

Lev Kuleshov first film school in Moscow. First film theorist and leader of Soviet
Montage. The Kuleshov Effect, 1918, was an experiment Lev Kuleshov led in which he
filmed an actors expressionless face and then intercut shots of a hot bowl of soup, a
woman crying over a coffin and a small child playing with a doll. When audiences saw
the experiment they all raved over the actors fine tuned acting skills.

Segei Eisenstein A pioneer in the usage of montage. Battleship Potempkin The

Odessa Stairs scene. montage is an idea that arises from collision of independent
shotswhere in each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of
the other. Images come in sequence but you see or think them all at once.

Vertov Pioneer of documentary or truth films Kino-Pravada. The Man with a

Movie Camera 1929. Seen as a user of montage as a propaganda tool through which
the film-viewing masses could be subjected to emotional and psychological influence
and therefore able to perceive the ideological aspect

Methods of Montage

Metric - where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the
physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the
image. Metric montage example from Eisenstein's October.

Rhythmic Like Metric it includes cutting based on time, but using the visual
composition of the shots -- along with a change in the speed to induce more complex
meanings. Rhythmic montage example from The Good, The Bad, The Ugly where the
protagonist and the two antagonists face off in a three-way duel Another rhythmic
montage example from The Battleship Potemkin's "Odessa steps" sequence.

Tonal - uses the emotional meaning of the shots to elicit a reaction from the audience
even more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping
baby would emote calmness and relaxation.
Tonal example from Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. This is the clip following the
death of the revolutionary sailor Vakulinchuk, a martyr for sailors and workers.

Overtonal/Associational - the cumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage to

synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect.
Overtonal example from Pudovkin's Mother. In this clip, the men are workers walking
towards a confrontation at their factory, and later in the movie, the protagonist uses ice as
a means of escape.[1].
Montage Theory

Intellectual - uses shots in which, combined, elicit an intellectual meaning.[2]

Intellectual montage examples from Eisenstein's October and Strike. In Strike, a shot of
striking workers being attacked cut with a shot of a bull being slaughtered creates a film
metaphor suggesting that the workers are being treated like cattle. This meaning does not
exist in the individual shots; it only arises when they are juxtaposed.
In Boogie Nights, Dirk Diggler announces at the conclusion of filming a pornographic
scene that he can "do it again". There is then a quick cut to a champagne bottle uncorking
at a post-shoot party, representing both ejaculation and Dirk's celebratory initiation into
the world of porn.