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Cinematic Montage One major creative device at the editors disposal is the montage, a series of images and sounds joined only by internal relationships. Montage is a Soviet term derived from the French verb money, to assemble. Practically speaking, a cinematic montage is the process of juxtaposing images through time. Generally, the montage combines the techniques for distorting time and combining images and visuals in order to create special moods.
There are several basic types of montage. 1. Time-transition montage The audience watches a series of fragmented scenes of, for example, a game of pool. The screen shows only bits and pieces of scenes linked by long, lingering dissolves. Each scene is superimposed on the next.
From this succession of images we feel that we have been through the entire game. 2. Mood montage A series of images can create a mood of time and place. It is often used at the beginning of a film or sequence. 3. Impact montage Short shots of physical contact between objects, accompanied by appropriate sounds, used to show, for example, an important game of rugby. There is an endless variety of uses for the montage and there are no restrictions in the art of cinematic montage. The film editor edits viscerally instinctively and makes decisions based on what he feels will do the job.
Consequently montage breaks down a scene into a number of shots, each from a different angle, enabling the audience to see significant parts of the scene close up. The viewer has an emotional response that is a result of the juxtaposition of images. Montage is regarded as a kind of syntax of film, in which the organization of the audiovisual elements corresponds to sentence analysis or the linguistic code of a natural language. A cinematic montage is the use of a succession of visual images and / or sounds to create emotional impact. Generally, the montage combines the techniques for distorting time and combining images and visuals in order to create special moods. A series of images can create a mood of time and place for an audience.
In effective film editing, control of the audiences attention must be absolute. The editor must carefully manipulate each element time, rhythm, and visual and aural relationships and must structure these elements to convey the meaning and emotional content of the film. In playing his cinematic conjuring trick, the film editor must be in complete control, carefully manipulating the focus of the audiences attention. In that way montage is very specific to the cinema, but its elements and facilities can be used in other arts like theatre or pantomime. During the 1920 s and 1930 s, Russian cinematic pioneers, Lev Kuleshov, V. I.
Pudovkin, Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Dovzhenko developed and extensively studied montage techniques. They discovered that montage is more than a visual technique to convey meaning. He developed his ideas first in the theatre and then in a series of films: Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925), October (1927) and The General Line (1928). Eisenstein constructed these films using shots as his cinematic building blocks.
He avoided long takes, which detracted from the control he could exert over his images and the impact they subsequently had on an audience. The short shots were referred to as shocks or attractions because they stood out and commanded attention within a film. These shocks were edited together in a process called montage, to convey a particular meaning. Eisenstein was building on theories of film-making developed by Lev Kuleshov and Dig Vertov.
These pioneers of Soviet cinema, working under economic constraints, re-edited existing film-stock to develop their ideas of film grammar. Kuleshov experimented with how shots before and after an image affected its interpretation. He realized he could modify an audiences reaction to a shot by changed the images either side of it in a montage sequence. Vertov developed an influential theory called Kino-Pravda (film truth) and stressed the importance of rhythm in editing, for example, speeding up a montage sequence towards its climax.
Eisenstein extended the initial theory of montage to encompass intellectual montage, by which a film is constructed as a series of colliding shocks (attractions) to convey a specific meaning to the audience. Eisenstein saw montage as a dialectical process, which raised conflicts that needed to be resolved. The specific meaning created in the minds of the audience, by the juxtaposition of two images, was solely due to their juxtaposition and not the content of the individual images. Therefore, intellectual montage is a good example of formalistic thinking in film. It is concerned with creating definite meaning through form, using brief juxtaposed shocks, for an ideological purpose. Eisenstein saw that sound and vision could be treated independently in montage, or used in concert to great effect.
Shots in a film and phrases of music, for example, could be timed together to increase the impact of a key shot. He also understood the importance of the rhythm of music in accentuating the rhythm of montage, for example, the use of military music in the Odessa Steps sequence of Battleship Potemkin. Eisenstein developed a unique cinematic style, which differed from that of other Soviet film-makers working in the 1920 s. Whereas Eisenstein used a montage style which drew attention to itself with colliding images, V. I. Pudovkin developed a different idea of montage in his theory of relational editing.
Pudovkin wanted his montage to be seamless, not drawing attention to itself, and be used solely to support the films narrative. This linkage editing, seen in films like Mother (1926) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927), was similar to the editing style developed by D. W. Griffith in the USA - for example, in Intolerance (1916). Alexander Dovzhenko, on the other hand made Arsenal (1929) and Earth (1930) as a series of tableaux, like a linkage of still photographs.
This gave his films a slow pace and a solemn air. In Arsenal, his style is perfectly matched to the film's anti-war theme, with long-shots of advancing archetypal soldiers, often in silhouette, cutting to individuals dead, dying or insane. The distinctive cinema, and related film theory, in the 1920 s and 1930 s continues to inspire film-makers today. The emphasis on the form and process of film, rather than the content of linear narratives, informs the work of Jean-Luc Godard and other 1960 s film-makers, while Eisenstein's ideas stimulate a range of directors seeking to experiment with the possibilities of film in the 1990 s.
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