Montage Editing Notes

What is Montage Editing?

• The production of a rapid succession of images in a motion picture too illustrate an association of ideas.
• E.g. : Rocky training montage
• Helps to establish characteristics and themes
• [Montage is] "the nerve of cinema...to determine the nature of montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema."

Soviet Montage Theory

• Lev Kuleshov
• Russian filmmaker and theorist
• Idea that the juxtaposition of different images can lead the viewer to reach different conclusions about the action in a film.

Kuleshov Effect

• Not just the acting or content of the scene that can elicit an emotional response
• The viewer brings their own emotional response

Sergei Eisenstein

• Believed that editing could be used for more than just showing a scene
• Felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors
• Differed from Kuleshov in believing that "each sequential element is perceived not next to each other, but on top of each other.

Eisenstein's Movement Theory

• Discontinuity editing
• Violations of continuity rules including the 180 degree rule
• Transitions between shots are deliberately obvious, less fluid, and non-seamless
• Argued that montage is inherently dialectical (new ideas emerging from conflict)

Eisenstein's Montage Theory

• Eisenstein developed what he called the methods of montage
• Metric
• From "October"(1927)
• Editing follows a specific number of frames regardless of what happens to the image
• Simple relationships between images work best
• Suitable for simple marge-time montages
• Can overcomplicate emotionally (DANGER)
• Rhythmic
• From "Batlteship Potemkin" (1925)
• Focuses not on the time between shot changes but key movements in the frame (eye movements.
• Tonal
• From "Battleship Potemkin" (1925)
• Focuses on the emotional meaning of the shots, not just manipulating the temporal length of the cuts or its rhythmical characteristics.
• Overtonal
• From "Strike" (1926)
• The interplay of the metric rhythmic and tonal characteristics
• Intellectual
• From "Strike" 1925
• The introduction of ideas and associations into the edit
• Conflict juxtaposition of intellectual effects

Film Reflection 14th March

Today in film, we continued planning our movie.  After consideration, we decided to change the theme of the movie slightly from "The Consequences of Experimenting with Drugs" to a more twisting concept that the drug would at first enhance the person in question, before gradually injuring him and eventually killing him. We refined many of the details we had discussed, and began finalizing a list of recurring shots we would want to include in our movie:

• Apple being cut, first calmly into quarters with a knife, and later violently into random pieces with a cleaver
• Heart rate monitor, gradually slowing and stopping
• Chess game, which at first the Person wins, but he is gradually beaten by an unseen character who in the final shot of the film is revealed to not exist at all.
• Person working on math problems. At first he has trouble, but after taking the drug the problems are solved faster and faster. However, after the side-effects of the drug begin to appear, the film begins to reverse, showing him erasing his progress, until the page is empty again.
• Person reading a book. He reads faster and faster, eventually finishing it and putting it down. However, he opens it later, only to find that the pages of the book are blank.
• After about halfway through the film, the side-effects of the drug begin to kick in. This is shown by gritted teeth, spasming fingers, etc. This will be interspersed with the "bad" incarnation of each of the previous shots.

We have begun refining this into a shot list, and anticipate finishing our shooting by the end of this week.