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