Montage
Have you ever made a picture collage?
Maybe you’ve sat with a pile of old newspapers or magazines in front of you, cutting out images that appeal to you and arranging them in a unique and new way. What motivates you to put the image of an apple next to that of a baseball? Or the palm tree next to the fork? Is it the color? The shape? The size? Perhaps it’s something about what each image represents that compels you to put them together.
If collage has a cinematic equivalent, it is montage editing.
Montage is an editing style developed in the 1920s by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. It serves as a counterpoint to the immersive linear approach of continuity editing, although both approaches can certainly be used in any project.
Montage frees you from a linear perspective of the world by allowing you to combine shots based on principles of association. These force the audience to be actively involved in their understanding and interpretation of the work.
Whereas shooting for continuity is rife with rules that you need to follow to maintain the illusion of continuous action, montage is unbound by rules. If anything, it invites you to think on a more abstract level.
And if continuity editing enables you to become immersed in the action on the screen, montage compels you to be aware of the editing itself.
Association is key to creating a compelling montage, and there are many different types of associations you can make. What is relevant here is the audience’s emotional response to these associations.
Contrasting Associations
Associations can be made by juxtaposing conflicting content:
- happy versus sad
- large versus small
- dark versus bright
- blurred versus focused
How do you feel if you juxtapose an image of a very large dog with that of a small balcony. What associations does that combination of imagery bring up? What about juxtaposing a picnic scene on a bright sunny day with imagery of a dark cage?
Intellectual Associations
Associations can be made using shots that are embedded with cultural meaning:
- religious icons
- pop icons
- public figures
Intellectual associations require that the viewer know something about the content. Using imagery of famous or public figures depends on the knowledge base of the audience. You can’t always control how somebody might feel about intellectual content so be careful how you use is. Not everybody feels the same way about a famous individual or religious iconography.
Temporal Associations
Associations can be made to manipulate time:
- condense time
- expand time
- reorder time
Making temporal associations is all about how you cut the footage to manipulate time. Do you slow something down to make it last longer? Do you repeat the same moment in time (a bit like a gif!) to make it feel like it will never end? What happens when you put things out of order, putting the end before the beginning?
Rhythmic Associations
Associations can be made based on movement within the frame:
- right to left
- up and down
How might it feel to edit two pieces of footage together that both have movement from right to left? What happens if you cut between something moving to the right and something moving to the left?
Always carefully consider how each shot will be cut together. Remember, each shot is a word, and the connections you make will form your sentence.
Out of this process of experimentation and happy accidents emerges a space where new worlds can spring into being. It’s a space where fantastic rules can be created, ignored, or followed, and magic can occur.
