15/11/16 – Montage Editing
At the start of today’s lab, we were shown three short video clips. They each started with a different shot, for example a beautiful woman or a plate of food, followed by a head and shoulders clip of a man. In each clip, the mood of the man came across in a different way, even though it was exactly the same shot. This technique, first demonstrated by Lev Kuleshov, highlights the difference that simply changing the shots in a montage sequence can affect the mood in a dramatic way – this is called the Kuleshov Effect.
We then discussed a range of different montage editing techniques and I have researched some of them more thoroughly online. Herbert Zettl discusses several techniques in-depth in his book Sight, Sound, Motion. He explains how a montage is a juxtaposition of two or more seperate events that, when shown together and in a certain order, create a new and more intense meaning. He describes this new montage sequence as a ‘gestalt’, literally meaning ‘an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts’.
Sequential (Analytical) Montage – in this editing tecnique, a series of events are quickly shown, remaining in chronological order. Often, the main event is not actually displayed to the viewer, it is however clearly implied to the viewer by the shots leading up to, and following, the event. Abenefit of this method is that a lot of information can be conveyed to the viewer in a very short space of time. A great example of this is the montage at the beginning of Up, showing Carl and Ellie’s life, right from first meeting to the death of Ellie, within 4 and a half minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G371JiLJ7A
Sectional (Analytical) Montage – whereas the first method condenses a period of time into a few shots to form the montage, this technique focuses on a single moment in time and shows it from several different viewpoints. This allows the viewer to appreciate the complexity and impact of the on-screen events, or understand what different characters are thinking about the current situation. With this technique, the order of shots doesn’t matter too much. A certain character will ‘own’ the montage, however, if the sequence of shots starts with them. This could imply different points of view.
Comparison (Idea-Associative) Montage – both of the idea-associative techniques take two seemingly unrelated ideas and show them in the same montage in quick sucession. This creates a juxtaposition between the two different sequences that invokes a third, more powerful feeling, emotion or idea within the viewer. For the comparison idea-associative method, two similar shots are shown one after the other. One might show a dog rooting around in a bin for food, and the next show a homeless man also looking for food. This conjours emotions of sadness and empathy for the homeless man. A visual example of this technique is in the opening scene of Lucy, 2014 – a tense scene is intercut with clips from a cheetah hunt. The scene ends with the cheetah catching it’s prey, and a character getting shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBNnHlqO4cs
Collision (Idea-Associative) Montage – whereas the compairson shows visually or metaphorically similar shots in the montage, this technique shows shots with opposite meaning. One shot is the homeless man rummaging in the bin, and the next might be a well-fed man gorging himself on plentiful food. While the ‘comparison’ situation made the audience feel sorry for the homeless man, the ‘collision’ technique creates anger towards the well-fed man at the inequality of the situation.
References and Further Reading:
tobysanderson.co.uk 
