Task Five – Understanding Montage Theory

Montage is a technique that you use to combine two scenes together, this is done to give an illusion that the 2 elements belonged together originally or just to add meaning to the compound. Montage has 3 different meanings French Montage, Soviet Montage and Hollywood Montage each one of them has a different definition. 

French Cinema: This is one of the 3 Montage types this one simply means to edit, this was created  Montage literally translated from French is assembly, the process when an  editor takes two scenes and combines them together to highlight their meaning. It is a method by which through two unconnected shots that creates a third and different meaning.For example lets call it shot A shot which is a ball and B which is a head ,mix the shots together and you will be able to figure out that the ball is going to hit the persons head.


Soviet Montage: This montage technique was created in the early s 1920, film makers started using juxtaposing, which basically means putting two intentionally contrast images next to each other, to make a new meaning that did not exist in either shots alone,the soviet montage was more about pushing the audience comprehension limit.
While other places had around three hundred or more shots, soviet films had more than a thousand. This idea came from a young soviet filmmaker, he was doing an experiment by taking an old film clip of a head shot of a noted Russian actor and inter-cut the shot with different images.This type of montage can be found in the film Strike, in this film you can see two different scenes(videos) one of people and others of bulls, we could see Russian troops killing innocent people and then we could see a butcher killing bulls, like I mentioned before, they made this to see if we could visualize what they are trying to say and compare, they were comparing the bulls being killed with the innocent people.

This is one example of Soviet Montage this is a soviet montage because in the film you were able to see men running away from Russian troops, then they show a second type of video that are bulls running away from  butchers, do they have something in common i do think so, which means that they are both going to end in the same way Death, this is what the filmmakers want you to realize and feel.

This i another example of soviet montage, this one shows a group of men going to work, and them shows a group of bulls so you can see what they both have in common, they both look busy , going somewhere, following each other.



Hollywood Montage:This type of montage is basically to show a narrative sequence of actions, in a short, compact way. This  is the way the film maker can take a long scene like for example, a 7 hour day in a school and turn it into a small scene that it only contains the necessary bit. These montage is used in a lot, for not say most of the movies now a days, one of them is (Rocky). In the film we see scenes of rock training for a big competition, the filmmaker made it look like he trained everyday and every time, but they made sure to short it and only show the essential of it.

This is one o the films where Hollywood was used, this was used to show rocky s, daily training and they made us believe that he was training for a long time days, weeks , they did this by showing the sky changing from lighter to darker, (day-night) but they made sure to only show the  important bits of rocky s training, that's why it is a Hollywood montage  scenes and bits of a daily activity in a short period of time.

                                           Les Kuleshev – Montage Experiment

Les Kuleshev was a the person that created the soviet montage, but he did that by doing an experiment, the experiment he did was take an old film clip of a head shot of a noted Russian actor and inter-cut the shot with different images. He then did another experiment he gathered 4 images and made people think what are their meaning, the first image was an image of Les Kuleshev face, then he added 3 other images to compliment the first one and give it meaning.

This is an image of a man and a young girl in a coffin, with no other detail just the image so now think and tell me what do you think it means. 

 

This one is an  image is an image of the same man but with a plate of food, and this makes you wanna think what hes feeling. 

This last one is an image of the same man as the other two but this time there's an image of a woman sitting down to compliment it, and now think.

OK, so now I am going to tell you what this images  have in common and what they mean, all this images are supposed to express feelings, and you are supposed to look at them and figure it out yourself, but they can mean a lot of different things.

Now lets reveal the meanings: 

(Did you get it right?)

    Serge Eisenstein 

Serge Eisenstein was another man that helped develop the montage technique,he was the one and only that introduced us the soviet montage.Serge first film was a video called Strike, where he shows scenes of butchers working in a slaughter house. They showed two different s scenes one of a group of people running and other of animals being butchered. The idea of this was to show the audience the way in which the people were being treated by comparing it with the animals.