Task 4 - Montage - DONE

Montage

The term Montage has a slightly different meaning when referred to in the following three contexts which are:

• French Film 
• Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s
• Hollywood Cinema

-The French Montage:

      1. In French films "Montage" has its literal French meaning (assenmbly, installation) and simply identified editing.

-Methods of Montage:
     2. In Soviet Filmmaking of the 1920s, "Montage" was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new mening that did not exist in either shot alone.

Lev Kuleshov.

*Lev Kuleshov was among the very first to theorise about the relitavely young medium of the cinema in the 1920s. He argued that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot-by-shot) the building (film) is erected. He also did an experiment that proves this point and this was an old film clip of a head shot of a noted Russian actor and inter-cut the shot with different images. When he showed these shots to people they praised the actor's acting.

The simple act of juxtaposing the shots in a sequence made the relationship. The audience was able to infer the meaning from looking at the two shots and this experiment was the start of a technique known as 'Montage'.

Sergei Eisentine.

*Was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but both parted was because they had different ideas of a montage. By contrasting unrelated shots Einsentine tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks. 

This "Strike" clip is known as a soviet montage. It's unrelated shots tell us something about the workers, for example. In the beginning of the clip it shows workers running very fast as though their running for freedom, but then we see a constant shot of a cow about to get slaughtered which gives the impression that something terrible is going to happen to these workers and they don't even know it.

In addition to that, because the cow is about to be slaughtered it looks helpless and this same impression of the cow reflects on the workers as well. 

[STRIKE CLIP]



Example: "Rocky Balboa" 

3.In Hollywood cinema, a "montage sequence" is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion. 

[ROCKY BALBOA CLIP]

The "Rocky Balboa" clip is a Hollywood montage. The whole clip shows us Rocky's progress in his training. He simply begins by doing a slow jog and the song starts off very low and calm but then as we see his progress in his training and his strength, the music gets louder and more effective on the viewer. It makes the clip more exciting and inspiring for the viewer. 

Hollywood Montage:



 This montage that I have created is a Hollywood style. A Hollywood style montage is much more straight forward, and simple in terms of how the audience can understand and see what is happening in the montage. The intention behind my montage was to give the audience a clear understanding and not creating any difficulties in having a basic understanding of the montage. Moreover, my montage makes great meaning.

My first reason for this is because in the beginning of my montage we see that a woman walks into a shop and wants to buy an item but doesn't have enough to purchase it. In the second scene we see that in order for the woman to buy the bag she realises that she'll have to raise money some way, some how which is why she began opening her own business by selling books to a number of customers. Last but not least, in the third and final scene we see that she raises enough money and goes back to where she started in the beginning but this time actually buying the bag that she wanted.

My montage is carefully thought through in terms of how the story line could become successful as a whole but also how there was an important meaning behind it. For this reason being, I personally feel as though my montage is successful because of the way how progress is clearly being showed in the montage, not too much time is being wasted and most importantly making the viewer/s relate and understand the meaning of it all.

Soviet Montage:

 


In my second montage I created a montage which is a soviet style. A soviet montage is mostly complicating not in terms of filming but understanding what the film itself is trying to tell it's audience. My intentions for the soviet montage was to make a political statement, what I mean by this is I wanted the audience to build up a personal statement from the film and I figured by creating a soviet montage, the audience would have an open statement to build up from.

My Soviet Montage also makes great meaning, and my reason for this is because we see that in the beginning of the scene we see that a girl drinks something which makes her ill and begin to slowly die, then in the next scene we see another girl going mad then for the rest of the clip, it repeatedly show these two contrasting shots of a girl slowly dying and another girl going mental. In the very last shot the crazy girl stops and the ill girl finally dies. The purpose for this, was for the audience to question them selves, why do we keep seeing a girl going mad? what does she have to do with the first girl dying? how do these two scenes link with each other? That was the challenging part of the soviet montage, because I had to consider how I could include the most contrasting ideas to make perfect sense.

What my soviet montage shows is that because the girl in the first scene is slowly dying, the girl in the second scene is terrified that she is about to pass away which is why she goes crazy until the in the last scene the ill girl is finally put to rest then the madness stops from the frightened girl. I personally think that my story line is strong and has an effective meaning to it and because of these reasons, it backs up the point that the montage was thought through very carefully.