Today’s Plan:
- Montage
- Quick Look at Some Past Interviews
- No Class on Monday
Montage
What is a montage? It is a series of shots in rapid succession. Montage was originally a Russian film technique (and Russian montage is often described by five formal categories). Because I’m a rhetorician, I like to think of them in terms of different purposes:
- Compress time: you can tell a longer story (say, getting ready for work) quickly. This compression often shows up in the “training” montage of sport movies or the “gearing up” montage in action movies.
- Composition: A montage can show us smaller elements of a thing to create either a sense of mystery or an air of grandeur (see Gestalt theory)
- Repetition: A montage can amplify an idea or action by showing us it over and over again (and can play with slight variation for humor or tragedy)
- Association: By putting elements in rapid succession, you can build a relationship between them. This can repeat a common theme. For instance, if my theme is nature, then I can jump to a lot of natural things. The viewer will feel nature without me having to say it. This is often referred to as “intellectual” or “ideological” montage
- Juxtaposition: This is a special case (or quirk?) of association. If I string together seemingly dissimilar elements, a viewer will attempt to develop some kind of relationship between them. Filmmakers will strategize the dissonance that juxtaposition can cause. This is another form of “intellectual” montage (see Kuleshov Effect)
Perhaps the best way to introduce montages is just to watch some. Here we go: CineFix’s Top 10 Montages of All Time.
Quick Look at Some Past Interviews
To Google Drive.
No Class on Monday
I’m cancelling class on Monday to make sure that your group has time to record their interview. You’ll need to have access to that footage on Wednesday for editing. Remember that you need to record both A-Roll and B-Roll. I’ll ask you to cut up your B-Roll into a short introductory montage.
