In soviet film making of the 1920's, "montage" was a method of switching shots to give it a whole new meaning that does exist of either of the shots alone. Also, In classical Hollywood cinema, a "montage" is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is being addressed through a variety of shots.
Hollywood montage is a montage that became a convention during the classical Hollywood era and remained a very popular technique among st the directors throughout the twentieth century.
The montage sequence is a series of short shots that are edited into a sequence to condense meaning. It is usually used to advance the story as a whole, which means the audience can see the passage through time.
In many cases, a song plays in the background to enhance the mood or reinforce the overall message.
Example: In the movie Up their is a scene where it shows the characters "Carl and Ellie" growing up together. This is such a powerful scene because it take you on a journey of their lives full of happiness and is ended so powerfully with the death of one of the characters. The director also includes emotional music to engage the audience further and to release emotion into the atmosphere.
In soviet montage theory, the editing creates symbolic meaning. For the director/ editing a film is like constructing a house brick by brick. He conducted an experiment to show that montage can lead to the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film. The director edited together a short film which a shot of a characters expressionless face was sequenced in a montage.
The audience believed that the actors face displayed three different expressions according to what he was looking at:
- soup = hunger
- girl in coffin = grief
- woman on the divan = desire
The footage of the characters face was actually the same shot each time. Montage works because viewers infer meaning based on context.
My example of a montage represents disappointed but in different context. The first scene people will feel that i am disappointed to go to my lesson. The second clip people will think i am disappointed in the fact that people have littered. The third clip people will think i am disappointed because i am hungry and the bistro is closed.
