Task Five - Understanding Montage Theory

In this task I will be writhing detail post explaining what Montage are and the different types of Montages that are used in the film industry.

French Montage

The First Montage is the French montage, in France the word montage only mean to edit or assemble. It describes the process of cutting out shots and putting them together to create meaning for the audience. So a French montage or editing is the most important part of media, without it we would not know about splicing and other techniques because they are all part of editing.

American Montage

The second montage is the American Montage, This montage is based on how the editor can take the important long parts such as a day, and turn them into a shot scene, which contains only important parts that were needed in the film. This type of montage is used a lot in movies, but the montage is mainly seen in the movie “Rocky”. In the movie Rocky, we see a training scene, in the scene we see Sylvester Stallone or Rocky training, we don’t see the whole training, but we only seen the most important parts of the training in that day wrapped up in a short scene. In the eyes of the audience they would see that the clip is in a day. It would start with Rocky running, than see him finishing in the night. The affect that was created was that the audience felt like they saw the whole process of the training, but however only saw a few shots, but due to those shots filling in the missing gaps; it put together the whole training scene in one.

Rocky training scene

Soviet Montage

The last montage is a Soviet Montage, this montage creates meaning by using different shots to compare to one single shot that reveals to an overall explanation that brings the film together as a whole. This is normally done to give the film a deep and thorough message to the audience, which creates an easier understanding of the film so they can have an idea of what is occurring throughout the production. Les Kuleshov and Seregi Eisenstein were the most famous film makers for making their montages. The Kuleshov Experiment is when the same image of the man is compared to three other random pictures which give it meaning, this is what Les Kuleshov was famous for. The video of the Strike is an example of Seregei’s work; comparing two killings and giving it one meaning. The main purpose of this video is to display the similarities between the butcher killing the bull and the Nazi’s killing innocent civilians, overall giving the message that both of them are just as bad as each other. Therefore, this was a big opening in the film industry as the reviews from the audience were great, making other production companies wanting to use this same technique.

Les Kuleshov

Kuleshov Experiment

Seregi Eisenstein
Video