Task Four - Montage

There are 3 different meanings to the word 'montage'. The first meaning of the word montage is is the  french term for the simply editing in film, and assembly and installation. The second meaning of the word montage comes from soviet filmmaking in the 1920's, which was thek method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone.
The final meaning of the word 'montage' comes from hollywood and means a short segment of film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion which would be based over a certain time of period.]

There was 2 main film makers, their names was Lev Kuleshov and Sergei Ersenstein. Lev Kuleshov was among the very first to theorise about the relatively young medium of the cinema in the 1920's. He argued that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick the building is erected.He did an experiment that proves this print. He took an old film clip of a head shot of a russian actor and inter-cut the shot with different images. When he showed the film to the people they praised the actor's acting  . The audience was able to infer meaning to the actors facial expression by cutting to other scenes that may make it seem as the person is acting in a certain way.

Sergei Eisenstein was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different idea's of montage. By contrasting unrelated shots Eisenstein tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks.






In the montage above is an example of a soviet montage.The intention of this soviet montage is to make the audience believe that the character is weird by cutting from the person being normal to someone doing abnormal things, creating vision that maybe the person aint as normal as he first seems. This is done as we cut from the character being normal to another person stamping their feet and acting in a strange manor. I think it is successful as it makes the audience think that at first the person is normal but after a couple of scenes makes them wonder how strange the person is.



However in this montage above is an example of a hollywood montage, the intention of the montage is create a sequence of clips to show improvements over  period of time but shorten it down, at the beginning of the montage you will see the worst bits and as the further it gets into the montage the more improvement you see. The montage makes meaning as you see the team get better due to practice over a period of time, i think it is successful as it shows the improvement as the montage goes on.