AS1: Task 5: Understanding Montage Theory

The term montage has slightly different meanings depending on one of the three following contexts: French Film, Hollywood Cinema, & Early Soviet filmmaking. The general purpose is to compress many weeks, or months of footage into a few minutes.

French Cinema
In French film practice, the term "montage" simply has its literal French meaning of "assembly". Therefore, the use of montage in French filmography simply identifies the process of editing, meaning that montage is used to describe the editor of a film.

Soviet Cinema
In early Soviet filmmaking during the 1920's, the directors created and used montages to reveal a deeper, more obscured meaning, for example, in the 1925 film Strike (Stachka) by Sergei Eisenstein, there is a scene that shows waves of Russian workers running away from, and being shot down by Russian guards, it would then cut to a video of a cow being slaughtered in an abattoir, it would continue to occasionally switch between the two. The purpose of the film was for Eisenstein to display the poor treatment that the workers were facing at that time, he compared the slaughter of the workers to the slaughter of cattle, which can also be used to show the workers being treated as cattle, in an attempt to show the poor conditions and terrible treatment that they are subjected to.

In the 1910's & 1920's, a Russian filmmaker named Lev Kuleshov conducted an experiment in which he created a montage containing 6 images, 3 of these images were of the actor Ivan Mosjoukine, in each shot, he had the same facial expression, in between these shots, Kuleshov edited in 3 other images, a bowl of soup, a coffin containing a young girl, and an attractive woman posing on a divan. The experiment seems to show his facial expression to change after each image is showed, despite the fact that Ivan has the exact same expression on his face each time, he appears to show hunger after the picture of the soup, he appears to show sadness after the picture of the young girl in the coffin, and he appears to show lust after the picture of the attractive woman on the divan. Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the effectiveness of film editing.  

Hollywood Cinema
In Hollywood cinema, a montage would be used to condense a long narrative into short compact sequences. A good example of a montage in Hollywood cinema would be in the Rocky films, where there is always a montage depicting Sylvester Stallone as Rocky training for a fight, the intention being to show Rocky getting better and better over time, and is shown in short snippets. It originally depicts Rocky not being at his physical peak, but gradually getting better throughout the montage, this is better than showing his entire change in physical prowess, as the audience may lose interest.

AS1: Task 4: From Analogue to Digital

Analogue Editing
In the early days of film, when editing was introduced, it was known as analogue editing, this involved the cutting together or "splicing" of celluloid film, they are spliced together to form a reel of film, it is edited together using a special type of glue, or tape, this often would take a long time to do. The reel of film is played at a constant rate of 24 frames per second through a projector, which displays the film.

Moviola

In 1924, Iwan Serrurier invented a device known as the Moviola, which is a device that can be used to view by a film editor to view a piece of film as he/she was editing it, it allowed editors to study individual shots in their cutting rooms, to determine more precisely where the best cut point might be. Unfortunately, being put through the moviola could cause the film to become scratched, torn, or unglued, so the editors had to be selective with their editing.

Linear & non-linear editing

Linear editing is where the film has to be edited in order, meaning that the film is edited from beginning to end, piece by piece, this is the way that all film was edited for a long time, until an advancement in technology allowed for films to be edited in any order. 

Video editing

Before digital technological advancements, information could be stored on magnetic tapes, they were known as VHS tapes, and could be played using a VCR. These tapes either had to be hand-rewound, or could be rewound using the VCR itself, these were much more convenient as not only did they take up much less space than a film reel, but it also meant that films could be viewed from the comfort of one's own home.

AS:1 Task 3: Developing Editing Techniques

In Camera Editing
Definition: In-Camera Editing is a technique used by the earliest film directors, it involves recording what you see with the camera, up until a certain point, at which point you then stop the camera, adjust the set, and then continue to record, it was accidentally discovered by George Melies when he was shooting a film, and his camera momentarily stopped, he then used this newly discovered technique to record his short film The Vanishing Lady (1899), which released only a year after the first film was ever made.

Pros: it doesn't take any time to edit the film afterwards as it has already been edited, it could have been done by anybody, it can be done easily and quickly.

Cons: the shot could be ruined if somebody moves when they're not supposed to, the director could stop the filming at the wrong time, the camera could be moved whilst the set is being adjusted.

People moved on from in-camera editing when editing techniques improved, allowing for people to splice their footage together using glue, this allowed the directors to be able to carry on with their filming, even if they'd made a mistake, as now they could just cut it out.