Montage

Montages are used in many different kinds of films - music videos, movies, and television programmes are just a few examples. They are used to express thoughts and ideas in a visual way, and often result in powerful and emotional sequences. Montages such as the one used in the opening of "This is England" are very striking. This particular montage does a brilliant job of creating a unique take on England and the famous moments - positive and negative - that are often associated with it.

The montage theory arose from Lev Kuleshov's work, which contained the a+b=c definition of montage. Lev Kuleshov found that having one image follow another image can produce a thought. His experiments supply us with some examples of this - he found that a picture of a silent, open mouth followed by a picture of a bird flying through the sky would make people think of the mouth singing. Also, when this image of a mouth was followed by a picture of food, people pictured a hungry mouth. The consumer sees the two pictures and combines them to create a result. These experiments were the basis for the development of the montage. A montage triangle can reflect the Kuleshov effect, as it is now usually called. Using the examples that I aforementioned, a montage triangle can be constructed with the image of the mouth at the top, and the images of the food and flying bird below it. This montage triangle results in two equations:

A montage triangle, which
shows the Kuleshov effect

Mouth+Bird=Singing

Mouth+Food=Hungry

A significant part of the art of montage is editing - the timing of the editing is particularly important. Rhythmic and metric editing are used for many reasons, such as to create as much tension as possible in a dramatic scene. Timing the beat of a soundtrack to the action can emphasize the emotions that are felt by the viewer. This would make the film become more interesting and absorbing. 

In addition, I think that seeing a montage where the beat of the soundtrack and the action are timed well is something people enjoy seeing. This makes the consumer want to watch the film more.

Sergei Eisenstein made The Battleship Potemkin (below), which contains an infamous montage. Eisenstein established five types of montage, which are:

Intellectual: Where the shots are put together in a way that creates an intellectual meaning based on the way they combine together.

Rhythmic: This contains cutting the shots together based on continuity, which creates visual continuity between each edit.

Metric: Where images are shown in a way that follows the beat and rhythm of the soundtrack. The focus is on the timing of the editing and what it conveys, rather than the connotations of the shots themselves.

Tonal: The focus is on the meaning of each shot - not how it is edited together. The timing of the editing and the continuity of the shots is less important.

Overtonal: A combination of rhythmic, metric, and tonal montage. The combination of these three different methods is used to construct more complicated and intricate forms of montage.

He said: "The idea of film-making as construction and montage as the putting together of parts of a machine (a machine for signifying, rather as Le Corbusier conceived of houses as machines for living in) had a strong appeal in modernist circles in the early years of the Russian Revolution."

Eisenstein is saying that montage is similar to combining many different parts of a machine to create a whole that conveys a certain meaning or emotion. Montages control what the viewer's response will be; they are used to make the viewer feel a certain emotion or picture something. 

In our music video, we may use montages at some points to create different effects - we may even combine a montage with other effects, such as lyric cards. A music video is, itself, a form of montage - a major part of music videos is conveying meaning through images and artistic editing.