Montage

what is "montage"? Montage means "editing" in French, but it was developed into a theory of lens combination in movies in Russia. Montage is basically a theory developed by Russian directors, which was extended by pudovkin according to the editing technique of Griffith, the father of American movies, and then eisenstein also put forward the view of relevance. Platts thinks that the juxtaposition of two shots is more significant than that of a single shot, and even thinks that the film is the art of juxtaposition between shots. At least with a long-term vision and a large number of close-up connections, psychological, emotional, and abstract ideas are the results. Eisenstein, influenced by Russian dialectical philosophical thinking, thinks that the juxtaposition and even fierce conflict between shots will create a third new meaning. When we describe a theme, we can put a series of related or unrelated shots together to produce a metaphorical effect, which is montage. For example, when we put our mother in the mirror while cooking, washing clothes, taking care of children, and even our father reading newspapers, we will feel that our mother is "busy".

montage refers to editing in a broad sense. In previous films, one volume without editing was filmed for ten minutes before another volume was changed. The first film to use editing was Battleship Potemkin, in which the baby carriage fell down the stairs, people around it were shooting, and the mother was in a panic. The interactive editing of these pictures

produced a tense, compact and metaphorical effect, which became a classic created by unprecedented inventions in film history. If you don't know much about it, you can refer to pudovkin's "Mother" or the "Odyssey Steps" in Eisenstein's "Potemkin Battleship", but basically montage is a way for directors to manipulate the camera, that is, to control the absolute intellectual thinking and expressive meaning, and the audience just waits to be instilled, which is completely different from the ambiguity and openness presented by movies with poetic expressions, such as Tarkovsky, Wenders and Ferini.

In fact, it shouldn't be just a technique of editing, because there are other forms that can create a montage effect. In short, it is the word "knowing" in China's writing. You can sequence people and things in different places by editing, so that you can think that they are related to each other. For example, you can shoot a person knocking at the door first, then follow the descendants into the house, and you may shoot it in different places when you go inside or outside.

What is a "montage" paragraph? For example, if there is a scene in which two people face to face, and then there is a close-up of one of them, the audience can know the action of the other person through this person's expression, although that person does not appear in the picture. Montage (clip) is a jump of time and space, and time is the connection of points, which is different from the movement of a line from A to B. The time presented by the montage is a point strictly selected by the director. In addition, montage emphasizes the result of one thing, like a woman arguing in a lounge, followed by a scene in which she is dead in the bedroom. The scene emphasizes the end after the quarrel, and the consideration of the ending exceeds the process of her murder. Montage highlights the shock caused by the result of the event, first making the audience know the ending of death instantly, and then letting the audience see the messy scene in the living room, and tracing back the reasons and scenes from knowledge.

Give an example.

In Coppola's Vampire, there is a scene in which the vampire's head is cut off and then flies out. The camera follows the scene and cuts the fat on a large plate at dinner when the head is about to fall, giving people the feeling that the head falls on the plate and becomes a mass of food, which gives people a metaphor of the law of the jungle. In Coppola's another classic "Apocalypse Now", when the hero is going to kill Marlon Brando, the pictures of the killing and buffalo killing ceremonies are constantly staggered and spliced together.

You will know what it means.

At the beginning of Out of Africa, the heroine's voice recalling the past matches the jungle in her heart, (the camera is unstable) and the roar of the beast. In the next scene, a man (later known to the audience as the hero Dennis) stood on the plain with a sunset on his head. After confirming the development of the plot, the audience will find that these two juxtaposed shots are the epitome of their past communication. Dennis appeared at the right time, scaring away a lion approaching the heroine. He brought her stability. However, he died in a plane crash when he was young, and the result was like a sunset, but it was impossible for people to rise again. In terms of the connection of two lenses, a short moment is the epitome of a person's life. For a single shot, the hazy figure in the sunset is a true portrayal of Dennis. For the heroine, Dennis is mysterious and difficult to understand, but what he sees in his heart is actually just a hazy outline.

montage is a transliteration of montage in French, which was originally an architectural term, meaning assembly and installation. Film and television theorists extend it to the field of film and television art, referring to the editing and combination in the process of film and television works creation. The meaning of "montage" is wide and narrow. In a narrow sense, montage refers to the arrangement and combination of lens pictures, sounds and colors, that is, in post-production, the recorded materials are carefully arranged according to the literary script and the director's overall idea to form a complete film and television work. One of the most basic meanings is the combination of pictures. Bela Balazs, a film aesthetician, said: Montage is that the film artist connects many shots according to a certain sequence conceived in advance, and as a result, these frames produce some expected effect through the sequence itself. It can be seen that montage is not the same element as the lens picture, but the rule of assembling these elements, and it is a rhetorical device in the symbol system of film and television language. In a broad sense, montage not only refers to the combination of lens images, but also refers to a unique artistic thinking mode of artists from the beginning of film and television plays to the completion of works. In this sense, pudovkin's famous assertion that "montage is the foundation of film art" still applies today, and it is very likely to apply forever.

As the existence of skills and thinking, montage has a deep-rooted foundation in human psychology.

The visual psychology foundation of montage Human beings live in a moving world. Objects pass through our field of vision, leaving a series of images on the retina, while the retina requires changes in the field of vision to move normally. When a person's eyes are fixed on a fixed object (such as a spot on the wall) for about five minutes, the image will become blurred. If you look at something else and go back to the original image, it will be clear again. This experiment shows that the human eye has the physiological instinct to constantly pursue new images.

Bruiser pointed out that people have this instinct in their infancy, for example, babies have been pursuing moving objects with their eyes before they can gather their eyes. The latest research by American psychologist Hober and Swiss scientist wiesel (Nobel Prize winner in medicine and physiology in 1981) shows that the human brain and eyes have special cells to detect image movements. These cells make people have a physiological need when observing external things: they don't always stay in one place, but constantly shift their eyes and constantly change their angles to observe the world. Film and television use sound and pictures to record images and reproduce movements, and the use of montage correctly reproduces the way we constantly pursue new goals when we usually watch things, and reproduces the inner process of contacting videos in turn with the shift of attention in the real environment.

This psychological process exists not only in film and television art, but also in other art fields. When you are reading a novel, your eyes always move from one word to another and from line to line. With the advance of the novel plot and the excitement of readers' emotions, the speed of eye movement is also accelerated. When the novel is in a gentle lyric paragraph, the reader's mood appears calm and quiet, and the movement speed will be slow and leisurely. This is consistent with the situation that people are close to an event. When a person is observing or experiencing a very exciting and rapidly changing activity, his reaction rhythm will be greatly accelerated, and he will quickly change the direction of his sight. On the contrary, he will be very calm and indifferent to an ordinary thing, and his observation of objects will become slow. This physiological phenomenon has produced the rhythm requirement of montage.

To sum up, the impression gained by a quiet observer can be reproduced by a so-called "slow cut" film technique, that is, each shot stays on the screen for a long time before being replaced. The impression gained by an extremely excited observer can be reproduced by "quick cut", that is, a series of short shots connected with each other. It is through montage that film and television artists have realized this psychological process of human beings.

Therefore, in a sense, the talent of film and television artists lies in the use of montage to make the visual psychological rhythm of human beings be properly reproduced in the film. In a quiet and peaceful scene, using quick cut will cause jumping and abrupt effects and make the audience uncomfortable. On the other hand, if the content of the scene is exciting, the audience will instinctively ask for a quick cut, and if the editing is slow, it will damage the exciting content of the film. So, how is the "speed" of screen switching appropriate? It is only appropriate to decide by the emotional content of the scene, but the emotional content of the scene is contained in the script. Therefore, the splicing pattern appearing in the finished film is the same pattern that has been quite clearly defined in the script. This pattern in the script has been gradually formed in the playwright's writing process. Even before he started, in the process of collecting materials, he has picked up materials with montage eyes and decomposed and combined time and space. It is in this sense that montage is a unique artistic way of thinking that runs through film and television creation and is the foundation of film and television art.

From combination skill to montage of thinking mode, it has experienced a historical process from occurrence to development to maturity.

Strictly speaking, the early films did not have montage editing, nor did they decompose and recombine time and space.

Lumiere's movies are actually just a display of new technology and a simple game. It uses a very simple method to make a film, that is, aim the camera at a scene until the film is finished. This is a naturalistic record lacking montage conception.

Mei Liai began to connect the shots taken in different scenes to tell the story, which made the film have the characteristics of "decomposition and combination". Obviously, he is one step ahead of Lumiere. But the whole scene was shot from one camera, and the lens connection is also the simplest connection. He didn't understand the great significance of this connection combination.

At the same time, American directors Porter and Griffith are also looking for a unique way to structure movies. In 192, Porter made use of some film materials reflecting the life of firefighters in the old film library, and made up the pictures of saving mothers and children in the studio by actor's acting, and then spliced the material films and the supplementary films properly to form The Life of an American Firefighter. Porter's attempt is a big step forward than Lumiere and Mei Liai's, and it explores the possibility of freedom of time and space for movies.

On the basis of Porter, Griffith became the first person who consciously used "montage" in film history. In The Adventures of Dawley (198), Griffith created the technique of "flashback"; In the bleak villa (199), he first applied parallel montage and created the famous "last-minute rescue" technique. In Ramona (191), he created a great vision; In Pastor Longerda (1911), he used a very close shot and developed the skill of alternately cutting people. In The Massacre (1912), he first applied mobile photography.

despite Griffith's above-mentioned series of creations, and in his two masterpieces "The Birth of a Country" (1915) and "Claiming with Different Groups" (1916), he applied his new skills skillfully, but he never put his montage method into order. It seems that he works mainly by intuition and an inexpressible love for film means, and he never shows that he is aware of these principles. He thinks that montage is only the most powerful assistant to vividly express drama stories, and uses montage only as a technical means. In essence, he has not understood the basic nature of montage and its full potential.

after the first world war, Soviet filmmakers developed montage into a complete film theory system according to the requirements of the new Soviet regime for film art after analyzing the creative experience of Griffith and others, and on the basis of a series of experiments, thus forming the Soviet montage school, with Kuleshov, pudovkin and Eisenstein as the representatives. Griffith mainly focuses on how to deal with the relationship between two dramatic scenes, while Soviet directors think more about the relationship between single shot and fragment, as well as the meaning and implication expressed by this relationship.

Kuleshov and pudovkin believe that the essence of the film lies in the composition of the film, and in the interrelation of the fragments shot to organize a series of impressions-how to change from one shot to another, and how they are formed in time sequence. They are convinced that montage editing can create extraordinary effects and achieve the narrative and ideographic meaning of the film. To this end, they did a lot of experiments to practice their theory. According to pudovkin's records, in 192, Kuleshov connected the following scenes:

(1) A young man came from left to right.

(2) A young woman came from right to left.

(3) They met and shook hands. The young man lit it with his finger.

(4) A large white building with broad steps.

(5) Two people walk up the steps.

In the eyes of the audience, this connected segment becomes an uninterrupted action: two young people meet on the road, and the man invites the woman to a nearby house. In fact, every clip was shot in a different place. The scene showing the young man was taken near the state-run department store, the scene of the woman was taken near the Gogol Monument, and the scene of shaking hands was taken near the Grand Theatre. The white building was cut from an American film (it is the White House), and the scene of walking up the steps was taken at the Church of the Savior. As a result, although these clips were shot in different places, they were regarded as a whole by the audience, resulting in what Kuleshov called "creative geography" on the screen. Here, people's illusions are used to make fragments of different time and space into a whole, and Montague's function of decomposition and combination is fully reflected. However, the Soviet school not only stayed in the narrative aspect of montage, but also further studied its ideographic function.

pudovkin thinks that every object photographed from a certain shooting point and then shown to the audience on the screen is still a "dead" object even though it was moving in front of the camera. Only when this object is put together with other objects, and only when it is shown as a part of various visual image combinations, this object is given life. Eisenstein highly summarized this ideographic function of montage. He said: the juxtaposition of two shots is not a simple one plus one, but a new creation. He believes that the camera shot without.