Editing Film editing (section)

== Methods of montage ==
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{{Main|Montage (filmmaking)}}
In [[motion picture terminology]], a [[Montage (filmmaking)|montage]] (from the French for "putting together" or "assembly") is a film editing technique.

There are at least three senses of the term:
# In [[French film]] practice, "montage" has its literal French meaning (assembly, installation) and simply identifies editing.
# In [[Soviet film]]making of the 1920s, "montage" was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone.
# In [[classical Hollywood cinema]], a "[[montage sequence]]" is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion.

Although film director [[David Wark Griffith|D. W. Griffith]] was not part of the montage school, he was one of the early proponents of the power of editing&nbsp;— mastering [[cross-cutting]] to show parallel action in different locations, and codifying film grammar in other ways as well. Griffith's work in the teens was highly regarded by [[Lev Kuleshov]] and other Soviet filmmakers and greatly influenced their understanding of editing.

Kuleshov was among the first to [[Soviet montage theory|theorize about the relatively young medium of the cinema]] in the 1920s. For him, the unique essence of the cinema&nbsp;— that which could be duplicated in no other medium&nbsp;— is editing. He argues that editing a film is like constructing a building. Brick-by-brick (shot-by-shot) the building (film) is erected. His often-cited [[Kuleshov Experiment]] established that montage can lead the viewer to reach certain conclusions about the action in a film. Montage works because viewers infer meaning based on context. [[Sergei Eisenstein]] was briefly a student of Kuleshov's, but the two parted ways because they had different ideas of montage. Eisenstein regarded montage as a [[dialectic]]al means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks. But Eisenstein did not always do his own editing, and some of his most important films were edited by Esfir Tobak.<ref name = edited>{{cite web |title=Esfir Tobak |url= http://womenfilmeditors.princeton.edu/tobak-esfir-esther/ |work=Edited by}}</ref>

A [[montage sequence]] consists of a series of short shots that are edited into a sequence to condense narrative. It is usually used to advance the story as a whole (often to suggest the passage of time), rather than to create symbolic meaning. In many cases, a song plays in the background to enhance the mood or reinforce the message being conveyed. One famous example of montage was seen in the 1968 film ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey]]'', depicting the start of man's first development from apes to humans. Another example that is employed in many films is the sports montage. The sports montage shows the star athlete training over a period of time, each shot having more improvement than the last. Classic examples include Rocky and the Karate Kid.

The word's association with Sergei Eisenstein is often condensed—too simply—into the idea of "juxtaposition" or into two words: "collision montage," whereby two adjacent shots that oppose each other on formal parameters or on the content of their images are cut against each other to create a new meaning not contained in the respective shots: Shot a + Shot b = New Meaning c.

The association of collision montage with Eisenstein is not surprising. He consistently maintained that the mind functions dialectically, in the [[Hegelian]] sense, that the contradiction between opposing ideas (thesis versus antithesis) is resolved by a higher truth, synthesis. He argued that conflict was the basis of ''all'' art, and never failed to see montage in other cultures. For example, he saw montage as a guiding principle in the construction of "[[Japanese writing system|Japanese hieroglyphics]] in which two independent ideographic characters ('shots') are juxtaposed and ''explode'' into a concept. Thus:
: Eye + Water = Crying
: Door + Ear = Eavesdropping
: Child + Mouth = Screaming
: Mouth + Dog = Barking
: Mouth + Bird = Singing."<ref name="Eisenstein">S. M. Eisenstein and Richard Taylor, Selected works, Volume 1 (Bloomington: BFI/Indiana University Press, 1988), 164.</ref>

He also found montage in Japanese [[haiku]], where short sense perceptions are juxtaposed and synthesized into a new meaning, as in this example:
: A lonely crow
:: On a leafless bough
::: One autumn eve.
(枯朶に烏のとまりけり秋の暮)

— [[Matsuo Basho]]

As Dudley Andrew notes, "The collision of attractions from line to line produces the unified psychological effect which is the hallmark of haiku and montage."<ref name="Andrew">Dudley Andrew, ''The major film theories: an introduction'' (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 52.</ref>