Montage is a transliteration of French montage, originally an architectural term. Film and television theorists call it the valley of film and television art, which refers to the editing and combination of film and television works in the creative process. Montage refers to the purposeful and logical combination of shots. In the meantime, establish contact, thus producing rich and meaningful film creation techniques. Its function is to establish the relationship between time and space in the film and describe it. Secondly, we can express emotion and meaning through the unity of opposites in the form or content of the lens.
In the 1920s, American director Griffith was the first to consciously take the lens as the basic narrative unit, then the scene was composed of the lens, and then the whole film was composed of paragraphs, which showed the whole event smoothly. His masterpiece is The Birth of a Country. It is the contributions of a group of former Soviet filmmakers, led by Eisenstein, Kuleshov and pudovkin, that elevate the status of montage to the core of the film and endow it with aesthetic character. Eisenstein believes that the significance of lens combination is greater than the sum of the original isolated lenses, which is the key to montage. Battleship potemkin is Eisenstein's outstanding work in practicing his montage theory. In the classic passage Odessa Steps, Eisenstein uses the change of rhythm to extend the actual time of the event to the time of the film. It takes about two minutes for ordinary people to run down the Odessa steps. In the film, it takes nearly ten minutes for soldiers to walk down the stairs, which gives people a strong emotional impact. The slaughter goes on endlessly. This passage not only records the massacre, but also is full of passion and rational critical spirit.
Second, the influence of montage on today's film narration
1, the structure and function of montage
According to the structural function, montage can be divided into three basic types: narrative montage, expressive montage and intellectual montage. Narrative montage is the most common, with the theme of explaining plot events, mainly including linear montage, parallel montage and cross montage. Linear montage refers to continuous narration according to the logical order of events; Parallel montage refers to juxtaposing two or more plot clues in different time or space, describing them separately, and finally belonging to the same theme. For example, in the second part of the American film The Godfather, the story of father and son is unfolded in parallel in different time and space. Cross montage means that several clues go hand in hand at the same time, and there is a close causal relationship between them, which promotes each other, alternates frequently and finally merges together. For example, Pulp Fiction, He Jiong Bridge and 1 1: 14 all use cross montage.
The purpose of montage is not to describe the plot, but to express emotion and reveal meaning, which mainly includes comparative montage, such as the cheers at Lily Marlene's concert, the explosions and bodies on the battlefield; Comparison of "Several Happy Families and Several Sorrow Families" in A Spring River Flows East. Metaphorical montages, such as pudovkin's mother, the workers' parade and the fast-flowing queue of the thawed river, symbolize the awakening of the working class. Psychological montage, such as the application of stream of consciousness in Love in Hiroshima. Intellectual montage refers to conveying concrete and abstract ideas by establishing the relationship between pictures, such as an Andalusian dog in bunuel, thus arousing the audience's rational judgment and thinking.
2. Narrative thinking of "multiple montage"
Movie master Godard said, "I hope I can make a normal movie, but I don't know why, I just won't ... For me, it's enough for the audience to see what I have to see ... Since what we know is false, we will give the audience what they should see ..." "Exhaustion" created a sense of panic, but grasped the degree. It can be said that Godard's "jumping" has inserted flying wings into the film. Godard broke Griffith's law. He understands the psychology of the audience and uses "the complete psychology of human beings". In narrative, what he wants is therefore not fruit, and there is nothing superfluous in the transformation of narrative. He found people's real eyes and controlled the narrative, space and time of the film to achieve the purpose of narrative. With the consistency of theoretical exploration and creative practice, Godard constantly redefined the film language and became an epoch-making revolutionary in the world film history.
The narrative of "multiple montage" is developed on movie master's shoulders. As we know, film narrative is told by lens, not dialogue, how to control the story, how to connect, and finally finish editing. Traditional narrative, time and space should be strictly consistent. For example, the scene scheduling of the movie Xu Ben is to complete time and space. The scene of Schindler's birthday in Schindler's List, which was shot by Spielberg in 1993, has a strong contrast between the shots, which has been reorganized, reshaped and reconstructed to form a montage.
Professor Zhou, a first-class editor in China, wrote in her published paper "Multiple Montage Editing" that "Multiple Montage" is to use more than two montage techniques in a scene or a paragraph to structure the plot and lay out the story, so that the information conveyed by the image is richer, the rhythm of film control is more concise and changeable, the rendered artistic conception is more ups and downs, and the artistic conception is more profound and broad, so that the audience can gradually show the elements and the subtle connections between them through the lens. It is precisely because this editing structure is based on the superposition, interpenetration and fusion of more than two montage techniques that I named it' multiple montage'. "Multiple montage" has become the narrative technique of today's movies.
As the basic narrative technique and aesthetic school of film, montage coexists with long lens technology, fast switching editing method and its theory. These narrative techniques are more and more closely integrated with each other and become an important part of today's film narrative language. For example, the film natural born killers is a fast switching editing mode, which has become the thinking concept in modern film creation. The director regards countless scenes as a fast-flowing vision, and switching exists as a style. Switching between shots and scenes has become the main form of changing shots and scenes. The comprehensive application of montage techniques such as parallelism, intersection, association, illusion, symbol and contrast has achieved a kind of harmony for the rapid advancement of narrative.
What style do you want to use to convey the story? The edited clips are based on the director's style.