To Do This Week
Watch: Hale County This Morning, This Evening (free on Amazon Prime, also available to rent on Youtube)
Blog: Watch “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.” Select a sequence/scene that uses montage (shots that break continuity, discontinuous editing). Take screen grabs and describe how/why the sequence works aesthetically and/or emotionally. What meanings or feelings come out of this style that breaks rather than connects fragments (shots) of time and space?
Loops (5%):
no more than 10 seconds per loop
Shoot and edit 3 video loops (6-10 seconds) that depict, emphasize or evoke different subjective experiences of time: cyclic, slow, timeless, frantic, rhythmic. In one loop try to incorporate continuity editing – POV shot, match on action, etc – to maintain unity. In another, try out a more discontinuous/montage style by contrasting edited shots – dark/light, fast/slow, close-up/long-shot. In the third, attempt a perfect/infinite loop. Create a variety of shot durations for emphasis. A 4-second shot sandwiched between 2-second shots, will seem to stretch time.
The best way to show the loop is to repeat (times 3-5) the edited loop in the video track before uploading.
Video Lectures
Friday Class (Zoom)
loops assignments
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Interview with director RaMell Ross
Montage and narrative, examples
Post-continuity Style
Spatial Montage – demo
Final Project/ Job Profile
Montage Assignments
Notes
Montage
Loop assignments…
Soviet Montage
Dziga Vertov– Man with a Movie Camera
In this sequence of Man with a Movie Camera, the impression of busy city life is conveyed through fast montage of varying discontinuous shots.
Five Methods of Montage
Sergei Eisenstein‘s methods of montage
1. Metric
where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image. This montage is used to elicit the most basal and emotional of reactions in the audience.
2. Rhythmic
– includes cutting based on the action within the frame – such as match -on-action, creating visual continuity from edit to edit.
3. Tonal
– a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots—not just manipulating the temporal length of the cuts or its rhythmical characteristics—to elicit a reaction from the audience even more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping baby would emote calmness and relaxation; billowing sails and the calm before the storm.
4. Overtonal/Associational
-the overtonal montage is the cumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect. This is the Eisenstein’s famous Odessa Steps sequence (revisited in the Untouchables).
5. Intellectual
uses shots which, combined, elicit an intellectual meaning. you put the idea together by the collision of shots.
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French Pre-War Montage
Coeur Fidèle (1923, Jean Epstein)
An Andalusian Dog, by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí – 1929 (tonal, rhythmic, false continuity)
Other Examples:
Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky – metric, tonal
City of God – metric, tonal, rhythmic
Tree of Life, Terence Malick – overtonal/associational
I Wish, Hirokasu Koreeda – overtonal/associational
Chungking Express – jump cuts for narrative
To the Wonder – – jump cuts for narrative
Nonlinear, Chaos and Post-Continuity Editing
Chaos Cinema 1, by Matthias Stork
Chaos Cinema 2 by Matthias Stork
Steenbeck Editing
Nonlinear Editing
timeline> sequence > tracks >clips> audio sync/linked > transitions
Compositing/Spatial Montage/Effects/Color Manipulation
Spatial Montage:
Thomas Crown Affair – simultaneous perspectives
Jean-Louis Boissier’s Flora petrinsularis. – the interface, simultaneous perspectives, comics
Mike Figgis – Timecode – simultaneous storylines
How to make a Spatial Montage (multiple screens):
Start to formulate an idea for the final project. Propose the idea to in person or as an email.
Final Project (30%)
Assembly Cut Due April 23rd
Rough Cut Due April 30th
Final Cut Due May 4th
With consideration of the assignments, readings , screenings and class discussions, create a final project that explores/exploits at least one feature of “digital cinema”: looped video, glitched video, composited video, networked video, hyperlinked video, database video, etc. You may create a fictional, non-fictional or abstract project. However,the project must be made of video (moving digital images originally captured as video), incorporate cinema language (thoughtful continuity editing and/or montage) and you must engage with the class ideas in the conception of your project. Your grade we will be based on the quality and effort of your creative work as well as its conceptual foundation.
Some suggested ideas:
- a mini documentary
- a profile of a person, company, product or institution
- a fictional short video
- a video essay
- a Youtube web series
- a series of video loops
- a work of hypercinema (HTML5)
- a mashup or series of mashups,
- an experimental video that creates a hybrid space with composting, spatial montage and other effects
- a multilinear database narrative
Group projects are possible.
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- Soviet Montage
- Chaos vs. Classical Cinema – how nonlinear editing has changed movies
- Nonlinear Editing – workflows
- timeline> sequence > tracks >clips> audio sync/linked > transitionsCompositing
- Spatial Montage > picture in picture
- Synch and Asynchronous sound
ASSIGNMENT: Due March 5th (two weeks)
Montage (5%):
As an element of film language, montage (the juxtaposition of discontinuous fragments) can be a powerful tool for storytelling: getting across ideas or emotions, summarizing events, conveying the cyclical or simultaneous, making poetic associations and creating rhythm and tension. Because juxtaposed images act on our subconscious, montage is effective in propaganda and marketing as well as storytelling. In other words, be free to juxtapose images for narrative/expressive effect, but be aware and sensitive to how those juxtapositions will be perceived. In this assignment, pay attention to Eisenstein’s methods of montage: metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal, intellectual.
Option 1: Idea Montage (5%):
no more than 60 seconds
Express an idea, a feeling or an issue or any complex subject through the juxtaposition of images and sounds. You may use natural sound or keep it silent, but please no music tracks. I want you to find the rhythm and pacing of your edits in the narrative, not in external music. The video could be a dream-like association of images and sounds. Or images and sounds that collectively express an abstract idea or that have an emotional impact. Use contrast between shots to make the viewer work at understanding. Use similarities between shots to build connections.
Ideas: a montage of a rainstorm, mobile phone addiction, a student experience at WSU, fear or anxiety, peace or calm.
OR
Option 2: Spatial Montage (5%):
no more than 60 seconds
Create a 30-60 second video that has at least two distinct video frames simultaneously on the screen. Think about the relationships between each frame’s content (for continuity or montage effects), the relationship between each frame’s editing rhythm, the combinations of their sound tracks and the similarities or differences in the proportions and positioning of the frames themselves.
Ideas: portrait of a place, coverage of an event from multiple points of view, simultaneous views of two or more people or characters.
OR
Option #3: Temporal Montage
Use montage (discontinuous editing) as well as continuity editing to summarize an event or series of events in time. In a 30-60 second video, you are to convey event(s) that take place for a duration greater than the screen time; greater by either minutes, hours or years. The subject must be about the passage of time. Use natural sound, but please no music tracks for now. I want you to find the rhythm and pacing of your edits in the narrative, not in external music.
Ideas: your morning routine or a commute, boredom while waiting for something, the short summary of a trip.