The Pianist (2002) plays with time while using different transitions during different points of the film. This film follows a Jewish piano player trying to survive after the invasion of Poland in 1939, and follows his sufferings throughout World War II. This film is very real, and very raw, based on a true story. In the beginning of the film, it is focused on the family trying to navigate life as the Nazi’s control over Poland increases, and they gradually loose their rights. These shots are rapid, and the transitions are between large time jumps that are quick and can be jarring. This is ment to show how fast the Polish Jewish people lost their rights, despite it being a gradual transformation. This is a sharp contrast to later in the film when Szpilman is on his own, starving, sick, homeless, trying to hide and survive. These transitions are long fade to blacks. It causes a pause, and takes time to transition from one scene to the next. This is ment to represent that although less time has passed from shot to shot, because of the suffering Szpilman is going through, it feels gruelingly long as he tries to survive with many unknowns about if he is going to be captured or die. These transitions are ment to communicate to the audience how Szpilman feels time passing. Thus, the audience feels it as well. This film’s goal is to help put into perspective what Jewish people went through during the Holocaust, and these cuts add communication to the heartbreaking suffering Szpilman goes through.

Here is my montage loop of me pressing buttons around my kitchen. The action of pressing the buttons tie the shots together, and I tried to keep the location of the button and my finger in a consistent spot.

Here is my endless loop of me pouring a cup of tea.

Here is my continuity loop of me endlessly playing the piano. I did speed it up so it didn’t take so long, but also thought the sound of the sped up piano was quite fun.

This is the Loop I and Qinn Carrick made in class, and edited together in class.

I was having fun, and decided to edit another infinite loop with the footage I gathered from the continuity loop, and thought I would share.

This film uses many shots of nature, such as leaves, rain, trees, and a body of water. It also has shots of a chimney with smoke. These shots are split by shots of a woman reading a letter and being very sad. These shots of the woman are the only linear part of the film, meaning there are actions and direct cause and effect between scenes rather than a static shot of water. That being said, the “nonsensical” shots of nature give us an insight into what the woman is experiencing and feeling. Through tone the audience can infer that she is feeling very sad and hopeless. Both the shot of the woman and the shots of nature are needed for communicating this, as without the woman the audience would not have anything to tie these shots to narratively, and without the nature scenes the audience would not have a reference for what she is feeling, which is suicidal. The film reinforces this idea of using symbolic footage to represent feeling, which is more difficult to communicate than say text, by using the sun to represent her shift in perspective and mood. I would say this approach to montage is successful, as it is a creative way to communicate complex character motivation through film, and shows us visually through symbolism what she is feeling. The use of montage aids to this clear communication, as it ties the woman and the nature scenes together.

For this assignment I tried to use intellectual montage and tonal montage. The concept is someone setting the table, with different perspectives of dishes. I wanted to play with different ways dishes could be shot compositionally, thus I took a more abstract direction with this project. This morphed into someone setting a formal table setting for two, only to be alone at the end with only one glass representing a desire for connection and community that is lacking in this character’s life.

Here is the final edit of the footage gathered in class for the In Class Montage Assignment. I worked with Quinn, and our idea was to communicate the feeling of being stressed out for an exam by using clocks as a theme. I also added a clock ticking noise in the background to further communicate the theme of time.

For this project, I wanted to create a short film that followed continuity of a lady making coffee and reading a book. As she reads the book, the set continuity changes. The consistency, continuity, and repetition brings more attention to the fact that details are being changed from shot to shot.

The main aspect of Run Lola Run that maintains its narrative momentum is repetition. It sets up a baseline with the first run, and then alters small details. Due to the repetitive nature of the narrative, breaking from this repetition brings attention to those moments. Not only that, but this film does a beautiful job of setting up the narrative with Lola’s first phone call with Mani. This gives the viewer enough information to understand all three runs, and is a great starting point for the branching timelines. 

Bouncing off that, this film also has strong visual symbols, which also help ground the viewer. For example, the color red is extremely potent in this film, and the flashback scenes have strong red lighting and color grading signaling to the viewer that  the content of those scenes is outside the narrative timeline. 

Not only that, but the film uses real world time as well, with all three segments being exactly 20 minutes. It does this by focusing on different details through each run, making shots longer or shorter depending on the narrative importance. For example, in run three we get a sequence of the homeless man and what he does after he obtains the bag. This is a contrast to the previous runs that only focus on Lola. This draws attention away from Lola, and based on the repetition and what we know from the previous runs, we can assume nothing new is happening with Lola’s timeline. This shot continuity signals the viewer what to focus on for each individual run.

Lastly, this film uses split screens to show multiple visual elements happening at once to maintain timing consistency, and show multiple events happening at once. This film also expands upon that by having a split screen take place within the same shot, showing altered perspectives in the same space.

The footage I captured had themes of my cats, working and doing activities for school/work, connecting with others, and traveling. I did not go into this assignment with a plan, but I tried to get a wide variety of shots, while still maintaining some shot continuity to connect ideas. For example, most shots of me walking are of my feet, and this clues the viewer that I am transitioning from one location to another. I also used a blue and desaturated color grade, as I asked some close friends what color I was and that (relatively) was the color they gave.