Introduction to Montage

In his essay “The Photographic Message,” Roland Barthes sees the newspaper as “a complex of concurrent messages with the photograph as centre and surrounds constituted by the text, the title, the caption, the layout and ... by the very name of the paper.” According to Barthes, a newspaper is a sea of text with pictures in the middle of it. What live performance, but a sea of text or music with pictures in the middle of it?

Choosing images is the central undertaking of video design. The audience will decode these images, so how will they make use of all the meanings? We can use major cinematic devices to clarify the emotion and meaning in audio/visual performance.

A central technique of VJ’ing is the remix, a collection of cuts. In cinema, we refer to a collection of cuts, or edits, as a montage or assembly. Montage was introduced to cinema primarily by Sergei Eisenstein in the 1920s, and early Soviet directors used it as a synonym for creative editing.

In our first module, Montage, you will learn a range of basic editing and layering principles, developing their timing skills as they develop sensitivity to successiveness, temporal order, and simultaneity. These will be used to contrast clock-time with subjective time, duration, temporal continuity, the feelings of anticipation and expectation, and the shifting of temporal perspectives as it relates to content.

The Cut

One of the oldest examples of montage editing is called the “Kuleshov Effect.” This experiment demonstrated cinema’s unique capacity as an art form to conjure emotional reactions from the relationship between indexical images.

You will use this cornerstone of editing as your first VJ’ing exercise, eliciting different responses and correlations by strategically ordering content. Finally, you will experiment with different ‘soundtracks’ to greater influence emotion and meaning.

Rhythmic Sequence

Eisenstein's montage theories are based on the idea that montage originates in the "collision" between different shots in an illustration of the idea of thesis and antithesis. His collisions of shots were based on conflicts of scale, volume, rhythm, motion (speed, as well as direction of movement within the frame), as well as more conceptual values such as class.

Rhythmic editing is when the relations between shots function to control visual pace and meaning. A shot's physical length corresponds to a measurable duration. Rhythmic function occurs when several shot lengths form a discernable pattern. For instance, equal length between cuts will create a steady metrical beat.

You’re creating rhythm almost immediately after you begin performing -- it’s inevitable once multiple elements appear on the screen. In this case, we’d like that rhythm to be a little more planned, instead of placing elements randomly. There are three primary types of rhythm you can plan for:

• Regular rhythm: Intervals between images are the same in duration (i.e., one second per image)
• Progressive rhythm: The duration of images are changed over a progression, getting faster towards the end (2 sec, 1 sec, ½ sec, and so on)
• Flowing (organic) rhythm: Occurs when the images or intervals are organic, used to create a feeling of visual polyphony. Think VJ’ing to wind chimes.

Cinéma Pur

From the 1930s to the 1950s, montage sequences often combined numerous short shots with special optical effects (fades, dissolves, split screens, double and triple exposures) dance and music.

The Cinéma Pur movement was to create a cinema that focused on the pure elements of film like motion, light, visual composition, and rhythm. It was begun by European filmmakers René Clair, Fernand Léger, [Hans Richter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Richter_(artist), Viking Eggeling, Walter Ruttmann, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. Often these abstract art films showed patterns in motion, creating visually pleasing or intriguing compositions that reflected cinema’s essential power. Films like Man With A Movie Camera, Ballet Mécanique, Symphony Diagonale, and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City are quintessential examples of Cinéma Pur.

For this exercise, you will experiment with the layering of indexical material to create new visual associations and meanings using a select range of optical effects. Experiment superimposing contrasting imagery — abstract and realistic, light and dark, graphic and photographic, fast and slow, human and machine. Be prepared to discuss the emergence of this third image with a statement of intent.