Introduction to montage
Montage is a transliteration of literature, music or art groups. It was originally an architectural term, meaning composition and assembly. Now is one of the main narrative means and expressive means of film and television creation. Generally, it includes two aspects: image editing and image synthesis. Picture editing: a unified picture work composed of many pictures or patterns juxtaposed or overlapped. Picture composition: The art or process of making such a combination. This film combines a series of shots taken in different places, from different distances and angles and in different ways to describe the plot and portray the characters. However, when different lens groups are connected together, they often have meanings that each lens does not have when it exists alone. For example, Chaplin connected the lens of workers entering the factory gate with the lens group of driven sheep; Pudovkin connected the scene of melting glaciers in spring with the scenes of workers' demonstrations, which made the original scene take on a new meaning. Eisenstein believes that when the lens groups in opposite rows are connected together, the effect is "not the sum of two numbers, but the product of two numbers". With the help of montage, movies enjoy great freedom of time and space, and even form movie time and space that are inconsistent with real life time and space. Montage can produce a third action besides the actor's action and the camera action, thus affecting the rhythm of the film. As early as the film came out, American directors, especially Griffith, noticed the role of film montage. Later Soviet directors Kuleshov, Eisenstein and pudovkin successively discussed and summarized the laws and theories of montage, and formed the montage school. Their related works have had a far-reaching impact on film creation. Montage originally refers to the relationship between images. After the appearance of audio movies and color movies, the application of montage has a broader world in images and sounds (human voice, acoustics, music), sounds and sounds, colors and colors, light and shadow, etc. There are many names of montage, so far there is no clear grammatical norm and classification, but the film industry generally tends to be divided into three categories: narrative, lyrical and rational (including symbol, contrast and metaphor). After World War II, andre bazan (19 18- 1958), a French film theorist, opposed the role of montage, believing that montage imposed the director's point of view on the audience and limited the fuzziness of the film, and advocated the use of depth-of-field lens and scene scheduling for continuous shooting, believing that only in this way could the integrity of plot space and the authenticity of time flow be maintained. However, the role of montage is undeniable. Film artists always use montages and long shots to create films. Some people think that a long shot actually changes the scope and content of the shot by the action of the shot and the scheduling of the actors, which is called "internal montage".
Simply put, montage is to make a film into many shots according to the content of the film and the psychological order of the audience, and then connect them according to the original idea. Bottom line: Montage is a means to connect the cut lens groups. Therefore, montage is a means to connect the shots taken by the camera according to the logic of life, the order of reasoning, the author's viewpoint tendency and its aesthetic principles. First, it uses a camera, and then it uses editing. Of course, the montage of movies is mainly achieved through the re-creation of directors, photographers and editors. The screenwriter of the film designs a blueprint for the future film, the director of the film recreates it with montage on the basis of this blueprint, and finally the photographer reflects it with the expressive force of the film.
In the production of a film, the director makes many shots according to the theme of the script or film, and then organizes and edits these different shots organically and artistically according to the original creative idea, so as to make them coherent, contrasting, associative, suspenseful and connected with different rhythms, thus selectively forming a film that reflects certain social life and thoughts and feelings and is understood and loved by the broad audience. These forms and ways are as follows.
To sum up, it can be seen that the basic element of a film is the lens, and the main way and means to connect the lens is montage, and it can be said that montage is a unique expression of film art. Since the smallest unit of a film is the lens, what is the basic element of this film-the lens? What does it have to do with montage? As we know, a lens is a piece of film shot from different angles, different focal lengths, different times and after different processing. In fact, montage has been used since the shooting of the lens. As far as the lens is concerned, shooting from different angles naturally has different artistic effects. Such as frontal shooting, cypress leaning, upward shooting, side shooting, backlight, filtering, etc. The effect is obviously different. As far as the lens with the same focal length is concerned, the effect is different. For example, distant view, panoramic view, middle view, close view, close-up and large close-up have different effects. Furthermore, different processed lenses will also produce different artistic effects. In addition, due to the use of spaces, abbreviations, upgrades and other techniques, it has also brought a variety of specific artistic effects. In addition, because of the different shooting time, there are long shots and short shots, and the length of the shots will have different effects.
At the same time, when connecting scenes and paragraphs, we can choose to use different connection methods according to different changes, different rhythms and different emotional needs, such as talking, talking, rowing, cutting, winding, pinching, pushing and pulling. In short, what kind of shots to take and what kind of shots to arrange together. In what way to connect the arranged shots, the way and means for filmmakers to solve this series of problems is montage. If picture and acoustics are the "vocabulary" for the film director to communicate with the audience, then the montage means of using picture and acoustics to form shots and combining shots to form film rules is the director's "grammar". For a film director, mastering these basic principles does not mean mastering "grammar". Montage often presents a variety of faces in the specific content and aesthetic pursuit of each film. Montage is from point to surface for the audience. For the director, montage is divided into parts, that is, editing, and then divided into parts, that is, combination. The smallest unit of cutting is the lens, so the director has to write a storyboard. As an audience, how should we appreciate the director's art from the perspective of montage? After all, montage is a way for directors to tell stories; The audience always wants the story to be fluent, vivid and infectious, which can arouse the audience's association and interest. These requirements fully apply to montage. The audience is not only satisfied with finding the outline of the plot, or roughly understanding the ideas and concepts of the film, but also requires clear and smooth perception of every link and detail of the film narrative process. The montage of the film must first be understood by the audience.
Nowadays, a contemporary feature film usually consists of about 500 to 1000 shots. The scene, angle, length, action form and the combination of picture and sound of each shot all contain montage factors. It can be said that montage has existed since the beginning of the lens. At the same time, the treatment of lens angle, focal length and length has included the photographer's will, emotion, praise and criticism and ingenuity.
In the arrangement, combination and connection between shots, the photographer's subjective intention is more clearly reflected. Because each lens part does not exist in isolation, it is bound to have a relationship with the upper and lower lenses connected with it. Different relationships will produce different artistic effects such as coherence, jumping, strengthening, weakening, parallelism and contrast. On the other hand, the combination of shots not only plays a role in vividly describing the contents of shots, but also produces new meanings that may not be expressed by a single shot itself. Griffith's first attempt to use montage in film history was to combine the shot of a man who should have been on a desert island with the close-up of a wife waiting at home. After such a combination, the audience feels "waiting" and "leaving sorrow" and produces a new and special imagination. For another example, the artistic effect of arranging a group of short shots together and connecting them by quick cutting is very different from that of arranging the same group of shots together and connecting them by "light" or "chemistry".
For another example, if the following three shots A, B and C are connected in different order, different contents and meanings will appear.
A, a person is laughing; B, pistol pointing; C, the same person's face shows the appearance of fear.
What impression did these three close-ups give the audience?
If connected in the order of A-B-C, the audience will think that this person is a coward. Now, the shots remain the same. If we just change the order of the shots above, we will come to the opposite conclusion.
C, a person's face shows the appearance of fear, B, a pistol pointed at; A, the same person is laughing.
If you connect in the order of C-B-A like this, this person's face will look frightened because there is a gun pointed at him. However, he thought about it and thought it was nothing, so he smiled-in the face of death. Therefore, he gave the audience the impression that he was a brave man.
In this way, changing the shot order of a scene without changing each shot itself completely changes the meaning of a scene, draws the opposite conclusion and receives completely different effects.
This coherent organizational arrangement is to use the unique montage means of film art, which is also what we call the structural problem of film. From the above examples, we can see the importance of this arrangement and combination structure, which is an important means to organize the materials together to express the film ideas. Meanwhile. Due to the different arrangement and combination, different artistic effects such as positive, negative, deep, shallow, strong and weak have been produced.
Eisenstein, a Soviet movie master, thinks that shot A plus shot B is not a simple synthesis of shot A and shot B, but will become a brand-new content and concept of shot C. He clearly points out: "The juxtaposition of two montage shots is not the addition of two numbers, but more like the product of two numbers-this fact was correct before, and it still seems correct today. The reason why it is more like the product of two numbers than the sum of two numbers is that the result of arrangement is always different from each individual component in quality (in "dimension" if you want to use mathematical terms). Let's give another example. Woman-this is a painting, a woman's mourning-this is also a painting; These two pictures can be expressed in kind. The' widow' produced by the juxtaposition of these two pictures is no longer something that can be expressed in kind, but a new representation, a new concept and a new image. "
It can be seen that the use of montage can make the connection of shots have a new meaning, greatly enrich the expressive force of film art, and thus enhance the appeal of film art. On this topic, we can also get great inspiration from a phenomenon in physics: as we all know, carbon and diamonds are the same in molecular composition. But one is surprisingly brittle and the other is unusually hard. Why? Scientists' research results prove that this is caused by different molecular arrangements (character structures). In other words, the same materials, due to different arrangements, may produce such diametrically opposite results, which is really thought-provoking.
Hungarian film theorist Bela Balazs also pointed out: "Once the last shot is connected, the extremely rich meaning hidden in each shot is emitted like an electric spark." It can be seen that this kind of "electric spark"-like meaning is "hidden" by people's unconscious single lens. Only through "combination" can people have a new and special imagination. When we say montage, we first refer to the combination relationship between shots, including the combination relationship between time and space, sound and picture, picture and color. And the significance and function of these connections.
In a word, "montage" is the connection of movies. The whole film has a structure, and every chapter, paragraph and paragraph should also have a structure. In the film, this connection is called montage. In fact, it is to combine the lens group into a segment, then combine the short segments into a large segment, and then organize the large segment into a movie. There is no mystery or trick in this process, which conforms to the logic of rationality and sensibility, the logic of life and vision, and looks' smooth',' reasonable', rhythmic and comfortable. This is a splendid montage, and vice versa. There is no such simple explanation and elaboration as montage.
Montage can be divided into performance montage and narrative montage, and can also be subdivided into psychological montage, lyric montage, parallel montage, cross montage, repeated montage and so on.
[Edit this paragraph] The birth and development of montage
When the Lumiere brothers made the earliest film in history at the end of 19, they didn't need to consider montage at all. Because he always puts the camera in a fixed position, that is, the distance from the panorama (or the distance between the audience in the middle row of the theater and the stage), he is shooting people's movements from beginning to end. Later, it was found that the film could be cut and then bonded with drugs, so some people tried to put the camera in different positions and shoot from different distances and angles. They found that all kinds of lenses can produce amazing different effects by different connection methods. This is the beginning of montage, and it is also the beginning of the film getting rid of the shackles of narrative and expressive means of stage play and having its own independent means. Generally speaking, in the film history, the creation of split-shot shooting is attributed to Edwin Porter of the United States. He thinks that great train robbery, which he showed in 1903, is the beginning of a "film" in the modern sense, because he relates what happened in different backgrounds, including the platform, cab, telegraph room, train car, valley and other indoor scenes to tell a story. But it is universally acknowledged that Griffith skillfully mastered the skills of different lens combinations, and finally made the film get rid of the dramatic expression method. Montage has developed considerably during the silent film period.
From 1927, the film has a sound, and at this time the film has a great shock from creation to theory. With the sound in the picture, it is no longer a simple visual explanation, and the film can reflect life more truly. Many legal hypothetical things in the original silent film and the author's method of expressing his views directly are no longer applicable. This is why many famous film artists, such as Chaplin and Rene Clare, were skeptical about audio films for a period of time, and the theorist Eindham always denied audio films.
Montage school appeared in the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s, and its representatives were Eisenstein, Kuleshov and pudovkin. They tried to explore new means of film expression to express revolutionary film art in the new era. Their exploration mainly focused on the experiment and research of montage, created a systematic theory of film montage, and applied the theoretical exploration to artistic practice, creating classic works of montage art such as Battleship potemkin and Mother and Land.
Eisenstein is a master of montage theory. 1922 published "Variety Montage" in the magazine "Left Art Front", which was the first programmatic declaration of montage theory. In Eisenstein's view, montage is not only a technical means of film, but also a way of thinking and philosophy. He pointed out that two parallel montages are not the sum of two numbers, but the product of two numbers. Battleship potemkin was shot by Eisenstein at 1925, which is the artistic crystallization of montage theory. The famous odessa steps in the film is regarded as a classic example of montage application.
On the other hand, some people think that montage is the product of silent movies and has no place in the soil of talking movies. Facts show that although the sound limits the application of some montage techniques, the film has changed from a simple visual art to an audio-visual art, and the characters on the screen have become a complete image that can be seen and heard, which greatly expands the application of montage. The picture is added with sound. From then on, montage is not only the relationship between pictures, but also the relationship between sound and sound, sound and picture. The so-called sound includes human voice, natural sound and music. The voice also includes lines, comments, inner monologues and the noise of the crowd. Therefore, the combination of picture and sound involves the combination of picture and human voice, the combination of natural sound and music, and the combination of sound and sound involves the combination of these sounds. It is precisely because of this complexity that the sound composition and sound painting composition of movies have infinitely rich possibilities, opening up an infinitely broad new world for audio-visual art (see movie sound). Film has developed from black-and-white film to color film, and color has become one of the means of film expression, which brings a new topic of color montage to film and enriches the world of film montage again.
[Edit this paragraph] The role of montage
By means of montage, the narrative of the film has gained great freedom in the use of time and space. A skill can jump from Paris to new york in space or span decades in time. Moreover, the juxtaposition and intersection of actions in two different spaces can cause nervous suspense, or show the relationship between people living in two places, such as the lovesickness of lovers in two places. Montage in different periods can repeatedly describe the relationship between the past psychological experience and the current inner activities of the characters. This freedom of time and space transformation makes movies provide freedom for novelists to express their lives to a great extent. The use of montage enables film artists to greatly compress or extend the actual time in their lives, thus producing the so-called "movie time" without giving people the feeling of violating the actual time in their lives.
Montage, the ability to manipulate time and space, enables film artists to extract the parts that he thinks can best clarify the essence of life, the characters' personalities and relationships, and even the artist's own feelings, combine them together, decompose them, keep the most important and inspiring parts, discard and omit a lot of trivial things, and refine life in a trivial way to obtain the most vivid narrative and richness. Griffith's performance in "Against Alienation with the Party" is that when he looks at the pain of the convicted wife of an innocent husband in court, he only pays attention to her convulsive hands. In Red women soldiers, Qionghua saw the landlord go south for eight days and shot in violation of reconnaissance discipline. The next scene is that the captain shoots Qionghua's gun on the table in order to avoid reporting to the company commander. The action is interrupted, but the plot is continuous and the relationship between characters is developing. This decomposition and combination make the film highly concentrated and generalized, so that a film in less than two hours can introduce a person's life like Citizen Kane, involving decades of social changes.
Montage has two undeniable important functions. One is to let the film freely use narrative angles alternately, such as from the author's objective narrative to the subjective expression of the characters' hearts, or to see a certain state of affairs through the eyes of the characters. Without this alternation, the narrative of the film will be monotonous and clumsy. The second is to influence the audience's psychology by changing the rhythm of the action through the lens.
The various functions of montage have convinced several generations of film artists and theorists that "montage is the foundation of film art" and "there is no film without montage", and the film should adopt a special way of thinking-montage thinking.
The main functions of montage are:
* Through the cutting and combination of shots, scenes and paragraphs, the material is selected and accepted, so that the performance content is prioritized, highly summarized and concentrated.
* Guide the audience's attention and stimulate the audience's association. Although each shot only shows a certain content, a certain shot sequence can standardize and guide the audience's emotions and psychology and inspire the audience to think.
* Create a unique film and television time and space. Every shot is a record of real time and space. After editing, the time and space are reconstructed to form a unique film and television time and space.
[Edit this paragraph] Types of montage
In practice, people have summed up two montage modes, namely narrative montage and performance montage.
1. Narrative montage
Narrative montage is a splicing method that connects different shots, narrates a plot and shows a series of events according to the development law, internal relations and time sequence of things. Narrative montage can be divided into sequential narration, flashback, insertion and sub-narration.
Show montage
Performance montage, also known as "column montage", is based on the internal relationship between pictures, through the changes and influences between pictures, pictures and sounds, to produce concepts and meanings that can not be produced by a single picture itself, and to stimulate the audience's association. Performance montage is subdivided into parallelism, intersection, contrast, symbolic metaphor and so on.
At present, in the production of film and television programs, there are many phenomena that don't pay attention to the montage law, and the most common phenomenon is the phenomenon of shooting to the end in animation production. This often destroys the rhythm of the program and annoys the audience. As a form and unique expression of film and television art, montage not only plays a guiding role in video and audio processing in the program, but also plays a very important role in grasping the overall structure of the program.
There is no unified view on how many different montages there are and how montages should be classified.
Pudovkin's classification is more specific. He thinks there are five different montages:
The first is montage, such as the connection between burning wheat and starving children during the capitalist crisis.
Second, parallel montage, such as pudovkin's Mother, depicts the growing workforce and the gradual melting of ice in neva river.
The third is metaphor or symbolic montage, which is often called "metaphor" today. For example, flying seagulls symbolize the yearning for freedom.
The fourth is the montage of overlapping or "synchronous development of actions", such as the last second rescue in "Lai Marriage".
Fifth, the "recurring theme" montage, that is, things that represent a certain theme repeatedly appear on the screen at critical moments.
Eisenstein, Bela Balazs and Einstein all have different montage classifications, up to 36 kinds. Some people think that overly complicated classification is futile. Artistic means are ever-changing, and it is impossible to generalize them into some grammatical norms. Artists will create new techniques at any time.
It is for this reason that Marda finally divides montage into three categories, namely narrative montage, thinking montage and rhythm montage.
Jean mitry, a French contemporary film theorist, believes that the purpose of montage is only to catch the audience's attention and make them focus on what they are showing. Firstly, the meaning is expressed through the vivid narration required by the plot itself and the plot, followed by lyrical, vivid expression and passionate rendering. To sum up, we might as well divide montage into narrative, lyrical and rational (symbolic, comparative and metaphorical), and there is no insurmountable gap between them. Often at the same time of narration, it also expresses feelings or conveys the author's thoughts.
[Edit this paragraph] Discussion on Montage Theory
Griffith and his successors did not want to summarize or explore the laws and theories of montage. The first person to explore montage seriously was Soviet director Kuleshov and his students Eisenstein and pudovkin. Their theories in turn influenced film theorists and artists in Europe and America.
Eisenstein has a famous saying about montage theory: "The juxtaposition of two montage shots is not the sum of two numbers, but the product of two numbers." In the words of Hungarian film theorist Bela Balazs, "Once the upper and lower shots are connected together, the extremely rich meanings hidden in each shot are emitted like sparks." For example, in "The Rural Female Teacher", varvara answered "forever", and then took two shots of cuttlefish branches, which had a meaning that did not exist alone, expressing the feelings of the author and the characters in the play.
Eisenstein applied dialectics to montage theory, emphasizing the conflict between contrast shots. For him, a shot is not an "independent thing". Only when it collides with the opposite shot can it arouse emotional feelings and understand the theme. He believes that a single shot is just an "image", and only when these images are fused together can a meaningful "image" be formed. It is this "montage power" that makes the combination of shots not a brick narrative, but a "highly excited and emotional narrative". It is this "montage power" that brings the audience's emotion and reason into the creative process and experiences the same creative path that the author experienced when creating images.
Eisenstein's view is inseparable from the enthusiasm for montage in the early Soviet Union. Kuleshov believes that the material of a film is a shot, and the performance of actors and the arrangement of scenes are only the preparation of the material. He did a famous experiment in which three different clips were pasted on a close-up of an actor without any expression. The first is a pot of soup, the second is the coffin of a female corpse, and the third is a girl with a toy. It is said that the audience thought that the first clip showed a close-up expression indicating that they wanted to drink soup, the second showed deep sadness, and the third showed a happy smile. This obviously exaggerates the role of montage and obliterates the role of performing arts. At that time, even pudovkin said, "A shot is just a word, a concept of space, and it is the object of death. Only when it is put together with other objects can it give life to the film. " Eisenstein even compared montage to hieroglyphics, saying that montage is like a word "dog" plus a word "mouth" in hieroglyphics, which is called "barking", which means that dogs bark, and two nouns are combined to produce a verb.
Eisenstein put forward the so-called "juggling montage" when he was engaged in drama activities. After his failure on the stage, he thought the film was the place to realize the "juggling montage". The so-called "juggling montage" is to capture the audience with powerful shots, episodes or programs that leave the plot structure, so that they can accept the ideas that the author wants to instill.
Pudovkin's montage has a broader vision. He no longer pays attention to the comparison and metaphor of montage, but regards montage as a narrative means and a means of expression. At the beginning of "On Montage", he declared: "The separately shot shots are well connected, so that the audience can finally feel that this is a complete, uninterrupted and continuous movement-a technique we are used to calling montage". Of course, this kind of work is not a rigid mechanical operation, nor is it a blind and random arrangement. To organize the lens into "uninterrupted continuous motion", "there must be obvious connections between these fragments". This connection can only be external, for example, a person is photographed in the last shot and a person falls down in the next shot, but more importantly, it is a "deep and thoughtful internal connection." He further pointed out that there are countless intermediate forms between the two ends of simple external connection and profound internal connection. But in short, "there must be one connection or another until there is a sharp contrast or contradiction." Therefore, he gave a definition of montage: "In film art works, various techniques are used to comprehensively express and explain the relationship between various phenomena in real life." People think that montage depends on the director's talent. "This talent makes the director good at turning the potential internal connection between life phenomena into a clear and visible connection that can be directly felt without explanation." Because of this, Bela Balazs said that the film is not a simple copy, but a real creation. A good director can not only show pictures, but also explain them.