Montage editing involves juxtaposing short shots to represent ideas through techniques like repetition, rhythm, and metaphor. Pioneered by Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s-1930s like Eisenstein, montage aims to disorient the viewer through non-linear cutting in contrast to continuity editing. When constructing a montage, editors should vary shot durations, employ techniques like freeze frames or speed adjustments, use multiple visual layers, and ensure sound design supports the montage structure rather than following a strict beat. Montage aims to add shots rather than subtract them through disorienting and symbolic associations between images.

1. MONTAGE
EDITING
BY C H A P E L L E C O O P E R

2. WHAT IS MONTAGE EDITING?
• The process of cutting up film and editing it into the sequence. May also be used to
mean intellectual montage which is the juxtaposition of short shots to represent
actions or idea.
• Intellectual montage is used to consciously convey subjective messages through the
juxtaposition of shots which are related in composition or movement. They are used
through repetition of images, through cutting rhythm, detail or metaphor.
• Montage editing, unlike invisible editing, uses close- ups, relatively frequent cuts,
dissolves, superimposition, fades and jump cuts.

3. HISTORY OF MONTAGE EDITING
Vsevolod Pudovkin, the filmmaker and film professor who greatly influenced this generation of
Soviet filmmakers, saw montage as the linking of ideas through the linking of one shot to
another. His student, pioneer filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, viewed montage as the conflict of
ideas derived from the opposition of one shot to another. Eisenstein wrote: “The general course
of the montage was an uninterrupted interweaving of diverse themes into one unified
movement. Each montage-piece had a double responsibility to build the total line as well as to
continue the movement within each of the contributory themes.”
From the 1930s to 1950s, montages were usually used to symbolize transportation across long
distances or the change in times through news reels. Don Siegel, the famed director of films
like Dirty Harry, actually got his start editing montages for Warner Bros. He edited montages for
over 20 films, including the legendary Casablanca. In this title sequence, the audience is
transported across the globe in the iconic superimposed look of film footage over a map. The
same technique is still used today. It’s a staple of the Indiana Jones films.

4. DOS AND DON’TS
Here are some specific DOs and DON’Ts for constructing a montage:
• DO pay attention to pacing. Choose shot content, focal length, and duration to maximize information,
engagement, and the story you’re telling.
• DON’T make every cut the same duration. Choose each shot’s length by how much information it
to convey. Once the shot’s played out, cut away to something new. Often you’ll notice that the cuts
to get shorter as the montage progresses.
• DO freeze shots, speed them up, or slo mo them to communicate their content the most effectively.
• DO feel free to use multiple visuals such as split screens, supers, layered shots to increase the
and pace of your montage.
• DON’T use every type of wipe or dissolve in your digital editing machine’s toolbox.
• DO make sure that the sound you use – music, sound effects, and/or words – supports your montage.
• DON’T cut on every beat of every of the music.
• DO use colour correction to adjust shots from different time periods, places, or sources for readability
aesthetics.

5. GUIDE TO MONTAGE EDITING
Adding, Not Taking Away
• People say that continuity editing is about taking shots away, while montage is about adding shots in. There’s
truth in this simple idea—we sometimes call montage additive editing, while continuity editing might be called
reductive editing. When creating montage, always go for adding shots in rather than taking them out. You might
need to make each shot shorter and faster, but that helps to disorientate the viewer.
Disorientate
• The aim of montage editing is the opposite of continuity. Now you need to try everything you can to throw the
viewer off balance, to disorientate and unsettle them. They get confused and disturbed, however, this doesn’t
the audience will disconnect from the film; instead they will get more involved, like a puzzle you can’t figure out..
Dreams
• In dreams we tend to see a mix of our authentic, real lives with small but crucial bits of weirdness. It gives this
weirdness a context and makes it stand out. If your dreams were movies, they’d seem to have no rhythm, and
change suddenly without warning. People change places, change shape, outfits, expressions. The weather alters
you flicked a switch; time speeds up and slows down. In fact, just about everything that we do in continuity
is turned on its head.
Use Symbols
• Symbols are a good way to get across ideas. Lay the clips on the timeline on your editing app and scan through
them to look for connections or threads, such as objects, colours or shapes, anything that can link together two
shots. Look for any shot that reminds you of another shot, and start pairing them up.

6. Mix Close-ups and Deep Shots
• Montage works by keeping you guessing, by throwing you off-balance because you just don’t know what is
coming next. But you don’t always need to place two totally random clips side by side. In a montage use
different types of shots like a dramatic close-up and then a long, wide shot, then both together as a part of
image enters the frame close by. Surrealist painters like Dali used this to confuse height and depth and
a kind of horizontal vertigo.
Use Colour and Tone
• When editing the trailer don’t go too overboard, use of colour (or black and white) which stays the same
throughout the whole sequence. If your sequence looks too diverse, give it a colour that carries through every
clip. Or try increasing or decreasing colour saturation by a small amount, or boost contrast dramatically so
clip looks similar.
Use Music
• Use music to enhance the montage. If two images can collide with each other to create other ideas, then
music can add to the battle even further. Music that seems out of place, or contradicts what we see, can be
effective. Even regular continuity editing benefits from this now and then.
• Finally, two other types of montage useful for movies which use continuity editing:
Parallel montage is when you cut quickly between two separate locations, to show simultaneous events going
on. They can be related or unrelated—either way we’ll make connections and get some interesting ideas out of
Accelerated montage is where you use faster and faster cuts to create a turbulent stream of images that the
viewer just can’t process fast enough to keep up. The result is a big disorientating overload, but if the images
somehow it should add up to an overwhelming theme or feeling. Cuts should be shorter than two frames,
preferably ten frames long.