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Soviet Montage


 Sergei M. Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin were looking for ways of using film to create new art when they discovered montage, which is the art of combining pieces of film or shots into larger units-first, the scene, then the sequence, and, finally the complete film. (BRAUDY and COHEN, 2004)

   “Eisenstein viewed montage as a kind of collision or conflict, especially between a shot and its successor. He sees each shot as having a kind of potential energy which can display itself in purely visual terms: the direction of its movements, the volume of its shapes, the intensity of its light, and so forth. This potential energy becomes kinetic when the first shot collides with the succeeding one. The two shots can produce a conflict in their emotional content (happy versus sad), in their use of illumination (dark versus light), in their rhythms (slow versus fast), in their objects (large versus small), in their directions of movement (right versus left), in their distances (close-up versus far shot), or in any combination thereof.” (BRAUDY and COHEN, 2004)

 Meaning he used the art of montage to manipulate peoples views to create the tone he wanted for the peace as well as propagandist messages (eg. "Battleship Potemkin" Odessa steps sequence where the tsars army is painted as the villan) 
KULESHOV EFFECT
Lev Kuleshov, who was interested in psychological impact the editing has on a person rather than filmaking itself (Folding Ideas, 2017), discovered that one image following the other can create different emotions. For example he took a static close up of a man and only by changing the following shot he managed to portray sadness, hunger and lust, even though the image of the man remained the same. (CrashCourse, 2017)

TONAL MONTAGE

To create this montage you use shots that have simillar tonal or thematic qualities. The shots build on one another to reinforce the meaning behind them (CrashCourse, 2017).
We ended up using this for the begining of our video (after the words that come up on the screen, such as "to lead" we put images of people who look like leaders/are leading to reinforce the idea)

RHYTHMIC MONTAGE

This montage matches the cuts to music, sound effects or actions on screen. It's common in modern film trailers. (CrashCourse, 2017)

For our project I tried to match the cuts to the music to best of my ability and because of the music we chose for the project it was really difficult to find the rhythm at the times.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
BRAUDY, L. and COHEN, M. (2004). Film theory and criticism: introductory readings. 6th ed. Oxford: OUP, pp.1-57.
CrashCourse (2017). Soviet Montage: Crash Course Film History #8. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RtBAa4YCgo [Accessed 22 Nov. 2018].
Folding Ideas (2017). The Kuleshov Effect. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy2Vhnqtu8I [Accessed 10 Dec. 2018].

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