Soviet Montage vs Contemporary Film

Contemporary film used Soviet montage to reach different objectives. Soviet montage provides an alternative choice for the directors to change the narrative into a more attractive and more suspense ways. For example thriller film always show montage and it become the hints for audience to know the truth of the film or who is the exact killer in the film. In the beginning credits of the film, will show the montage by following of the crew names.  In an audience perspective, audience will based on the montage and try to relate their assumption to the development of story. This will be an invisible interaction between audience and the film.

The pictures above is choose from the movie "Daybreakers" which is act by Ethan Hawke.This movie is about Edward Dalton, a researcher in the year 2019, in which an unknown plague has transformed the world's population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race.

Nightfall 2012

I have watched this movie few days ago. During watching this movie, I found out that the techniques of montage are actually applied in this movie.

Sadly to say that I could't post out those screenshot for discussion but I would like to encourage you all to watch this movie. Not only because of the techniques in editing but the story itself is attractive too.

This is a detective kind of movie, guess most of the young adults are actually like because the ending is really unpredictable if you are not pay the full attention on the movie.

Eugene Wang (Nick Cheung) is mute after he wreck his vocal chords to commit suicide in prison. When he was released, he found Tsui's second daughther,Zoe who has the same face with Eva. Han Tsui's is dead. Inspector Lam (Simon Yam) investigate about Tsui's case, the finger of blame is pointed at Eugene.

Influence of Soviet Montage in "Hanna"- Part 2

Referring to the previous post which talks about the influence of soviet montage in “Hanna” movie, we mentioned that the director has used 2 types of Eisenstein montage elements in this movie. The elements that the director used were Overtonal Montage and Intellectual Montage.

Overtonal Montage is a type of editing which combine the similar or relevant elements shots together to make it become a scene which come with its meaning. This montage style shows a combination of clips to make audience know what is happening rather than use the normal or ordinary way to present the narrative. It is an artful way to view the scene.  

The scene in “Hanna” which used the Overtonal montage is the scene where Hanna came to a hotel. In this particular scene, it shows many electronic devices which Hanna has never see before. Because Hanna doesn’t know how to use those electronic devices, when she touches those devices, they are out of control and Hanna start feels panic. To let the audience feel the panic and nervousness which Hanna feels, the director use the Overtonal montage to shows the electronic devices shots and all the objects are spinning.

Film Makers of Soviet Montage (Part 2)

Lev Kuleshov

Lev Kuleshov

The founder of the world's first film school and he is very first film theorist for Soviet Montage. Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin are his students and had develop his theories of montage editing. His theory is about what distinguishes cinema from other arts is its capacity to organize fragments (shots) into meaningful, rhythmical sequences. Editing creates meaning and emotions that go far beyond the meaning and content of individual shots. 

To illustrate this principle, he created what he has come to be known as the Kuleshov Experiment. In this video, shots of an actor were intercut with various meaningful images (a casket, a bowl of soup, and so on) in order to show how editing changes viewers' interpretations of images. Below is a re-creation of the Kuleshov experiment.

In the early post-Revolutionary period, when there was a desperate shortage of everything, including film stock, Kuleshov worked at the new State Film School with a small workshop of actors, refining his techniques in the so-called "films without film." Central to these was the experiment that has become known as the "Kuleshov effect," which demonstrated that the viewer's interpretation of an individual shot is determined by the context (or sequence) in which that shot is seen. The same shot could be interpreted differently in different contexts. But Kuleshov also appreciated the importance of acting and was responsible for developing the notion of the actor as naturshchik or "model," deriving from the Delsartian school of acting technique. By economical and stylised gestures, refined during an intensive period of rehearsal, the naturshchik could convey precise meanings to the audience in accordance with the director's plan. Kuleshov would produce an "action score" for every movement in his films.