Complexity editing is the process by which images are pieced together with an increased focus on dramatic or thematic elements of an event. With marked contrast to continuity editing, complexity editing seeks to remove the confines of time in terms of the horizontal parameter, and thus opens the event to a more introspective interpretation along the vertical axis.
The primary application of complexity editing is the use of montage. Montage is the art of construction; the systematic selections of images that can be organized in either sequential or non-sequential manner in order clarify and intensify an event. When these images are viewed in a designated sequence, they call upon a particular translational response that does not rely on the viewer having been provided all relevant details, but rather on their ability to draw conclusions based solely on the selected segments of information. In this respect, montage can provide a unique opportunity to utilize what we know and understand about a viewer’s thought process and allow us to manipulate that process to invoke an acute response. (If this sounds a bit like the primary basis of all film theory, you’re not far off base by any stretch, in fact it can be argued that all films rely on some form of montage or another to tell a story).
Montage relies heavily, if not entirely on the theory of gestalt, the psychological process of closure or filling in information. This effectively makes montage a study of relationships, one cannot close an event with a single image; thus, each image in a sequence is only as meaningful as the image before and after it. Traditional continuity editing is much more forgiving and forthcoming, more likely to spoon-feed the message of the event, whereas ...
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...ut there are still those spaces---where questions remain. Who is Andy? Why is he in prison? Who is the man in the yard? When does Andy reach freedom again and how does his friend manage to join him? Those are the pieces our minds cannot fill in, but through the emotional gestalts formed through the information provided, we are left with a longing to fill in the blanks of the rest of the event. This is sequential analytical montage at its best.
Sectional analytical montage relies on many of the same principles in terms of dramatic and thematic emphasis, but in this case the motion along the horizontal time line is often suspended, so that we may examine this event in greater detail as it happens in one or a few select moments in time. In addition, multiple view points are often portrayed using this method. One very good example of this
A rapid succession of images or scenes that exhibits different aspects of the same idea or situation, this is the definition of montage as provided by Encarta Encyclopedia ’98. The idea of a “montage of attractions” was first used by Eisenstein and Pudovkin in the 1920s for the purpose of invoking specific emotions in the viewers. The movie The Night of the Hunter starring Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish makes use of this film technique.
Parallel editing draws the audience attention to important narration details and shapes the audience’s emotional response.
characters and events accompanied by the use of visual effects create a message that is
Although reality involves a vast supply of details and you can not select them all. Many writers, directors, and artists, emphasis with this information and diminish other information in order to make the novels, movies, plays and etc. more vivid to our imagination.
The use of cinematography helps to convey the superior relationship between characters. This occurs during the film frequently to demonstrate the superiority
Body Paragraph #1: Within one incident in the story Andy transitions from thinking like an adolescent, to a realistic view by recognizing the seriousness of his situation and the world
In the film “Avatar” directed by James Cameron, wide shot, close up shots, gesture, lighting, sound, facial expression and dialogue are used to help the audience better understand the themes, good vs evil and respecting the environment which is expressed in the film.
Welles uses image overlays of maps during this sequence, multiple exciting transitions between scenes such as various wipes and graphic matches between scenes as they fade into one another. The news reel uses a voiceover to efficiently get the information across to the audience in a short amount of
In the film V for Vendetta the director James Mcteigue uses a range of different film techniques in order to gain the audience's attention and to make the movie more interesting. The four film techniques I’m going to focus on in this essay are editing, music, camera angles and the lighting. I am going to do this by analysing the ‘Domino Montage’ scene.
Mattie, Cogburn, and LaBoeuf’s journey through the Choctaw Nation is a long, gruesome one. The scene features a couple of cinematographic techniques that make it very memorable. One of these is editing. The group’s journey takes approximately ten hours, but Deakins uses time lapse cinematography to make it much shorter. The images dissolve into one another with each new image bringing them farther into the Indian Territory. This technique shows the distance the Mattie, Cogburn, and LaBoeuf travel by compressing the time. Another ...
...successful collaboration of sound, colour, camera positioning and lighting are instrumental in portraying these themes. The techniques used heighten the suspense, drama and mood of each scene and enhance the film in order to convey to the spectator the intended messages.
Eisenstein took the idea of montage as cinematic language, and essentially went to town with it. And because of this, Eisenstein really pushed the depths of cinema and forced us as the viewer to do the cinematic version of “reading between the
Despite the loss of “montage” as an aesthetic vision in contemporary films, we see how “montage” as an editing technique had in fact contributed greatly to filmmaking as we know it today. While the continuity style’s emphasis is on the narrative as well as clear, understandable space and time, the montage style focuses on creating impact with different images juxtaposing against one another. It is hence clear that the Soviet montage style has given filmmakers new ways to express certain ideas that might have previously been limited by the continuity style – giving filmmaking greater nuance and complexity as an art form with its own unique
Berliner, Todd and Cohen, Dale J. "The Illusion of Continuity: Active Perception and the Classical Editing System." Journal of Film and Video 63.1 (2011): 44-63. Project MUSE. Web. 14 Feb. 2011. .
...have already begun to see – more as a means to playful firing visual fascination. The opposition of realistic film visual culture and non-narrative montage tradition has begun to breakdown. It is leading towards hybridization of realistic and stylized editing. Thus at one extreme there is a montage phenomenon of music video and on the other hand the editing technique of traditional cinema comes together. Montage is no longer a dominant aesthetic according to the new computer culture, as it was throughout the twentieth century, from the avant-garde of the 1920s up until postmodernism of the 1980s. New editing techniques like composting has emerged which combines different spaces into a single environment seamlessly creating a virtual space. Compositing is an example of the alternative aesthetics of continuity and it is considered counterpart of montage aesthetics.