Task 5 - Understanding Montage Theory

Montage is know as a technique where you select, edit and piece together different film clips and then put them together to make a whole film.

Montage has three slightly different contexts:

• French film montage
• Hollywood montage
• Early Soviet filmmaking 

French film

The meaning of 'montage' in French simply means just editing the film.
The literal french meaning "Assembly".

Hollywood Cinema

Hollywood Cinema takes shots through out the whole day and then the editor will go and chose which parts are the best to keep for the filming. This can be seen in the movie "Rocky" as we go along through his day of training for a big boxing match that he has coming up. You can see that they have taken the good parts of Rocky's training so that we can see how hard working he is.

Early Soviet Filmmaking
With Soviet Montage, "montage" had a different meaning. The film makers started juxtaposing shots to create new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone. This is used for comparing two different things to reveal a hidden or deeper meaning. Lev Kuleshov was a young soviet film maker and did an experiment in 1920 where he took an old film clip of a head shot of a Russian actor and an inter-cut the shot with different images. By Putting the the picture of the actor and the dead child, the audience can see that the actor is sad then by putting him next to a picture of food the audience think he is hungry and then putting him next to a picture of a woman the audience think he is thinking of lust. If the picture of the actor was on his own, then the audience would not know what he was thinking about or what he was feeling.

In the 1925 film Strike! (Seget Eisenttein) Soviet filmmaking is used to reveal a hidden or deeper meaning such as the Russian troops were mistreating the strikers and this can be seen in the clips of the butchers slaughtering the cattle. The first two scenes seem unrelated until the Russian troops start killing the striking works, linking the butcher to the Russian troops and the works to the cattle that is being slaughtered by the butcher. This is telling the audience the striking workers were being killed like they were animals.  

Task 4 -From Analogue to Digital Editing

Analogue film and editing is (splicing)

Analogue editing is when you cut together pieces of Celluloid Film. 

At one point in film making, images were printed on to acetate negatives. Once that was done, they were then "spliced" (cut&stuck) together to form the reel of film. After the film was made, it would then be feed through a projector at a constant speed of 24 frames a second which then makes the pictures look like they are moving.


The Moviola

Moviola was invented in the year 1924 and was invented by Iwan Serrurier. The Moviola was the first device that allowed directors to view the film they were making while it was being edited. This machine was used for feature length motion picture editing.













Video editing .

Before digital technologies became available, magnetic tapes were used to store information-these are known as video tapes. 

Video editing is the process of editing segments of these tapes using a device that mechanically put pieces of video tape together. The film has to be edited in the right order.

Digital Editing

Digital Media is a form of electronic media where data had been saved in digital form. Digital Editing is used on computers to order and manipulate this digital data. When it comes to Digital Editing, there are different programs such as: Adobe Premier, Avid and Final Cut Pro. Digital film making uses bits and bytes to record, transmit and reply images, instead of chemicals on film.

When it comes to digital editing, it is all electronically done so there is no need for printing or "splicing". This way of editing soon took over Video editing because of it being a quicker and cheaper way to edit. The best thing of this is that you can edit in any order.

NON-Linear editing is...

When you edit in any order, it is called Non-Linear editing. This means you can edit a sequence from the end before you even edit the first scene in the film. The whole progress uses a electronic files that makes cutting and pasting text into a word documents. 

The pros and cons analogue and digital editing

There are pros and cons on both Analogue and Digital editing. 

The Pros in Analogue editing is that Analogue editing is quicker and precise for people who are filming. it is also safer to film because theres less chance of the film getting damaged. On the other hand, the Cons to Analogue editing such as if you make a mistake, you can't change it or take a retake of the scene you shot. Also, in the time of Analogue editing, there was no CD's or VHS' so it would be more expensive to film and it would be harder to carry. Another con to Analogue is that you could not have any communication with the person behind the camera because you can't edit out people talking.

The Pros to Digital editing is that you can put clips together in any order with also means you can film in any order you like. The Cons to Digital editing is that it could be hard for people to use because it is more complex to understand and may struggle when it comes to editing. Also, Digital editing relies on technology, so you never know if the technology you will be using will work or not or it could break while being used.

Task 3 - Developing Editing Techniques

George Melies was the historical filmmaker who came across 'In-camera editing' completely by accident while as he was filming his film 'The Vanishing Lady' and his camera stopped working for a moment. In-camera editing is a technique of production, which the camera operator shoots the shots in the exact order of what the filmmaker wants his/her audience to see. In-Camera editing was used a great amount in the early days of film making before the use 'splicing' became a lot easier way to edit. The film that is being made is simply "edited" just by simply turning on and off the camera.

Pros and Cons of In-Camera Editing

PROS

• It gives you time to change the setting of where you would like to film.
• It makes you think about the footage that you want to capture for the film you are making.
• It's less time consuming when it comes to editing 
• It gives your actors more time to practice what they are going to do before you start filming

CONS

• If you end up making a mistake there is no way that you can change it. 
• The use of communication 
• The timing
• You can only take one clip and you have to stick with in. You can not change it.

The pros that can be seen in my In-Camera editing film is that it gave us time to move from one place to another, inside the school. Another pro is that it is less time consuming when it comes to editing because all we had to do was stop the camera when we captured the part that we wanted.

There were a few cons in our work too. one of the cons was when we ended up filming two different clips in the wrong place so when you look at it, it looks very confusing. another Con is with the timing. As I was working on the camera I did not press the stop button on time at one point so the camera is on the actor longer then what it really needed to be.