Montages

A montage in film is an editing technique in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. A montage is a great way of getting a lot of information across to the audience in a short period of time. Examples of effective montages are shown in 'Election' which I briefly discussed near the beginning of this blog, and the '127 Hours' introduction that I also discussed at an earlier date.

The element of time is expressed in montages; condensing a long period of time into short cuts, often combined with a soundtrack. 

Team America: World Police (2004) Montage

The montage scene in Team America could be seen as a satire aimed at other films who use the technique.  The soundtrack used in the montage features the lines "We're gonna need a montage, it takes a montage, to show the passage of time. Show lots of things happening at once, remind everyone of what's going on, every shot show a little improvement, to show it all would take too long. If you end on a fade it seems like more time has passed." 

I think this is brilliance, displaying a montage that contributes to the overall story ark of the film and ironically using the soundtrack to ridicule the technique, but actually doing it in the film. In this case, the shots chosen show the main protagonist working out/training in order to attack the villain in the film and rescue his friend.

Team America aside, most films use the montage technique to great effect in order to progress the story forward and put the audience on a level playing field with the characters on-screen. 

I have yet to create a proper montage during my last years at Uni, but I have edited footage together in the past to music to create a montage. I think it's a fun and interesting process that I would happily do again.