7 Montage

[Lisa Nevilles]

Montagemɒnˈtɑːʒ/ mon-TAHZH) is a film editing technique in which a series of short shots are sequenced to condense space, time, and information. Montages enable filmmakers to communicate a large amount of information to an audience over a shorter span of time by juxtaposing different shots, compressing time through editing, or intertwining multiple storylines of a narrative.

The term has varied meanings depending on the filmmaking tradition. In French, the word montage applied to cinema simply denotes editing. In Soviet montage theory, as originally introduced outside the USSR by Sergei Eisenstein,[1] it was used to create symbolism.[2] Later, the term "montage sequence", used primarily by British and American studios, became the common technique to suggest the passage of time.[3]

The word "montage" came to identify...specifically the rapid, shock cutting that Eisenstein employed in his films. Its use survives to this day in the specially created "montage sequences" inserted into Hollywood films to suggest, in a blur of double exposures, the rise to fame of an opera singer or, in brief model shots, the destruction of an airplane, a city or a planet.[5]

Two common montage devices used are newsreels and railroads. In the first, as in Citizen Kane, there are multiple shots of newspapers being printed (multiple layered shots of papers moving between rollers, papers coming off the end of the press, a pressman looking at a paper) and headlines zooming on to the screen telling whatever needs to be told. In a typical railroad montage, the shots include engines racing toward the camera, giant engine wheels moving across the screen, and long trains racing past the camera as destination signs fill the screen.

"Scroll montage" is a form of multiple-screen montage developed specifically for the moving image in an internet browser. It plays with Italian theatre director Eugenio Barba's "space river" montage in which the spectators' attention is said to "[sail] on a tide of actions which their gaze [can never] fully encompass".[6] "Scroll montage" is usually used in online audio-visual works in which sound and the moving image are separated and can exist autonomously: audio in these works is usually streamed on internet radio and video is posted on a separate site.[7]

In contrast, Siegel would read the motion picture's script to find out the story and action, then take the script's one line description of the montage and write his own five page script. The directors and the studio bosses left him alone because no one could figure out what he was doing. Left alone with his own crew, he constantly experimented to find out what he could do. He also tried to make the montage match the director's style, dull for a dull director, exciting for an exciting director.

Of course, it was a most marvelous way to learn about films, because I made endless mistakes just experimenting with no supervision. The result was that a great many of the montages were enormously effective.[11]

The sports training montage is a standard explanatory montage. It originated in American cinema[13] but has since spread to modern martial arts films from East Asia. Originally depicting a character engaging in physical or sports training, the form has been extended to other activities or themes.

The standard elements of a sports training montage include a build-up where the potential sports hero confronts his failure to train adequately. The solution is a serious, individual training regimen. The individual is shown engaging in physical training through a series of short, cut sequences. An inspirational song (often fast-paced rock music) typically provides the only sound. At the end of the montage several weeks have elapsed in the course of just a few minutes and the hero is now prepared for the big competition. One of the best-known examples is the training sequence in the 1976 movie Rocky, which culminates in Rocky's run up the Rocky Steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[14]

The simplicity of the technique and its over-use in American film vocabulary has led to its status as a film clich. A notable parody of the sports training montage appears in the South Park episode, "Asspen". When Stan Marsh must become an expert skier quickly, he begins training in a montage where the inspirational song explicitly spells out the techniques and requirements of a successful sports training montage sequence as they occur on screen. It was also spoofed in Team America: World Police in a similar sequence.[15]

The music in these training montage scenes has garnered a cult following, with such artists as Robert Tepper, Stan Bush and Survivor appearing on several '80s soundtracks. Songs like Frank Stallone's "Far from Over," and John Farnham's "Break the Ice" are examples of high-energy rock songs that typify the music that appeared during montages in '80s action films.[16] Indie rock band The Mountain Goats released a single in 2021 entitled "Training Montage," an homage to the eponymous cinematic trope. [17]

Use the Ashlar pseudo-image format to lay out an image sequence in continuous irregular courses. By default, a reasonable canvas size and border width is determined relative to the image collection you provide. You can explicitly set the canvas size and border width by appending to the filename, e.g. ashlar:canvas.png[1024x768+4+4]. By default, alignment is along the left edge. Use -define ashlar:best-fit=true to align on both the left and right edges. You can label the image tiles with, for example, -label %f. Here is an example command:magick '*.png' -resize 320x320 -label %f ashlar:ashlar.pngThis is designed to quickly view a collection of images. To have more control over the layout of your image tiles, use the montage command instead.

Because of this, past users of montage often used large numbers such as "999x1" to generate a single row of images. Now such a argument will produce a very long image, and could take a long time for IM to complete. As such...

A jigsaw puzzle manufacturer typically uses the same die-cut pattern for many different puzzles. This makes the pieces interchangeable. So I sometimes find that I can combine portions from two or more puzzles to make a surreal "puzzle montage" that the manufacturer never imagined. I take great pleasure in discovering such strange images lying shattered, sometimes for decades, within the cardboard boxes of ordinary mass-produced puzzles.

These artworks are float-mounted or float-framed, and ready to hang on your wall. (See the bottom of this page for details.) Please note the dimensions shown under each work. They all appear about the same size here, but in reality some are much larger than others.

If you want to know about newly available montages, including any newly-available instances of ones that are currently sold out, please email me or follow my Facebook page. Meanwhile, I'm looking into publishing a book or calendar. Also, as an enthusiastic public speaker, I'm available to give a fun 20-to-45-minute talk and slideshow about my adventures with the obscure art of puzzle montage. Contact me at art...@puzzlemontage.com. Thank you for your interest!

All images copyright Tim Klein. Please contact me for permission to use them. (art...@puzzlemontage.com)

On Facebook: Puzzle Montage Art by Tim Klein

I made this montage by combining a puzzle showing a church with a puzzle showing a carnival ride. I've been a bit surprised at the wide range of reactions it gets. Some people find it humorous, others find it affirming or joyful, and others see it as blasphemous. At any rate, it draws attention out of proportion to its relatively small size.

This was the first puzzle montage I ever created that I thought was worth keeping. I used pieces from two puzzles that were probably published in the 1980s. One puzzle showed the historic mansion at Orton Plantation, located near my boyhood hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. The other puzzle showed Mt. Jefferson, near my current home in the Pacific Northwest. At the time I constructed it in about 1992, I had moved away from North Carolina but had no idea I would ever live in the Pacific Northwest, so I unwittingly made a montage of my past and my future!

I made this montage out of three square puzzles published in the early 1970s. One of the puzzles showed a maze. The others were two copies of the same puzzle, showing a large ancient Chinese statue of the bodhisattva Kuan-Yin.

In the original image, the statue rests on a dark rocky pedestal visible all along the bottom edge of the puzzle. I found that although my two copies of the Kuan-Yin puzzle shared the same cut pattern, they had been run through the die cutting machine at right angles to each other. This enabled me to eliminate the pedestal from the image, by replacing one puzzle's bottom edge with pieces from the left-hand edge of the other puzzle. Then, by incorporating pieces from the maze puzzle, I gave Kuan-Yin some butterfly wings. The subtitle "Enlightenment" refers not only to the Buddhist principle of enlightenment, but also to the fact that I've "lightened" a big heavy statue and given her flight.

Part of my Metamorphosis series of montages involving butterflies and transformation. I created it from two round puzzles published in 2012, one showing a caterpillar and butterfly, and the other showing Renoir's Horsewoman in the Bois de Boulogne.

Made from two puzzles published in the 1980s. Most of my puzzle montages are in a single plane, with pieces from the two source puzzles intermixed. But in this one, the coins puzzle is on top of the puzzle containing the eyes, resulting in a two-layered piece. Thus, the eyes look into the viewer's eyes from the other side of a wall of gold:

Constructed from the pieces of two puzzles published in the 2000s, one showing Frederick Carl Frieseke's painting The Open Window (circa 1910), and the other showing William Vanderdasson's contemporary painting Snowy Owl.

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