BVA year 2 Blog10

Analyze basic moving image editing techniques

Montage is one of the basic techniques in editing film. In contemporary film industry, montage is not just about two or more images are juxtaposed, creating meaning from the collision, montage has been divided into several technics.For creating different emotion, mood, meaning or genre, editors will use and chose the right montage technic to edit videos.

Kuleshov Effect-this is the most basic montage technic; it is just about link two scenes or images together to create third meaning. A photo of a man plus a food picture can present a concept of hungry.

Metric Montage- “this is the running time of the shot or each time of the shots.” (www.maikito.com)Commonly editors would like to use metric montage to edit documentary clips or images. That means metric montage is not a technic for editing narrative or story.

Rhythmic-“this combines elements of metric montage, the combination or collision of two shots or the rhythm of the shots. How the moment in one shot affects the moment in next shot. Here, movement takes precedence over length.” (www.maikito.com) For making music videos, rhythmic montage is the most commonly used method. In “written in the star” music video, sequences are linked based on the strong rhythm of the song. It shows how clips are affected by each other. Basically, the singer will sing the same lyrics in many different scenes. The editor’s job is to pick one or two parts from each clip and link these parts in order to produce rhythmic flow.
Tonal-tonal montage is about cutting and editing clips together that elicit emotion. The key to produce an emotion is finding the right clips to respond the tonal of background music. Another similar technic is called “overtonal montage”, this kind of editing always happen in movie trailer. Usually, the purpose of making movie trailers is to attract potential audience. So it is important to think about what is viewers feel when they finish watching movie trailer, is the emotion make them want to watch the whole movie.