Question 1

What is a montage?

Ari Eisner · Accepted Answer

Typically set to music, a movie montage is the method of choosing and editing individual sections of footage together to form a continuous sequence.

Question 2

What is the purpose of a montage?

Ari Eisner · Accepted Answer

The purpose of a montage is to convey information clearly and effectively to an audience inside a condensed amount of time.
A successfully executed montage can be an invaluable storytelling tool for a filmmaker. It plainly expresses necessary information to an audience while maintaining the overall pace of the film by eliminating elements that could bog the story down. So while that’s a general look at the reasoning behind executing a montage, let’s dive deeper into the goals behind using them.

Question 3

What was the first movie montage?

Ari Eisner · Accepted Answer

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a Soviet director and filmmaking pioneer who first used montage in his wildly influential 1925 silent film BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN. Eisenstein has since become known as the father of the montage theory. You can see the sequence from the film here. It’s interesting to note how almost a hundred years later, storytelling in montage still maintains its fundamental, original elements.

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