Eisenstein- the Einstein of Montage

Before reading the post and watching the various videos of montage, I had assumed that the movie montage only had one purpose: to cheesily show a rapid passage of time in the middle of a story. It's a classic, and almost every film out there has at least one to show people growing over time, aging together, or finding themselves in someway. After exploring the world of montage, it has revealed a much greater purpose, it not only speeds up time, but it can also slow it down, make it more meaningful, or make it unbearable (It being time).

Ultimately, montage in film is the essence of playing with time. Time is an incredibly hard concept to grasp considering it is a manmade concept--really not even tangible. Some dialogue from George Orwell's 1984, 

"Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?"

"No."

"Then where does the past exist, if at all?"

When put into context like so, the concept of time is completely time bending, but besides the point: my montage. Inspired by the montage in Marley and Me, I thought it would be cute to show the bond between my family and our dog Otis, but it proved much more difficult than I expected. After storyboarding plenty of easy shots to make a clean project, my untrained, 1-year-old Black Lab had other ideas. He is adorable, but his menacing side came out in this project. Rather than focusing on proper technique, tripod usage, and color correction, I focused on trying to get Otis to cooperate. My final project is choppy, but I think the message did get across: no one can replace the brotherhood and love of a dog. His lack of cooperation made for a video that evokes an "awh" and maybe even a laugh. This mesh of poorly composed videos helps you get an idea of what living with Otis is like.

http://youtu.be/b34n87MXExM

Ten Shots that nearly killed me

In all honesty, I feel as if the shots done in my video were mostly done very poorly according to the examples. These images were quite difficult to capture because of the unusual movement with the camera. In retrospect, I considered my cinematography, and I'm coming to realize that I rely too much on editing in my projects. The beauty of film comes from the composition of shots... not necessarily the color balance or order of edit.



Out of these compositions, I struggled the most with Focus Transition and Overexpose Fade, Underexpose Fade. Playing with the ISO and exposure didn't exactly work out for me, so I tried to make up for the shabby camera work in Final Cut, and it just didn't workout as planned. The techniques were also very similar, and debating between the two was pretty confusing. They should've been clear enough to figure out once we imported the footage, but we couldn't even differentiate.



My favorite shot of the ten was undoubtedly the sleepover. The spinning keeps the shot suspenseful despite the lack of movement from the actors. It can allude to nearing death or beauty, and the shot really drew me in. Examples that come to mind are always of sleeping people, and the spinning gives off an idea of uneasiness in the dream or thought, and as a viewer, I always anticipate the opening of the eyes in some sort of fear or discomfort. It is such a simple way to reveal fear or love is within a character.