Show a lot of things happening at once,
Remind everyone of what’s going on
And with every shot you show a little improvement
To show it all would take too long
That’s called a montage
Oh we want montage
Next film-making project is a montage. “Montage” is just the French word for assembling (or editing), but it’s come to mean a specific form. We’ll study how they are put together and then you’ll be making one of your own.
The grand-daddy of film montage is the “The Odessa Steps” scene from The Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 silent classic by the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. You’ll need to go to youtube for this, since they won’t let me embed it.
The mongtage in Team America, made by the South Park folks, teaches most of what you need to know:
And here are some other clips of famous montages.
Your assignment: make your own. There are many definitions/subsets of “montage,” but the one that we’ll use is “a short sequence of multiple shots totaling 2 – 4 minutes, that compresses time and illustrates a change.” Remember, you’re not necessarily telling a whole story, just making a sequence that shows the passage of time, with “a little improvement” (or just, “change,”). It probably helps to imagine the story in which this montage fits, but the only part you need to make is the montage itself.
Understanding Film 