AS Media Montage Source Of Inspiration

Montage Source Of Inspiration

Research and Planning

One way of using many locations is by creating a montage. A montage is an editing technique of relevant clips that occur in quick succession in no particular order. An example of this is shown below from a clip of "Requiem for a Dream".

Using this technique allows for a fast understanding of the plot/character's state. Despite, urban dramas usually having a minimal amount of editing, other social realism films/TV programmes that use this are usually based on drugs i.e. "Skins" to show its effect on the character. I looked at different techniques for this effect in my urban issues blog.

I believe this is good to establish the initial position of our homeless character in the film opening. We can, therefore, use this montage to display and almost 'day in a life' situation which can include all of the planned locations and scenes that will conform to many conventions of an urban drama and make it incredibly identifiable as an urban drama or a social realism film.

We can further this busy montage of urban life not only through the large extent of locations but also through contrasts with perhaps and opening scene where the protagonist is alone. We thought perhaps, linking with the plot and the idea that the brief is to produce a film opening, that we could include a quite scene where the character has just woken up alone. Within this scene, the introduction of a slight plot of family issues, could be shown through a sentimental object and then we can cut to the montage after the title to separate and emphasise the contrasts.

Some editing techniques like crosscutting are used in quick succession similar to a montage to create a more fast paced scene which still maintains some kind of order. For our opening, this scene would probably be the best option as we can still include many locations etc. while still maintaining some sort of order to initialise the film's plot. My group and I worry that developing a plot would make things to complex as urban dramas are usually character driven and it may seem like a short film, but we could do this while maintaining professional simplicity. We could create some sort of sequence of the girl travelling throughout her day to a final destination which can prompt the following supposed film. This would still be simple and character driven with some indication of plot, without being a pointless and random, fast paced montage.

A perfect example of this can be seen in "Hot Fuzz", directed by Edgar Wright. Although Wright specialises in comedy, he focuses on visual effects to create humour rather than improvisation and dialect, with little editing, that most comedies include nowadays. Rather than humour, we can use some of his techniques about framing, props, order and lighting to create a sense of sadness or concern for the homeless girl as she wakes up and gets on with her day. This would be most beneficial, as from a preliminary we learnt that dialogue is very hard to capture without appearing so amateur.

Inspired by this I like the idea of using sound to keep the audience focused but also enforce ideas like the eerie crackle sound similar to thunder when the church is showing, hence, not only being pathetic fallacy and parallel to the character's disagreement with moving, but also foreshadowing that the supposed rural and, therefore, peaceful, village is not what it seems. Therefore, to also enforce the contrast between the quiet scene, where the girl is on her own, and the busy montage, we can use contrasts in volume, tempo etc.  Doing this would make the urban streets seem threatening and unpredictable.

With all of this in mind, the following storyboard ideas were produced using already planned ideas:

• A close up shot of someone kicking over a cup with money in it from begging.
• A close up shot of cardboard signs.
• A long shot of Emma amidst a crowd of people or traffic.
• An extreme close up shot of her dirty features i.e. fingernails.
• A long shot of traffic.
• Establishing shots of deprived urban areas.
• An extreme close up shot of rubbish
• A 'trombone shot' (like a tracking zoom shoot) of them walking down a street.