Soviet Montage theory was principally developed by Sergei Eisenstein, a Russian film director and theorist, whose teachings about film and editing still play a big part in film history. In contrast to classical Hollywood Cinema that used widely popular editing techniques like crosscutting, eye-line and action match, in ''Eisenstein at 100: A Reconsideration'', it is argued that Eisenstein ''re-functionalized'' these known devices in order to create more emotional and cognitively engaging films. [1] Eisenstein's theory of intellectual montage was achieved through juxtaposition of contrasting images and its main aim was to force the viewers to take active part in the interpretation of the film. Jacques Aumont mentions in ''Montage Eisenstein'' that intellectual montage takes the spectator and his reactions into account, provoking a process of forming associations between the contrasting images and thus eventually revealing the statement that the filmmaker is trying to convey. [2]
My short film, following the theories of Soviet intellectual montage, addressed the trend among young women in today's society to hide their appearance behind excessive use of cosmetics. My statement or synthesis was that 21st century women are more and more unauthentic. From that I developed the contrasting images, which became my thesis and antithesis. My aspired outcome was to evoke a reaction out of the viewers by contrasting women putting on more and more make-up with non-diegetic shots of a cake being decorated with unnecessary amount of frosting, eventually making it look unpleasant and uninviting. The aim was to bring out my point of view without making any obvious connections between the two images.
For the main storyline of two girls putting on different types of cosmetics, I used a neutral setting with all the shots taking place in front of a mirror, implying at the growing obsession today's society has with physical appearance. In contrast I wanted the shot of the cake being decorated to have a very bright and vibrant setting to create a clear conflict between the two. To achieve this I used coloured paper to cover the surface of the table, and multi-coloured frosting which effectively covers up the initial simplicity underneath. I decided to use different shot angles to further juxtapose the opposing images. For the scenes in front of the mirror I changed the camera angles multiple times, with the added use of big close-ups. In comparison, the shots of the cake are all from the same angle, with the framing remaining exactly the same throughout. To create a subtle connection between the scenes, while still following the main ideas of Eisenstein's theory, I used similar action in continuous shots between the girls and the cake e.g. a shot of a girl using hairspray cuts to a shot of a cake being decorated with gold shimmer spray.
The main problems I encountered while filming were due to a lack of a clear enough vision of what I wanted the end result to look like. After starting the editing process I realized that I had a lot of unnecessary footage that was too repetitive and slow in pace. For example there were scenes of the two characters walking and having a conversation outside that I intended to include to the film, but during editing realized that there was no connection between those particular scenes and the story I was trying to tell. Unfortunately, these complications did not come out until I had already started cutting the film together. In addition, there were shots that I did not think of while preparing for the film, which prevented me from producing a segment that truly showed my point of view on the subject the way I had intended. There were also a couple of technical issues, for example the lack of space to use a tripod for all shots with the two girls, hence making the hand-held scenes less aesthetically pleasing to watch. However, the issues I came across while filming and editing this film definitely gave me a better understanding how to prepare for the next assignments by keeping my main focus on developing a very clear idea and visualizing the film before the shoot.
In conclusion, with this assignment I tried to create a short film following the theory on intellectual montage developed by Sergei Eisenstein. He aspired to oppose the harmony of typical Hollywood cinema by using contrasting images to create a conflict and evoke audience participation to reach an understanding of the scene. Despite of some problems with clearly visualizing my aim with the movie and thus being fully satisfied with the end result, I managed to find two contrasting images that in my opinion were in accordance with Eisenstein's main points about montage. Personally I believe that the shots of the girls applying make-up and a cake being decorated successfully managed to convey my original synthesis that 21st century women are increasingly more unauthentic, thus making the short film a success within the constraints of the approach used for this assignment.
