Montage Editing

Click here to view our Initial Trailer Montage

This opening News Montage was inspired by the opening of the 'Gattaca' trailer .
Uses:
- a collection of fast edited images and
- overlapping voiceover
- creates a social context for the film's focus debate.

Although we were very proud of this version it was pointed out that the clips felt too documentary similar to programmes/sequences created by Adam Curtis. (Here is an example of his documentary style)

This decision was made in response to audience feedback.

After this we edited our montage:
- increasing the pace,
- overlapping and merging the over-voice more and
- only emphasising key phrases.

We cropped our first image of the BBC presenter to her mouth down to shoulders. The reduced amount of her face that can be seen establishes her as a vehicle to present our themes rather than an important character. Some shots were removed altogether to increase the fluidity of the message and the build of pace.

We looked again at the Gattaca trailer and conventions of our soft-scifi and dystopian genre. A bluy-grey colour scheme is frequently used to mirror the oppression of authority and we used this throughout our montage, deviating only to create dramatic contrast with shots containing fire which we added the 'Heat wave' effect to.

We also experimented with brightness, saturation and contrast to create the right ambiance of a fractured futuristic society.

Not only is the montage now shorter, with faster editing which creates drama, it has a more filmic quality.

Our Lists and Planning: Teaser Opening Montage

These were our initial montage ideas -greatly inspired by the opening sequence of 'Gattaca'. Although we did not use all of these ideas, it was important to us that we built up a basis and ambiance for the montage. The main message we wanted to convey was the closure of media outlets and government intervention. 

To begin editing we required audio which would create a structure to the montage and hopefully set up the landscape of the social stage within our narrative. 

Our first base for research was YouTube where we searched a variety of key words eg. 'Freedom of speech', 'war', 'media impact', 'social networking debate','riots', 'terrorism', 'protests' and 'patriotism' to build a picture of the scenario within our narrative.

Below are our initial transcripts and links to the videos we took them from. Our manipulation of the resources online highlights the ease with which audio and images can be taken out of context and made to represent or symbolise something very different. This gives the media a great deal of power and creates, to a certain extent, fear, which is something we found during the casting of our Prime Minister figure.

Initial Montage Audio Transcript:

-          ‘An extraordinary moment in British journalism’

-          ‘The end of the News of the World’

-          ‘failure to start a reinvestigation into phone hacking two years ago’

-          ‘much tighter laws on media ownership’

-          ‘is closing down newspapers’

-          ‘those responsible being brought to justice’

-          ‘This Sunday’s edition will be the last’

-          ‘should you be celebrating tonight or lamenting today’s events’

-          ‘the damage could go beyond financial concerns’

-          ‘Thank you and Goodbye’

-          ‘Goodbye and stay well’

Freedom of speech video

-          ‘undermining the judiciary’ (1:27)

-          ‘the very foundations of western society’ (1:37)

-          ‘journalists who corrupt the language to suppress the truth’ (2:27)

-          ‘defending the indefensible’ (3:07)

-          ‘they’re anti-freedom, anti-free thought, anti-free speech’

-          ‘this is just the beginning’ (4:57)

-          ‘a crime against humanity’ (5:57)

-          ‘poisoning the whole world’ (6:05)

77 Tony Blair speech on London Bombings

-          ‘complete resolution, to defeat this terrorism’ (1:24)

-          ‘our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater then their determination’ (2:23)

-          ‘they will never succeed’ (2:50)

BBC 10 o’clock News 2003 –War on Iraq

-          ‘the day the war started’ (0:18)

News and Social Media

-          ‘the role social media can play in propagating news’ (0:33)

-          ‘influencing everybody else’ (3:20)

Media – Positive or Negative

-          ‘extremist groups’ (1:23)

-          ‘fabricating information’ (3:14)