montage, the art and technique of motion-picture editing in which contrasting shots or sequences are used to effect emotional or intellectual responses. It was developed creatively after 1925 by the Russian Sergei Eisenstein; since that time montage has become an increasingly complex and inventive way of extending the imaginative possibilities of film art. In still photography a composite picture, made by combining several prints, or parts of prints, and then rephotographing them as a whole, is often called a montage or a photomontage.

montage(French; “mounting”)

Pictorial technique in which cut-out illustrations, or fragments of them, are arranged together and mounted on a support, producing a composite picture made from several different pictures. It differs from collage in using only ready-made images chosen for their subject or message. The technique is widely used in advertising. Photomontage uses photographs only. In motion pictures, montage is the sequential assembling of separate pieces of thematically related film by the director, film editor, and visual and sound technicians, who cut and fit each part with the others to produce visual juxtapositions and complex audio patterns.

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