View source for Montages

{{trope}}
[[File:Schlock20151203.jpg|thumb|450px|[[Schlock Mercenary|Para Ventura shows us]] one way to [[Jump Cut|end a montage]].]]
{{quote|''Show lot of things happenin' at once''
''Remind everyone what's goin' on.''
''And with every shot show a little improvement''
''To show it all would take too long.''
''[[Lampshade Hanging|That's called a montage!]]''
''Ooh, we wanna montage!''
|[[Shaped Like Itself|"Montage"]], ''[[Team America: World Police]]''}}

{{quote|'''AVC:''' In the film your character goes from being a spectacular failure to a huge success more or less over the course of a montage sequence.
'''Simon Pegg:''' God bless the montage. [Laughs.]
|[http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/simon_pegg The AV Club] interview.}}

A montage (literally "putting together") is a form consisting of a series of short shots which are edited into a coherent sequence. Or at least coherence was intended.

Note that it takes more than a lack of dialogue and some overlaid music to be a montage. Montage is generally considered to be the ''opposite'' of [[Continuity Editing]], so discontinuity is key. If the shots are short, but one flows into the next in real time, it's ''not'' a montage, it's just a tense scene.

Not to be confused with a [[Motif]], although a motif may crop up here if a certain type of image is repeated. See also [[Scenes]].

See: [[:Category:Montages]] for sub-tropes.

{{noreallife|Real Life does not have montages.}}
----
{{examples}}
== [[Film]] ==
* The biopic ''The Life and Death of Peter Sellers'' is rife with these: a [[Time Compression Montage]] charting his rise to U.K. film stardom, a [["Falling in Love" Montage]] for his courtship of Britt Ekland, a [[Madness Montage]] when she leaves him that becomes a [[Time Compression Montage]] (the film moves from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s), a variant on a [[Lost Love Montage]] when he is watching his old home movies in solitude, and finally an [[Anger Montage]] (burning his old film memorabilia) intercut with a version of [[Writer's Block Montage]] (trying to find the character of [[Being There|Chance the Gardener]]). Whew!
* [[Sergei Eisenstein]], if he didn't invent the montage at least perfected it. One particular sequence, in ''October'' (also known as ''Ten Days the Shook the World''), 1928, there is a sequence where single frames of the muzzle of a machine gun and of the gunner are alternated. I've heard this referred to as "Clatter Cutting". There is also a sequence which violates part of the given definition, where shots of three stone lions in different positions appear as a single statue spring to its feet. Also check out ''Battleship Potemkin''.
* The films of [[Fernando Meirelles]] feature many montage sequences.
** Roughly 90% of ''[[City of God]]'' is composed of montage sequences, including [[Lock and Load Montage]] and a [[Time Passes Montage]] that spans the entire history of drugdealing in an apartment.
** ''[[The Constant Gardener]]'' features both a [["Falling in Love" Montage]] and a [[Lost Love Montage]] for the same person. It also features a [[Hard Work Montage]].
* ''[[The Sound of Music]]'' has two montages involving Maria and the children: one following "My Favorite Things," and another that makes the endless repeats of "Do-Re-Mi" considerably less boring.

== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'' episode "Making a Stand" has two sequences which parody musical montages. In the first, the narrator complains that even with music over the top, the sequence of images wasn't funny; he says it would have been better with "Yellow Submarine", but they couldn't afford that. The second montage has similar complaints from the narrator and a cheaper song about a yellow boat.

== [[Web Animation]] ==
* Special mention: ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' spoofed these in the Strong Bad email "[http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail117.html montage]". After a fan asked him if he could "creat a montage" (sic), Strong Bad did ''four'' montages, all involving a "wagon fulla pancakes". One had Strong Bad and the wagon just hanging out, another had Strong Bad [["Falling in Love" Montage|falling in love]] with the Wagon Fulla Pancakes, the third had The Cheat and the Wagon Fulla Pancakes [[Travelling Salesman Montage|as "down-on-their-luck door-to-door salesmen",]] and the last one was a [[Training Montage]] with the Wagon Fulla Pancakes "training for the champeenship" and besting Homestar. And to top it all off, he did an end credits [[Photo Montage]], complete with captions out of a [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]].
* ''[[Robot Chicken]]'' manages to create the [[Anthropomorphic Personification]] of the montage as... [https://web.archive.org/web/20120511092211/http://video.adultswim.com/robot-chicken/montage.html the superhero, Montage!]

== [[Web Original]] ==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20201130104458/https://www.cracked.com/funny-318-movie-montages/ This] Cracked article contains the outline for a quite a few.

== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Both ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' and ''[[Futurama]]'' use musical montages all the time, usually with licensed songs.
* ''[[Archer]]'': Danger Island - in episode 7, montage is referred to by name, as is [[Genius Bonus|the Soviet theorist and film maker who come up with the idea]]; it is explained that [[Lampshaded the Obscure Reference|the concept cannot be translated as the native peoples lack filmic context]], and then the montage [[Subverted|never appears]].

{{reflist}}
[[Category:Narrative Devices]]
[[Category:Trope Names From the French]]
[[Category:Camera Tricks]]
[[Category:Narrative Tropes]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]