So this is where “montage” suddenly came into picture for me..

By chance I came upon some short films by segaji video on vimeo, a film studio from Korea. They’ve done some documentaries as well as shoots for fashion magazines and brands like nylon and keds. I really like their style of production because although there is a consistent vibe to each of their videos, there is also an unexpected element to each of them. A watch a few videos and I think I know what they’re about, but then I watch another one and I think “how do they do that?”. How is it possible to maintain a common vibe, yet still surprise audiences? Actually, my desire to do a montage-type documentary stems from their short documentaries. It may because they always work with artists as their subjects, but there is something inherently artsy, stylistic, and most of all, genuine about their work. When they film non-English speaking artists, although I don’t understand the language, I think it actually helps me to study the visuals and shots more so because I’m less focussed on the dialogue.

Also, I recently discovered the film “Hero”. The cinematography was done by Christopher Doyle, who I knew did Chungking Express and In the Mood For Love, but I’m not the type of person to follow everything from a certain director, or cinematographer so this discovery for me was kind of mind-blowing. The reason for this is I never knew I had seen the film “Hero” until it was screened to me in our cinema course. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t remember things unless they leave a strong impression on me. Well I remember as a child that I watched a film and it left a really strong impression of me – but not the whole film, not the dialogue, not even the narrative – just two scenes, and I only remembered one image from both scenes. I went to the screening and it was towards the end of the film where those scenes were shown. So I just thought to myself “I finally found where those impressions were from!!”. (To be honest, there were many things I didn’t like about the film, but that’s another thing). A few weeks later, as a result of my lurking youtube, I watched a compilation of works by Doyle, and I saw the scene from Hero in it! So long story short, I established my liking for Doyle, and next time should probably research more thoroughly into the films that I enjoy.

In any case, I watch a few short documentaries of his and he goes through how he searched for locations, available lighting, and “his world”. Really, he just has some insight and mastery that I can only ever dream of attaining. If you compare the sets and locations he uses “before” and “after”, the transformation is just woah. In Chungking Express, there was a montage-y sequence of the apartment getting revamped by the female protagonist. In the film it looks so scenic and picturesque, but the actual apartment is really ordinary. It’s just really normal. I don’t know how else to put it. His use of lighting, the camera movement, angles, exposure, use of shadows and silhouettes, made the set more sophisticated than it was in reality.

For my montage, an ambitious and distant goal of  mine, I don’t know how I’m going to approach. I’m speculating that it’s going to end in either of two ways – I will try and utilise a set that’s already “interesting” or I will find an “ordinary” space and kind of emulate the style of segaji and Doyle. Where I’m at now, I don’t think I will be able to create a montage from just my own imagination, I don’t have that kind of intuition.

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