Before the advent of technology as we see it today, film editing was a very difficult process. Editors and directors had to go through a rigorous manual process to show movement in a situation. But Sergei Eisenstein’s discovery of a new editing technique was a revolution in the film industry of the 1890’s.
Film montage is an editing technique that pieces together series of frames to form a continuous sequence. Its use survives to this day in the specially created ‘montage sequences’ inserted into Hollywood films.
For example, two common montage sequence devices are a newspaper one and a railroad one. In the newspaper one, there are multiple shots of newspapers being printed (multiple layered shots of papers moving between rollers, papers coming off the end of the press, a pressman looking at a paper) and headlines zooming on to the screen telling whatever needs to be told. This is a montage sequence. In a typical railroad montage, the shots include engines racing toward the camera, giant engine wheels moving across the screen, and long trains racing past the camera as destination signs zoom into the screen.
Popular movies like Fight Club, The Karate Kid, The Godfather and Citizen Kane have extensively used this technique.
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Sergei Eisenstein – known as the father of montage – was a Soviet artist known for films like Battleship Potemkin, Strike and The General Line. Today’s doodle celebrates the contribution of this man to the world of film editing.
The doodle pays tribute to Sergei Eisenstein by showing a series of film rolls in movement therefore depicting iconic imagery in some of Mr Eisenstein’s films. A closer look into the doodle shows sequencing of a number of images in a continuous loop therefore creating the effect of a montage. The doodle also shows a cartoon of him, holding a film roll and a scissors depicting a cut or an edit.
Along with his work on defining motion picture, director Sergei Eisenstein contributed to realistic filmmaking depicting the struggle of downtrodden workers against the ruling class. His notable work, Battleship Potemkin, made on the Revolution of 1905 is widely known as a masterpiece in the world of cinema even today. The film among several other works of Sergei Eisenstein is often termed as the best understanding of the art of motion pictures.