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If direction is a look, montage is a heartbeat. To foresee is the characteristic of both; but what one seeks to foresee in space, the other seeks in time. ~ Jean-Luc Godard

What is montage? The idea of montage often overlaps with the notion of editing as the two practices indicate roughly the same process: to purposefully arrange the components of a whole to a specific aim.  So, for instance, we all edit a text to avoid repetitions as well as to clarify and give consistency to its sections.  Rhetoric, as a long-established art, is very much based on the intentional and purposeful arrangement of established structures upon a set of dedicated rules.  Traditionally, montage refers mostly, if not uniquely, to videos, while editing to written texts and, strange enough, sequences of images.  In this context, to avoid any confusion, montage will be use as the noun defining the practice of editing any form of document.  To indicate the action, I will use the verb to edit. 

So this specific lesson is dedicated to introducing basic directions and experimenting with montage as the practice of editing the parts of a whole towards one or more aim/s.  The purposefulness of the activity remains its defining element, and we will shortly explore that by reference to the actions of selecting and ordering images. 

Objectives

In detail, this lesson aims to: 

1. Introduce the basic notions of editing;
2. Explore how montage is defined by its purposefulness;
3. Experiment with the challenges of montage by editing a set of images.

By the end of the lesson, you should be consequently able to:

1. Clearly appreciate the role of montage as the pivot of visual communication;
2. Intelligently recognise how montage can be used to both analyse and produce visual communication;
3. Critically apply shared notions to your own work.