How to Create a Newspaper Montage
Newspaper montages came out of an expansion of journalism and represent parts of a composition that are particular and objective. Newspaper montage in film offers a way to explain the impact of a certain event or to draw attention to your character's past and often reveals the fates of the characters. It is a photo montage or collage created specifically for a movie.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
Ways to Create A Newspaper Montage
-
1
Study how contemporary filmmakers make a newspaper montage. Usually, they create a fake newspaper in Adobe Photoshop by scanning a newspaper to computer and combining it with digital images of the actors, using photo editing tools. Cinematographer films an insert shot of the newspaper, which later is included in the final cut of the film. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" features newspaper montages inter-cut with the moving pictures in the paper.
-
2
Research how avant-garde filmmakers use newspaper montage. They combine concrete images with abstract images in a complex and inventive way to expand the imaginative possibilities of film art. By combining composite pictures, newspaper headlines, early newsreels and film sequences artists like Bruce Conner and Errol Morris created examples of free association visual montage. "The Thin Blue Line" by Errol Morris (1988) is a groundbreaking film about a young drifter Randall Adams tried for murder in Texas in the 1970s. Morris uses newspaper headlines mixed with filmed interviews and collages to examine the nature of memory.
-
-
3
Learn about old Hollywood techniques. Hollywood art directors used to cut a number of newspaper clippings and combine them with photographs, then photograph the composite and make prints, thus creating a fake newspapers. The most famous newspaper montage in film history is from the 1941 Orson Welles film "Citizen Kane." The newspaper montage in "Citizen Kane" is comprised of shots of spinning newspapers, which represent Kane's newspaper empire. It is safe to say that each newspaper montage created since in film was influenced by "Citizen Kane."
-
1
Tips & Warnings
Study Bauhaus newspaper photo montages by Marienne Brandt. Her work examines gender roles and represents a synthesis of technology and culture. See Pablo Picasso's collage in pen and ink on blue paper called "Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper" (1913) .
