What Is a Montage?
Montage means two different things depending on who's using it, and mixing them up is why film students get confused reading two textbooks on the same week. One is a specific editing theory from 1920s Soviet cinema. The other is the training-sequence shorthand most people actually mean when they say the word.
Two Meanings
The word splits into a theory and a shorthand
In academic film theory, montage refers to the Soviet montage tradition, editing built on the idea that meaning comes from the collision of two shots, not from either shot alone. In everyday use, especially in the US, "montage" means something narrower: a compressed sequence of short shots, usually with music, that shows time passing or a character changing, the training sequence, the falling-in-love sequence, the getting-the-team-together sequence. Both are real and both are correct, they're just answering different questions.
Where The Theory Came From
Sergei Eisenstein and the collision of shots
Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein developed montage theory in the 1920s, arguing in his writing that editing wasn't about smoothly joining shots but about the conflict between them producing a new idea in the viewer's mind. His film Battleship Potemkin (1925) and its Odessa Steps sequence remain the reference example taught in film schools for how juxtaposed shots build meaning and tension that no single shot contains on its own.
The Rocky Example
How Rocky's training montage became the popular template
Rocky's training montage, culminating in the run up the 72 steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, set the template most people picture when they hear "montage" today. Editor Richard Halsey cut the sequence to composer Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now," shaping the footage to the music's rhythm rather than fitting music under a locked picture, the reverse of how scoring usually works. That collaboration between editor and composer is what makes the sequence land: every beat of Rocky's progress hits on a musical accent, and the final "gonna fly now" lyric lands exactly as he reaches the top step.
What It's For
The actual job a montage does in a story
A montage compresses time that would otherwise be boring or repetitive to watch in full, months of training, a relationship developing, a team assembling, into 60 to 120 seconds of highlights set to music. It works because the audience already understands the underlying process and doesn't need to see every rep, every date, every rehearsal, just enough beats to register the change.
When To Skip One
Where a montage is the wrong choice
A montage is the wrong tool when the process itself is the story, if how a character struggles and specifically fails matters more than the fact that time passed, compressing it removes the scenes that actually carry weight. It's also a weak choice in unscripted and documentary work when it papers over a gap in the interview material instead of finding the real connective footage, using it as a transition to avoid a harder editorial decision rather than because it serves the story.
Building One In A Pre-Edit
Planning the beats before you touch footage
A montage lives or dies on rhythm, and rhythm is easier to plan against text or a beat sheet than against raw footage. For a documentary or branded piece using interview audio to drive a montage, mark the strongest short lines in the transcript first, three or four words each, arrange them in the order they'll hit, then find the matching b-roll. ScriptCut supports this by letting you highlight and reorder those short beats directly in the transcript with word-level timecode, so the rhythm is locked before you're scrubbing footage trying to match cuts to a temp track by ear.
The Takeaway
Two meanings, one useful tool
Montage is both a 1920s editing theory about the collision of shots and the modern shorthand for a compressed, music-driven passage-of-time sequence. Use it when compression serves the story and skip it when the process itself needs to be seen in full.
Related: What Is a Multicam Edit?, What Is a Shot List?, What Is a Paper Edit?, and Video Editing for YouTubers
Sources
frequently asked questions
It depends on context. In film theory it's the Soviet editing tradition built on meaning arising from the collision of shots. In everyday use it means a compressed, music-driven sequence showing time passing, like a training or falling-in-love sequence.
Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein developed it in the 1920s, arguing that editing creates meaning through the conflict between shots rather than within any single shot. Battleship Potemkin's Odessa Steps sequence is the reference example.
Editor Richard Halsey cut the footage to match composer Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now" beat for beat, shaping picture to music instead of the usual reverse. That precise sync is what made it the template most people picture today.
When the process itself is the story, if a character's specific struggles and failures matter more than the fact that time passed, compressing them into a montage removes the scenes that carry the most weight.
Plan the rhythm first, against text or a beat sheet rather than raw footage. Mark the strongest short beats, arrange the order, then find matching footage, which locks the pacing before you're cutting to a temp track by ear.
No. A highlight reel shows the best moments roughly in order. A montage specifically compresses a passage of time, training, change, or growth, into a short, rhythmically edited sequence.
Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925), particularly its Odessa Steps sequence, is the film most cited in teaching montage theory.
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