Abstract
Emphasising the importance of speed to the moving image, Andre Bazin noted that speed is implied by ‘a multiplicity of shots of ever-decreasing length’.1 Within the montage sequence, speed has a particular impact for an audience. Ken Dancyger notes how, over the last 30 years, the montage sequence has been shaped by the arrival of MTV but also by earlier forms, such as experimental filmmaking, and television commercials.2 The centrality of pace in the music track provides the style for the montage itself. Dancyger says the montage sequence is abundant in terms of style, and that style is placed above narrative within these sequences. Time and place become less important within the montage sequence; time can be any time, and place can be any place. The music video creates a feeling state, synthesizing human emotion from the music. It can be dreamlike with no narrative continuum. Pace, subjectivity and close-ups are used to intensify the montage sequence. Dancyger argues that a faster pace causes events to feel more important to an audience.
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Notes
Andre Bazin, ‘The Evolution of the Language of Cinema’, What is Cinema? Vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958, 2005), p. 25.
Ken Dancyger, The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, Practice, fifth edition (London: Focal Press, 1993), pp. 267–276.
Claudia Gorbman, ‘Why Music? The Sound Film and Its Spectator’, in Kay Dickinson (ed.), Movie Music: The Film Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 39.
For a more nuanced reading of the London Riots, see Laurie Penny, ‘Panic on the Streets of London’, Penny Red: Every Human Heart is a Revolutionary Cell (9 August 2011) (http://pennyred.blogspot.co.uk, accessed 14 July 2014).
Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics (translated by Marc Polizzotti), (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977, 2007), p. 149.
See Timothy Scott Barker, Time and the Digital: Connecting Technology, Aesthetics, and a Process Philosophy of Time (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2012) for a process philosophy reading of time.
Michelle Chen, ‘What Labor Looks Like: From Wisconsin to Cairo, Youth Hold a Mirror to History of Workers’ Struggles’, in Daniel Katz and Richard A. Greenwald (eds), Labor Rising: The Past and Future of Working People in America (New York: The New Press, 2012), ebook, no page.
George McKay, ‘The Social and (Counter) Cultural 1960s in the USA, Transatlantically’, in Cristoph Grunenberg and Jonathan Harris (eds), Summer of Love: Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counterculture in the 1960s (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2005), p. 57.
See Bernadette Devlin, The Price of My Soul (London: Pan Books, 1969).
See Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish Town, second edition (London: Pluto Classics, 1993).
Gerry Smyth, Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music (Cork: Cork University Press, 2005), p. 49.
David Hendy, Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening (London: Profile Books, 2013), p. 201.
Noel McLaughlin and Martin McLoone, Rock and Popular Music in Ireland: Before and After U2 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012), p. 133.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (translated by Brian Massumi) (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 3–28.
Due to the limitations of space, I am unable to discuss Duncan Campbell’s film Bernadette, 2008, 38 minutes. Campbell’s film does not use music or montage in the way that Goldschmidt and Doolan do; rather his approach is experimental and associative, utilizing sound effects much more frequently than score music or pop songs. For further reading on Campbell’s film see Liz Greene, ‘Placing the Three Bernadettes: Audio-Visual Representations of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey’, in Jill Daniels, Cahal McLaughlin and Gail Pearce (eds), Truth, Dare or Promise (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013), pp. 112–134.
For more on Radio Free Derry see Paul Arthur, ‘March 1969-September 1969: In Search of a Role’, People’s Democracy 1968–1973 (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1974), (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk, accessed 14 July 2014).
For more on the Battle of the Bogside, see Russell Stetler, The Battle of the Bogside: The Politics of Violence in Northern Ireland (London: Sheed and Ward, 1970), http://cain.ulst.ac.uk, accessed 14 July 2014).
Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 299.
David Kingman, ‘Spending Power Across the Generations’, Intergenerational Foundation (London, December 2012), pp. 1–32.
For an in depth discussion on nostalgia and punk music, see Andy Medhurst, ‘What Did I Get? Punk Memory and Nostalgia’, in Roger Sabin (ed.), Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 219–231 and
Martin McLoone, ‘Punk Music in Northern Ireland: The Political Power of “What Might Have Been”’, Irish Studies Review 12 (2004), pp. 29–38.
Terri Hooley’s autobiography was written in conjunction with Richard Sullivan. Terri Hooley and Richard Sullivan, Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem, Good Vibrations (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2010).
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Greene, L. (2015). Music and Montage: Punk, Speed and Histories of the Troubles. In: Carlsten, J.M., McGarry, F. (eds) Film, History and Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137468956_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137468956_11
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