Moving Montages: How To Tell A Story In Minutes
Discover clever editing techniques that can propel your audience through a narrative in a visually captivating way.
Our attention spans are shortening. It’s not helped by short video formats on social media channels, which are conditioning us to switch off if something isn’t well paced.
When you’ve worked so hard to get someone’s attention, it’s more important than ever that you fix their focus. But how can you do this when you’ve got a really long sequence that is essential for your narrative? The answer is a masterful montage.
What is the Definition of Montage?
Montage is the technique where you select, edit and then piece together separate bits of media to create a whole. The definition of montage varies slightly depending on the medium.
What is a Montage in Film?
In filmmaking, a montage describes how a sequence is edited to accelerate a timeline or condense a lot of information. This technique speeds through clips, allowing you tell a story in a significantly shorter time frame.
There are many cliche examples of montage in film, like the clips that expedite the tedium of long-term training in the lead-up to a big sporting event, or flash a character’s life before their eyes as they take their final breaths.
When you think of a montage, you may recall Rocky training before a big fight, or the emotional opening scene of Up that rushes you through a lifetime of marriage in minutes. You may also picture the gloomy timeline collapse at the end of Donnie Darko, or the end of American Beauty, when Lester sees a montage of his most significant moments.
You’ve most likely seen a montage in cooking videos, when the chef whisks you through the steps of a recipe at the very start of the video, just like this example:
What is a Photo Montage?
This concept can be applied to photography too, with a technique called photomontage. Instead of splicing together video clips, a photo montage involves cutting out photos and combining them to make one very dense image. It creates the same effect: you can tell a much greater story from one photomontage, instead of having to look through piles of disconnected photographs.

Mastering the Montage Film Technique
Don’t get so caught up in the editing technique that you forget the thing that will give your montage impact: it needs a narrative. Before you start splicing together clips, you need to think about the progression of the story. Treat your film montage like you would any other video and plan out the story before you think about touching that record button.
How To Create a Video Montage
There are three steps to making your own video montage:
- Capture as much high-quality video footage as you can
- Choose a piece of music that complements the style and tone of your video
- Cherry-pick the very best clips and arrange them in order with video editing software
Harun Robert follows this process when he edits clips for social media:
The Best Video Montage Maker Apps and Tools
Working with the right software can not only help you with the rapid creation of a video montage, it can improve the quality of what you’re able to produce, too. But with so many video montage maker apps and tools out there, how do you know which one to try?
The most popular apps and tools for making a montage are:
- Adobe Premiere Pro, which has lots of support to get started, but can be pricey.
- You can get a free trial of Final Cut Pro and learn the basics in just one hour.
- If you’ve got an Apple computer, you can also learn how to use iMovie to make your montage.
- For a totally free tool, you might want to edit in Hitfilm Express. Just be aware that your options are limited with the free version.
- Want to edit with a website instead? You can edit videos in Canva with a free account.
- If you prefer to edit video footage on your mobile phone while you’re on the go, the KineMaster and CapCut apps are both popular and free to download—and so is Canva’s.
When you learn how to film and edit a montage, you’ll spend a significant chunk of time thinking about how to get the best footage, because the impact of your video is limited by how good your clips are.
Don’t underestimate how long the editing stage will take either, as you will spend hours tinkering with your timeline to get the clips to line up perfectly.
Start By Thinking About Composition
Before you press record, you need to think about how you’re going to compose the image in the frame. These tips will help improve your composition:
- Think about what it is that you’re trying to capture: is it a cheeky smile, or a glittering sea? Be sure you make the subject the focus of the frame, and move around with the camera until you’ve found the best angle.
- Consider the background: is there anything distracting that will pull focus away from the subject? If so, remove it or reposition yourself.
- Don’t forget the rule of thirds. Place the subject at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal thirds to get a more balanced composition.

Make the Most of Your Camera’s Settings
To make the best video montage, you need the best footage you can capture. Make sure you’re familiar with your camera’s settings to maximize the quality of what you’re able to shoot. You need to think about:
- Lighting: can you see the subject or does it need more light? If you’re filming outside on a bright, sunny day, do you need a ND filter to let less light through?
- Exposure: have you set the White Balance? Does it look over- or under-exposed?
- Shutter speed: are you capturing movement and require a fast shutter speed, or should it be slower to allow more light into the lens?
- Aperture: do you want a dramatic scene where one element is in focus and the rest is blurred (known as a shallow depth of field), or do you want to capture everything?
- ISO: do you need to raise the ISO to get more light in your footage?
Photographer Justin Bridges explains how to balance these competing settings and get the best from your camera:
Choose Your Music
Before you begin editing, you need to select a piece of music to pull the whole video montage together. When you’re thinking about the right score for a montage, it helps to think about:
- Is the music the right style for the piece? Does it match the subject of the footage?
- Does it have a decent beat? You’ll want something to punctuate the edits and create a sense of rhythm from your montage.
- Do you actually like the music? You’ll have to listen to it lots when you’re editing, so make sure you pick something you enjoy listening to.
When you’ve made your decision, make sure you download the file as a .wav and not .mp3.
Get Editing
Once you’ve opened up your video editing software and imported all of your footage, it’s time to start editing. You’ll usually follow this process:
- Create a shortlist of clips by cutting out the bits of the footage that you don’t want to use.
- Create a new sequence and import the music file. Go through your shortlist of clips and start adding the ones you want to this new sequence, introducing a new clip with each new beat in the music.
- When you’ve got the structure sorted, add transitions to create some finesse between clips. Don’t overlook the importance of this step: you can communicate through transitions just as much as you can with the music and the footage.
Export and Publish Your Montage
Congratulations, you’ve made a video montage! It’s time to share this with your friends and family: you can send the video file via messaging apps, upload it to your social media platforms, or even publish it on YouTube if you think it deserves to be seen by a wider audience.
Unleash Your Inner Video Beast
Has this inspired you to capture more footage and share your video montages with the world? Maybe it’s time to tackle video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro and discover how to start your own YouTube channel.

Learn the Basics of Adobe Premiere
Cut It Out: Film Editing with Adobe Premiere
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