ABSTRACT

Filmmakers have long looked to music to provide a sense of continuity when bringing together images or sequences that do not logically follow one another of their own accord. Music can provide rhythmic and structural coherence while commenting on or enlarging details about the story, especially when popular music is used. The soundtrack very often imparts an impression of regularity to a film, providing a beat, a sense of passage, or a trajectory. Michel Chion refers to this phenomenon as "temporal linearization," in which piece of music can add "a sense of time that is linear and sequential" to images that do not necessarily present themselves as either successive or simultaneous. There is often a financial benefit to using montage, as part of a larger economy in the narrative of Hollywood films. Too much time cannot be spent on any one subject, conversation, or scene for fear that the rest of the story will not have enough time to develop.