Montages, Sequences, and Syntagmas

In addition to scenes, there are three other medium-size units in cinema that are scene-like, composed of scenes, or composed of scene-like parts. The first of these is the montage—a series of related shots traditionally knit together with dissolves. The sequences is groups of related scenes. And the syntagma, a term borrowed and modified from semiotics, is composed of subscenes—scene-like subunits that have neither a real beginning nor an end. Syntagmas are alternations of subscenes with some consistent combination of location, character, and time change. The evidence for these three types of units—montages, sequences, and syntagmas—is empirical, based on judgments by viewers. In experiments, viewers segmented two dozen movies. They almost never segmented within a montage; to them, it was a whole, just like a scene. They almost always segmented the scenes within a sequence, but they segmented within syntagmas erratically and only half the time.