Generative Montage: An Analysis of AI-based Video Editing Software Effects on Montage

This chapter explores how AI-based video editing software is transforming the grammar of cinematic montage. As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in creative workflows, particularly through features such as automated scene detection, transcription, and generative extension and rhythm analysis, traditional notions of editing as a human-driven, but tech-led expressive practice are being redefined. The study addresses two questions: how do these tools alter foundational principles of montage, and what are their implications for the editor’s cognitive and creative agency? The chapter employs a theoretical and critical approach, drawing on film theory, media studies, and software analysis. It makes an exploratory comparison between the early evolution of montage in Soviet film theory – primarily the work of Eisenstein, Kuleshov, Pudovkin, and Vertov – through the digital turn described by media and film theorists such as Manovich, Casetti, Pearlman and Furstenau, and the present-day incorporation of AI in editing software. It reflects how the aesthetics, temporality, and ontology of montage shift when decision-making is partially automated. Attention is paid to the role of the software’s interface as a site of negotiation between human intention and algorithmic suggestion. Ultimately, the chapter argues that AI-enabled editing does not eliminate montage, but reconfigures it: from a dialectical grammar to a generative, semi-automated, hybridized form of media composition. The chapter contributes to a broader understanding of how cinema’s expressive and representational possibilities are being reshaped in this moment of algorithmic aesthetics.