Choosing a Frame

Choosing which frame to cut on is one sense of timing. It creates the specific frame-to-frame relationship of two shots and their contents. “Etymologically the word [rhythm] probably implies ‘not flow, but the arresting and firm limitation of movement’.”¹ Timing is the tool at work in firmly limiting the movement of one shot by choosing the precise frame on which to begin and end it. If, for example, the editor is constructing a conversation in a shot–reverse shot configuration, and there is a shot in which a man looks up and then smiles, followed by a shot in which a woman looks away, the editor might choose to cut on the frame before the smile starts. In that case the scene would play as “the man looks up, then the woman looks away.” As little as one frame later, the smiling becomes perceptible, so cutting exactly one frame later would make the scene play as “the man looks up and starts to smile, but the woman looks away.” A world of different meanings can unfold if the woman seems to look away because the man is smiling or because the man looked up.

Figure 3.1 In the days when “cutting film” meant actually cutting pieces of film, you could hold up a film strip to the light and choose the precise frame on which to cut. The process of editing was altogether more physical, and, when holding those strips of film, you actually had the sensation of holding time in your hands. [Photo credit: The Kobal Collection]

Choosing Duration

“Timing” frequently refers to duration or the length of time a shot is held. It is the aspect of rhythm being referred to when one says something feels long or short. Holding a shot for a long time or for what feels like a long time are both functions of timing. Choosing duration is distinct from choosing the precise frame on which to cut because, although a shot may change meaning quite dramatically by holding or dropping one frame, the feeling of its duration is not really affected by one frame (which is only a small fraction of a second). A 10-second shot will feel long if it is juxtaposed with a series of 1-second shots. The same 10-second shot, used in the same context, will still feel just as long if it is actually only 9 seconds and 20 frames. And the same 10 (or so)-second shot will feel quite short if juxtaposed with a series of 60-second shots. The feeling of a shot’s duration is created by the relative durations of the shots near to it and the concentration of information, movement, and change within it.

Choosing the Placement of a Shot

Figure 3.2 Even though the long lines are not exactly the same length, they both feel long compared to the short lines. Similarly, the short lines all feel short; although their shortness varies in relation to one another, they are roughly the same in relation to the long lines.

The decision about where to use a shot is also called timing. This sense of timing refers to “where” as in when to reveal the punch line or the surprise. It is related not so much to duration or precise frames; rather, it shapes rhythm in broader strokes by determining trajectories and emphasis. If, for example, the plot is moving toward the discovery of a clue, does the detective stumble over traces of gunpowder in the foyer or discover a smoking gun first? The movement of the plot—direct or indirect—is determined by the timing of where the shots are placed. The detective’s sequence of movements reveals something of his character, such as how astute or dimwitted he seems to be, by placing shots in an order that makes him move directly to the clues or meander, bumbling, toward them.

This is also a way of placing emphasis by repetition.² If an editor has standard coverage for a scene (for example a single on each character and a two-shot of both characters), she will be able to use repetition of shot setups expressively. A common repetition, for example, is to alternate between the singles of the two characters as they discuss something and then to cut to the two-shot, introducing change, at the moment at which their discussion is resolved.

Movement qualities within shots can also work with patterns of repetition for emphasis. An editor does not have to repeat three gestures of hesitation exactly to emphasize hesitancy; she can cut together a hesitant glance, a hesitant reach, and a hesitant step to place a big emphasis on hesitancy, or she could drop all three of those shots and go straight to the smoking gun to remove any hesitancy from a detective’s timing.

All of the uses of timing—the precise frame on which cuts are made, the duration of shots, and the sense of timing as in where a shot is placed—intersect with one another and the other tools of rhythm: pacing and trajectory phrasing. Separating and identifying these things may have some value for understanding the processes of cutting rhythms. At the very least, all of these uses of the word “timing” can be turned into specific questions an editor can ask: “Which shot where? For how long? On which frame do I cut?” are all timing questions.

Rate of Cutting

Pacing sometimes means the rate at which cuts occur, as in how often per second or minute or hour. This is not just another way of saying “duration of shots,” although the two ideas do overlap.

Pacing in this sense can easily be seen when the rate of cutting occurs in patterns; e.g., accelerating the number of cuts per minute as a chase gets closer to its climax. (In this case the durations of the shots get shorter, and the two meanings overlap.) However, pacing, as in “rate at which cuts occur,” is also a factor in the rhythm of film even when it is not patterned by design. For example, cutting frequently around a conversation may make the performances seem edgier or sharper. Here we are not looking at durations of shots directly, but at the content curve of movement within the shots and either cutting it very sharply, which creates a sense of the pace being quicker, or leaving it loose, with full arcs of movement intact, which makes the pace seem slower. Thus, the pacing, in the sense of the rate at which the cuts occur, manipulates the sensation of the movement of the conversation. Further, the rate at which cuts occur defines the rate at which new visual sensations are introduced—every cut is in itself a change, so lots of cuts make a faster rate of change.

Rate of Change or Movement Within a Shot

Pacing also refers to the juxtapositions of rates of movement or change within shots. If the rate of change within a shot is fast paced—for example, in one 5-second shot the door opens—the vase falls over—the cook screams—and the burglar slips out, and that shot is juxtaposed with another 5-second shot in which the thief is cornered—he kicks the cop—he gets bitten by the dog and jumps over the wall—the pacing of the sequence may be seen as very fast, even though the cuts are relatively infrequent. (Making one cut in 10 seconds is not a “fast” rate of cutting in contemporary cinema.)⁵ If the editor chooses to present each of these events in its own shot, thereby making a cut every 3 seconds rather than one cut in 10 seconds, she would make the rate of change slow down—these events each shown in a single 3-second shot would take 24 seconds, not 10. The editor would have sped up the rate of cutting, but the overall effect would be of slowing the pacing.

However, it would not necessarily be correct to assume that the sensation of slowing the pace arises solely from a sequence taking more time. The actual reason the pacing could feel slower may arise if the full action of each movement is being revealed by putting in a 3-second shot of each “gesture.” When it is possible to see the whole of an action—its beginning, middle, and end—and not just the height of its activity, a certainty about source and direction of movement replaces the uncertainty that makes one feel as though things are moving fast.

Figure 3.3 The rate of change within a single shot in any Marx Brothers movie, including this one, A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935), is extraordinary. Even in this still image it is possible to see that at least four separate transactions are taking place at one time. Breaking these down into individual shots to “cut faster” would not only slow the pace but also lose the humor created by overlapping all of these unlikely events in one continuous time and space. [Photo credit: MGM; The Kobal Collection]

Rate of Overall Change

Pacing also refers to movement of the overall film. A film’s pacing may be the rate at which events move in the film or the rate at which movement of images or emotions occurs in the film. Each of the following three examples creates a fast pace through a different aspect of high concentration of movement overall.

1. A film with a series of moving camera shots traveling around a breathtaking array of characters, alluding to complex and fraught interpersonal relationships, has a high concentration of quick movement in visuals and emotions, which creates a sensation of fast pacing. At the same time, it has only one plot event, such as “the house guests settle in.” But this will feel like a fast-paced film even though there are few events, because the rate of physical and emotional movement is high (Fig. 3.4).

Figure 3.4 Robert Altman’s 2001 film Gosford Park feels fast paced because characters, camera, and emotions all move quickly, but the plot doesn’t move quickly, and it is not cut especially fast. The furious rainfall, the pressing forward against the rain of the figures under the umbrella, and the alert focus of the two attendants on either side of the car all make this frame feel fast paced, but all that is happening is people getting into the car. [Photo credit: USA Films; The Kobal Collection]

• 2. A film with rapid dialog, relatively infrequent cuts, not much camera movement, but a rapid series of events or changes in the character’s fortunes can still be considered to have rapid pacing (Fig. 3.5).
• 3. A film with lots of cuts, timed to maximize the energy of the movement trajectory and the collision of the movements between shots, but with basically no movement of events or no emotional change, as in a music video, may also be considered fast paced (Fig 3.6).

Figure 3.5 Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940). With its rapid-fire dialog and quickly changing plot events, His Girl Friday is well known as a fast-paced film, even though there are almost no camera moves and, by today’s standards, cuts are infrequent. [Photo credit: Columbia; The Kobal Collection]

In each of these three films the high rate of overall movement or change and the consequent sense of fast pace are achieved through manipulation of a different aspect of pacing. The same three aspects of pacing could each be employed in the opposite manner to make a film’s overall pace slower.

In general, all three of these uses of the word “pacing” interact with one another to determine a film’s pace. Pacing is very important, especially for the creation of sensations of time, but rhythm also has other methods with which to shape time, energy, and movement.

Figure 3.6 Music videos do not need to have plot changes or character changes to feel fast paced; instead, they can have lots of cuts and/or lots of camera moves. In Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” (Sam Brown, 2010) the rate of cutting accelerates with the emotion in the song and the rate of movement in the images. The sharp collisions of movement won editor Art Jones an MTV editing award.

Linking or Colliding Trajectories

Should the connections be smooth or abrupt? This is one consideration in the shaping of trajectory phrasing.

In practice, this means looking at aspects of movement, such as screen direction and asking if they should link or collide. A smooth cut is one in which movement from right to left in one shot is matched with movement from right to left in the next shot. A cut in which movement from right to left is “collided” with movement from left to right, or simply unmatched in spatial organization and energy, is a little shock. In his ideas on ‘collision’, Eisenstein includes graphic directions, scales, volumes, masses, depths, shot size, darkness and lightness in his list of visual elements that can be collided.

Selecting Energy Trajectories

The phrasing of the movement energy is also a matter of selecting shots for the qualities of energy they contain and using the cuts to shape the flow of energy across shots.

In continuity style coverage, a cut may be a “match cut,” a “match on action,” or a collided cut, but it is not just a choice between linkage and collision; it also contains choices from among an array of energy quality possibilities.

For example, here is a scenario that will be cut in continuity style:

We will call the “getting up and moving to the kitchen” the movement trajectory of each character, and the two of them getting up and moving to the kitchen will be the movement trajectory of the scene.

Imagine that the coverage includes a shot of the woman moving with a degree of hesitancy and one of her moving with a greater degree of confidence. Same movement, different energy or attitude behind it. The coverage also includes shots of the man getting up with difficulty

Figure 3.7 Joel Grey in Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972). In the film Cabaret, Editor David Bretherton often makes very hard cuts between scenes, slamming together the energy in images to make surprising connections between ideas and create a physical jolt or shock for the audience that underlines the film’s themes and makes them palpable experiences of the motion and emotion of life in Berlin in the 1930s. [Photo credit: ABC/Allied Artists; The Kobal Collection]

Figure 3.8 Kristen Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1996). Editor Walter Murch favors smooth linkages of movement energies in The English Patient, which help him to underline the lyrical aspects of the film and the connectedness of the central characters to each other on a nonverbal level. [Photo credit: Tiger Moth/Miramax; The Kobal Collection; Phil Bray]

and other shots of him springing off the sofa. Any of these shots can be cut together to match (link smoothly) but the rhythm of the scene is shaped by the choices of movement energy. Is her move to the kitchen hesitant, whereas he springs off the sofa to follow her? Or is her move confident, whereas he moves with difficulty? Or perhaps her hesitation and his difficulty will be cut together to create the trajectory that best expresses the movement of emotions in the film.

These same principles apply in cutting of, for example, documentaries, in which there is no continuity style coverage. Cutting the movement energy of events, information, colors, textures, ideas, emotions, and so on is a process of shaping the flow of energy into a coherent, expressive rhythm.

Stress

Figure 3.9 In this cut from the documentary Island Home Country (Jeni Thornley, 2008), the raucous movement, colors, and framing of an Australia Day celebration picnic (a) collide with the flow and grace of the dolphins in the sea (b). Cutting these two shots together creates an idea through visual collision; in this case, the idea that colonization and nation building conflict with nature and First Nation peoples.

“Stress” is emphasis created by the use of the energy in a shot as an accent. Choosing where to place the stresses or the accents is part of trajectory phrasing. Here is a definition of “stress” in poetry: “Accent in the sense of emphasis is the more general term, ‘stress’ is the more precise … stress can denote intensity as opposed to pitch or length.”¹⁰ And here is what The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians has to say about the importance of “stress” in rhythm: “duration and stress—in other words constructions in time and gradations in strength—are the central determinants of rhythm, its constituent factors.”¹¹

Stress in movement is “gradations of strength” or intensity of energy. In a phrase of edited material, a 2-second shot may either be a 2-second close-up of a scream or a 2-second wide shot of a sigh. The shots are of equal duration, the rates of movement or change within them are comparable, but the stress (effort) they contain and the stress (emphasis) they create are different. Both the shot size and the energy being expended within the shot contribute to the energy accent it makes.

Trajectory phrasing is something spectators feel in a very immediate way. We feel the movement flows that are created across shots without conscious processing. Smoothness or abruptness, hesitancy or confidence are recognized immediately by our mirror neurons and kinaesthetic empathy (see Chapter 1). Our immediate feeling of a trajectory phrase is the result of many hours of intuitive work by the editor in which she cuts the flow of movement energy into one trajectory or another until her own mirror neurons and kinaesthetic empathy light up with the feeling of the “rightness” of the flow.