Which Shot?

When looking at different takes of performances in order to choose “which shot” the editor looks for moments of authenticity in the performance, moments where the framing or light has caught the actor just right to emphasize their qualities of feeling or intention, moments where an expression has crossed their faces and revealed subtext, and especially moments where their energy or intention throws an emotional opening, question, or challenge to the other performer.

Where?

When deciding where to place a shot an editor may start at the beginning of a scene and add, shot by shot, to the unfolding of the emotional exchange. Or she may start with the shot that she has decided is really at the heart of the scene, the one everything else needs to lead to, and build outwards. Cutting toward a shot in this way means finding shots that build to it logically in other performances, shots that throw the openings or questions or challenges needed to set up or reveal the heart of the scene. Ether way, deciding where a shot goes is a creative process that decides the timing of the emotional exchange, its pace, and its phrasing or emphasis.

For How Long?

This question of choosing the precise duration of a shot can come later in the process, once a scene’s logic and flow has been roughly put into place. Trimming frames off of shots can make cuts smoother or more abrupt by eliding or colliding movements with the edits. Trimming can also focus attention on the key aspect of a performance, the key glance or shrug or other emotion driven move that tells the story. The important thing here is to cut on the frame that gives the strongest impression of the emotion being thrown from one performer to the next. This is because, with lots of takes and shots to choose from, you are looking for the strongest feeling of cause and effect, you are trying to create the feeling that one actor’s emotional throw is caught by the other actor and has an impact on how they, in turn, feel and express their feelings.

In editing, the decisions about “which shot, where, and for how long” are decisions about how to throw the emotional energy from one shot to another. I use an improvisation exercise called Throwing the Energy as a metaphor for what an editor is doing when shaping emotional rhythm. Here is a description of how it works, and later, some instructions for playing it yourself, which is recommended—better to experience something physically than to just read about it!

In the Throwing the Energy game, the first person pretends he has a ball of energy in his hands. The ball is invisible, but he articulates its outlines by shaping and moving his hands around it. He plays with it for a while, letting it travel through all parts of his body, and as he does, we get to see what kind of energy he imagines it to be. If it is fierce, compressed energy, the moves that shape it are tight and forceful. If it is easygoing, playful energy the moves that shape the invisible energy are relaxed and light. Once he has played with the energy for a while, he throws the energy ball to the next person, and this is where it gets really interesting. The first person may throw the energy in a hard fast direct move. If he does, than the next person catches it, as it was thrown. If the first person slams the ball of energy at the second person’s head, the second person will instinctively reel as though hit. If the first person dribbles drops of energy into the second person’s palm, the second person will crouch around the drops protectively, gathering them before they slither away. In other words, the kind of energy the first person throws, combined with the force, speed, and direction of his throw, equal the kind of energy that the next person receives.

Why does it matter how one person throws the invisible ball of emotionally laden energy and how the next person catches it? Because throwing the energy is what an editor is doing with cuts.

Figure 7.2 One of the earliest things children learn is to respond to emotional energy. As infants, although we cannot understand words, we still understand the energy with which they are spoken. For example, we shrink from anger or embrace delight, because the energy communicates the emotion on a nonverbal level. In this sequence from Down Time Jaz (Karen Pearlman, 2002), I used the children’s innate capacity to respond to energy qualities in movement and got the child performers to dance very convincingly by playing the Throwing the Energy game with them. [Photo credit: The Physical TV Company; Dominika Ferenz]

An editor chooses the first shot’s duration and frame to throw a certain kind of energy. This shot is then juxtaposed with another shot. The second shot receives the energy the first shot throws. The editor is creating an impression of cause and effect, an impression that the energy and action in the first shot causes the responsive motion seen in the next shot.

Because the energy thrown creates a cause-and-effect relationship with the energy of the next shot, the editor has begun to shape a trajectory phrase of emotional energy. For example, if a character smiles gratefully in one shot (the gratitude being the energy or intention that propels the movement of the smile), and another character shrugs awkwardly in the next shot, the gratitude appears to have caused the awkwardness. The timing, pacing, and trajectory phrasing of this exchange are a little piece of emotional rhythm built from the rhythm of the performances.

In the Throwing the Energy game, we watch the energy course through the players, changing and expressing their intentions. This is also what we are watching when we watch a character’s emotion move. We are watching, on a much more minute level, the play of emotional energy in his body, how slowly he smiles, how awkwardly he shrugs. These are the expressions of emotion in movement. Seeing the emotional energy work its way through an acting performance is more subtle than seeing energy in an energy game, but there are some specific things that actors do in creating their performances, which, if an editor knows to watch for them, can help her shape the energy and arcs of emotional rhythm.

Prepare, Action, Rest

One useful idea about actors’ movement comes from the Russian theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was a direct influence on the seminal Soviet director, editor, and teacher Sergei Eisenstein. Meyerhold’s influence on Eisenstein had a significant influence on the development of editing and film form. One of his ideas is that every movement has three phases: a preparation, an action, and a recovery.²

For the editor of emotional rhythm this idea of “preparation, action, recovery” is a way of seeing a trajectory through an actor’s movement. It implies a phrasing in every complete action that can be marked off, with a conceptual grease pencil, as a possible place for a cut. If an editor can watch an actor picking up a cup of tea (or throwing a bomb) and see these three phases of movement, then the editor can ask herself: What do I need from this movement to throw the emotional energy to the next character or event? Do I need just the preparation? Is it enough for the audience to know that the first character does pick up the tea, and it is the way he goes for the tea that causes the other character’s disapproving glance? Or do I need to see it all the way through to the first character’s obvious enjoyment of the tea, and that becomes what causes the disapproving glance? By watching for the prepare, action, recovery arc of a given movement, whether by a professional actor or by a social actor in a documentary, editors can find an optimal point to cut in the trajectory of the emotional energy to convey the force and quality of emotion required by the scene.

Two very different concepts that are also helpful to editors in training their eyes to see emotions move come from Stanislavski’s “method.”

The Actor’s Actions

One important concept Stanislavski introduced to the training of actors is the idea of “actions.” An action, in actors’ terms, is the actor’s psychological intention spelled out as a verb. The reason for making his intentions into verbs is to give the actor something to do rather than to be: doing is active, being is passive. Most importantly, for the editor, the action, being a verb, implies movement of thoughts or feelings.

Actions in this sense make the text or the subtext into emotional movement. If an actor has the line, “May I have some cake?” his subtext may or may not be the same as the text. He may be saying the words that ask for cake, but the subtext is asking not for cake, rather, it is asking for affection.

Actors will try to make their actions as active and emotionally accurate to their subtext as possible. “To ask” is one possible action, but depending on what the actor thinks is his real objective in the scene, “to ask” might turn into “to plead,” “to manipulate,” “to distract,” “to deceive,” “to declare love for” … Whereas some of these may seem outlandish with reference to a simple piece of cake, it is important to remember that unless all the character really wants is cake, he could be asking for any number of things—love, time, respite, engagement, or forgiveness, for example. His objective is what he really wants; his action is what he is doing to get what he wants. His action is the energy that propels his movement.

An editor can look at the actor’s movement (including the aural movement of the voices rather than the words) and see what an actor is doing subtextually. If the editor can see the action, for example, pleading, behind the words, then she can discern a point at which the action has reached its optimal energetic point for the throw. The editor can perceive the action as a movement phrase, see where its cadences, breaths, stress points, etc., are, and make the cut at the exact point at which she wants to throw the energy to the next actor, for precisely the impact she wants it to have.

If we look at an actor’s action as what he is really doing, then we can explain why cuts that don’t match perfectly in continuity still work. When the emotional energy is being shaped, we don’t notice little continuity errors or mismatches because we are not watching the character reach for cake; we are watching him reach for affection. Our attention is not on the movement patterns in and of themselves, it is on their emotional meaning. If the cut throws the emotion well, then our eye follows the emotion, not the cake. The emotional movement is visible, as Murch tells us, in the rate and quality of blinks and it is also visible in the breath, the tilt of the head, the purse of the lips, the raise of an eyebrow, etc. All of these movements, especially seen in close-up or medium close-up, are effective ways of throwing the emotion. So, if an actor reaches for cake with one hand and then picks it up with the other, this continuity gaffe will go unnoticed if the actor is truthfully inhabiting the body of the character. If the actor is playing his action and throws his emotion to the other character with movement—such as a hopeful raise of his eyes—then, as his eyes lift up, the editor sees the emotion move and cuts to the other character. Does the other character reassure or turn away from that hopeful pleading? The editor has thrown the movement of the emotional energy and opened the questions, “How will it be caught?” and “What will be the effect this emotional cause has?”

Throwing the emotion well is not just a case of deciding on the cadence of the emotion being thrown but how it is going to be received. If we go back to the Throwing the Energy game, the players receive the energy as it is thrown, so what they are reacting to is not just the energy but where it is directed. If it slams at their head, they don’t shake it off their fingers. Film actors are not improvising; even if they were on set, now that they’re on filmstrips, they are not any longer. So, the editor can look both at the available range of reactions and at the available range of throwing actions before choosing exactly where to cut. The editor’s job is to shape the movement of the emotion into a feeling of cause and effect, a feeling of throw and catch. It is the actor’s performance that draws our “eye-trace”³ to the emotional movement; it is the editor’s cut that determines the trajectory of the throw.

Beats

The Stanislavski method has another word that can be very useful for editors in shaping emotional rhythm: “beats.” There are a number of possible interpretations of this idea, but for our purposes we will say that the beat is the point at which an actor changes or modifies his action.

For example, if a character named Joe wants affection but asks for cake, his girlfriend might say, “Help yourself.” But if his girlfriend is withholding affection and her action is “to ignore,” then Joe, having failed to achieve his objective (getting affection) with his first action, will then shift his action to any number of other actions such as “to demand,” “to inspire,” or “to insist.” The change of action, or change of what Joe is doing to achieve his objective, from asking to demanding is called a beat. There may be any number of beats in a scene until objectives are achieved (Joe gets affection) or thwarted (his girlfriend breaks up with him). Keep in mind that, in the real world of a documentary or in a well-crafted drama, the other person, the girlfriend in this case, will also have objectives. She will have actions she is doing to achieve her objectives, and beats as she changes her action to accomplish her goals. The emotional energy is thrown between the two characters, back and forth. If Joe throws his request for affection gently, by asking, and the girlfriend throws back a block by ignoring, then the change of Joe’s action to demanding is caused by the emotional energy his girlfriend threw. This is a cause and-effect chain. Asking causes ignoring, ignoring causes demanding, and so on. Emotion moves back and forth, like a tennis ball in play. But it is the editor who shapes the rhythm of the game. She shapes it by choosing the shots for the energy they contain, placing the shots to make a dynamic and credible emotional arc, and trimming the shots to the frames on which the energy is optimally thrown and caught.

What is important for the editor is that a beat gives her the chance to see the end of one emotional energy trajectory and the rise of another. The energy of the actor’s movement will change according to the actor’s intention, and editors who sensitize themselves to these changes can see beats as little movement phrases. For example, if Joe’s action is to ask, his eyes will move directly, and he is likely to blink at the end of his request, throwing it to his girlfriend with a simple and direct energetic motion. If his girlfriend throws back hostility by ignoring him, Joe will have a beat, a responsive shift of his action to this new emotional development. Possibly that beat can be seen as he looks away, blinks a few times, maybe bites his lip or sighs, possibly not. Either way, the beat will occur as he shifts into his new action, in this case to demand, and his eye, breath, head, and face movement will change again. The editor uses all of these moves as potential cutting points, because they are the movement from which she will shape the rhythms that the audience experiences as the meaning in the actors’ exchange.

In sum, editors throw the emotional energy of one shot to the next by choosing which shot, where, and for how long. When the throw is caught and the response is thrown back, the editor has shaped a cause-and-effect chain. To shape the cause and-effect chain effectively, the editor watches for the movement of emotion across faces, gestures, and sound. The ability to see a preparation, action, recovery arc, and an actor’s actions and beats gives editors the ability to see emotional energy move and ways of cutting emotional movement into rhythms.

Case Study: The Hours

What follows is a case study on the cutting of a scene from The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2004), a drama scene in which the emotional rhythm is shaped from the energy thrown between two characters as each tries to achieve her objectives.

There are, of course, thousands of scenes that could demonstrate the principles involved in shaping emotional rhythm. I chose this scene from The Hours in the first instance because of the brilliance of Toni Collette’s performance as Kitty, the neighbor who comes to call on one of the central characters of the film, Laura, played by Julianne Moore.

Toni Collette has an astonishing capacity to reveal the layered symphony of emotion moving through her character’s soul through the movement of her face, head, and body. But her performance in this scene had to be balanced against the elegant performance by Julianne Moore, whose character is tentative and uncertain compared to Toni Collette’s brassy extroverted Kitty. The editor, Peter Boyle, does an extremely effective job of balancing the two performances, shaping Toni Colette’s to just the right amount of expressive activity and providing respite from the intensity of her energy with well-measured interjections of the restrained Julianne Moore.

This scene, with its surprising climax, is played almost entirely on subtext, and the richness of that subtext is experienced in the emotional arcs shaped by the editor. Boyle has been guided by the performances, but also shaped them to give balance between them and continually renew the questions of how each character’s utterances will affect the other. If, for example, Kitty confesses, what does Laura do? If Laura probes, what does Kitty do? These questions, as discussed in Chapter 2, are not consciously asked. They are created and understood immediately by the movement that expresses emotion, movement that we experience directly through our mirror neurons and our kinaesthetic empathy. The shape, rate, and intensity of emotional movement, and the tension and release of the emotional questions are in the hands of the editor.

This scene between Kitty and Laura is complex and traverses, in the course of the 5 minutes it takes to play out, an escalating series of character objectives, actions, and beats. It starts with Kitty coming in on Laura at a vulnerable moment, when Laura is cursing her own incompetence at baking; her cake has turned out lumpy and lopsided. Kitty’s objective at the beginning seems to be to boost her own confidence, to compare herself to her neighbor and come up favorably. Laura just wants to appear to be a proper homemaker or, on a more basic level, to survive, to keep her head above water in this competition.

Kitty notices that Laura has baked a cake and walks over to inspect it. Cut to Laura getting coffee spoons from the drawer as though she wishes she could just crawl into the drawer and hide (Fig. 7.3a). We see just enough of her tension to know she feels Kitty’s inspection keenly and then cut back to see just enough of Kitty’s tinkling, mocking laugh to know that her good humor is laced with scorn (Fig. 7.3b). Too much of Laura’s anxiety in this exchange would make her look hopelessly neurotic. Too much of Kitty’s mocking would make her look cruel. The balance that Boyle has achieved in the time spent on each of them and the timing of cuts onto their gestures gives the relationship complexity—there is friendliness, helpfulness, good cheer, and irony at the same time there is neurosis, mocking, and gloating.

Figure 7.3 The emotional rhythms of this scene from The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2004) are beautifully modulated by editor Peter Boyle. In this exchange he balances Laura’s (Julianne Moore’s) discomfort, visible in her tense shoulders and back, with Kitty’s (Toni Collette’s) friendly mocking to give the exchange a bit of sharpness but not draw blood. [Photo credit: Paramount Pictures, Miramax, Scott Rudin Productions]

Once Kitty is seated at Laura’s table with a cup of coffee, there is a series of shot–reverse shot cuts of the two women in conversation. This is a very common configuration for a two-handed scene, and the emotional rhythm is shaped by choosing when to cut from one character to the next. In this case Kitty’s flirty self-confidence bounces energetically against Laura’s quiet, self-effacing comments and inquiries. Until Laura says something that Kitty doesn’t really understand (Fig. 7.4a) and Kitty reacts, first defensively (Fig. 7.4b) and then by withdrawing her attention from Laura and looking around the house irritated and bored. When Kitty’s eye lights on a book Laura has left on the counter top, there is a cut to a wide two-shot. Cutting out of a shot–reverse shot sequence and into a wide two-shot is usually a signal that the emotional objective of a scene has either been achieved or thwarted. In this case Kitty’s objectives have been achieved—she is confirmed as commanding and vivacious—and Laura’s have been thwarted—she has lost Kitty’s approval by her clumsy introspection. Up until now, we have been watching the emotions being thrown between the two, watching first one character, and then the other, receive the emotional energy and bat it back. When the emotional question has been resolved, cutting to a two-shot gives the audience a more objective view of the state of play. The two-shot serves as a punctuation point, closing one question and opening another.

Figure 7.4 After some chit-chat, Laura throws an idea toward Kitty that she doesn’t really understand (a) and Kitty reacts by closing off her charm and openness (b).

In the wide two-shot, a book, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, is in the foreground, in focus, and the two characters are out of focus in the background (Fig. 7.5a). The cinematographer shifts the focal point from the foreground to the background in the middle of Kitty saying the line, “Oh, you’re reading a book.” This line is an accusation. If the subtext were written as text it might read, “That’s a very strange thing to do; no wonder you’re so strange.” Kitty gets up, covering her distaste for books with a teasing inquiry and swinging her hips in a mix of officiousness and flirtatiousness as she goes to pick up the book, asking, “What’s this one about?” (Fig. 7.5b). Laura, left in the background of the wide shot that Kitty now dominates completely, starts to explain, haltingly.

Figure 7.5 Editor Peter Boyle comes in on this two-shot as a way of changing the subject and tone of the scene. The shot starts with the book in focus and Kitty’s attention on it, out of focus and in the background. Then the focus shifts to Kitty, who takes charge of the dynamic of the conversation once more and sashays over to have a look at the book.

The spatial dynamic and performances create tension—is Laura going to manage to stumble through an explanation or dissolve tongue-tied in the path of Kitty’s effusive handling of the conversation? Laura manages. She looks inward and draws on the strength she’s gotten from the book to say, “Well, it’s about this woman who’s incredibly, well, she’s a hostess and she’s incredibly confident …” Here Boyle cuts to a reverse shot of Kitty in time to see Kitty’s expression change from boredom and distaste to apparent interest and delight as the key character in the book is described as “confident” and “giving a party.” Seeing Kitty shift from boredom to engagement is important because it aligns Kitty with the confident character in the book.

Boyle then cuts back to Laura, who gently delivers a blow to Kitty, a velvet-covered hammer that cracks Kitty’s façade. We are on Laura, who looks more glowing and energetic than she has yet in the scene; when she delivers the blow. She says, ostensibly about the main character in the book, but clearly also about Kitty, “Because she’s confident, everyone thinks she’s going to be fine. But she isn’t” (Fig. 7.6a). This is an emotional throw to Kitty, and Boyle cuts to her to let us watch the whole arc of her receiving and responding to the emotional energy. Toni Collette, as Kitty, speaks volumes with her facial expressions, even the way she flips through the pages of the book, by slowing down and absorbing the impact of this blow to her façade (Fig. 7.6b). She closes the book with a degree of deliberateness that delivers subtext something along the lines of: “I don’t want to be like this character anymore, but I can’t just dismiss her.”

Figure 7.6 Laura is gently cracking open Kitty’s façade by describing the plot of the book, Mrs Dalloway. She throws her energy gently but confidently, and it hits its mark, making Kitty slow down and reflect.

Laura’s action now is to expose Kitty; Kitty’s is to keep control. This moment is sustained by the cutting. Kitty closes the book; cut back to Laura, watching; back to Kitty as she puts the book down; back to Laura, who quietly says “So”; back to Kitty, who gathers herself together and tries for a perky smile but breaks it off to look away. This series of five shots sustains the moment rather than being a series of throws and catches of emotional energy. Nothing changes between the two characters. It is as though the moment is holding its breath. They are both holding the energy, filled with the question of how Kitty will deal with this sudden revelation about who she really is.

Holding the moment in this way is a very delicate operation and needs to be done fluidly and lightly. All too often one sees a strong emotional scene become heavy-handed by sitting too long on the emotionally laden shots with no change or variation. But Boyle’s handling of this moment is both fluid and light. He cuts very fast: all five shots in under 15 seconds. But because the characters are both concentrating intently, the very fast cutting does not draw attention to itself. In fact, if ever cutting could be called invisible, this is it. We see the movement between the two characters as though it is utterly “natural,” when, of course, it is anything but. The sense that it is natural comes from the perfectly judged timing of the cuts. It feels as though, if we were standing in the room with them, we would look from one character to the other at exactly this rate, to see what would happen. I believe that this is an example of the editor’s internal body rhythms at work in shaping the emotional arc of the scene. He is watching and cutting to coincide with the way the question sits in his own body, as though he has placed himself in that room as our proxy, watching and wondering, moving from one shot to the next, on behalf of us, quietly—without disturbing the energy of the scene, but quickly, so that we don’t miss a beat.

The scene now moves through another series of beats: Laura has watched Kitty trying not to be like the woman in the book, the one who seems fine but isn’t. Now Laura probes and Kitty confesses that she is also not fine. In the exchange that follows, there is a series of escalating revelations by Kitty about her fears and feelings of inadequacy. The cutting comes back to a shot–reverse shot pattern, and Boyle makes a series of very effective choices about where to place the cuts. As Kitty speaks, her sentences are punctuated with bright, fake smiles. Boyle uses these smiles as throws and catches of the emotional energy. He leaves a shot as Kitty begins to smile and pull her façade up (Fig. 7.7a) and cuts to Laura listening or nodding (Fig. 7.7b). Then he comes back to Kitty as the smile disappears (Fig. 7.7c) and she speaks the truth once more. Starting to smile throws the energy to Laura; Kitty is begging for reassurance. Laura’s sympathetic nods throw the energy back to Kitty, and Boyle cuts back just in time for us to see the last few frames of Kitty’s smile disappearing as Laura’s probing sends her deeper into her pain.

The emotion escalates and Laura stands up, coming into Kitty’s shot to hug and comfort her so that once again we are in a two-shot, when the objectives of the scene are achieved.

Figure 7.7 At the end of shot (a) Kitty starts to smile again. She is moving away from her pain by putting on a happy face, but Boyle doesn’t let her get away with it. Instead he cuts to Laura, nodding gravely (b), and doesn’t come back to Kitty until he can come in on the shot just as her smile starts to fade (c)

Laura kisses Kitty tenderly, lovingly, on the mouth. Kitty returns the kiss willingly. Laura has achieved her real objective; she has expressed her true desire, her love, her forbidden sexual longings. Kitty has also achieved her real objective, to get respite from her pretense, to be loved for who she is, not for the act she puts on.

But the scene doesn’t end there. Kitty at first seems to accept what has occurred; she says to Laura, “You’re sweet,” and then Boyle cuts in a long close-up on Laura so that we can see the dawning of revelation on her face. The time spent on Laura’s reaction also gives Kitty time to pull herself together. It is a long beat for each of them as they adjust their objectives and actions to respond to what has just happened, with Laura moving toward her feeling and Kitty turning sharply away from what has passed between them.

Kitty interrupts Laura’s reverie, and Boyle gives us just enough time on Laura to see her respond to the interruption before cutting back to Kitty so we can see her grabbing the energy back from Laura and changing the subject completely. Now Boyle uses Toni Collette’s performance differently than when her character was on the back foot, needing help. Each of the succeeding shots of Kitty shows the complete preparation, action, and recovery of each smile and gesture. Kitty’s bright forced smiles and gestures are barriers deliberately thrown up between her and Laura, rejections of Laura, and denial of any need to be comforted. So the scene ends at the door, where it started, the relationship apparently unchanged. Kitty is confident, swinging her hips, click-clacking along in her high heels; Laura is disheveled, teary, and vulnerable. But as an audience we witnessed everything changing between them, because the scene was cut on subtext and emotional movement, and we are utterly changed by the intensity of the emotional ride we have just been on.

Summary

In the cutting of emotional rhythms, editors make decisions about the extent to which they manipulate and alter a performance or leave its rhythms intact. The strength of the performance and the relative importance of various emotional moments in the story are considerations in the editor’s decision-making process. In shaping the emotional movement the editor throws the energy or intention of one performance across a cut to create the feeling of a cause-and-effect relationship in the movement of emotions. If an editor can see the performers prepare, action, rest movement arcs, or their actions and beats, the editor can use these physical movements as guides for phrasing the emotional movement, finding the best cutting points, and shaping its rhythm across an exchange.

Endnotes

1. Murch, W., In the Blink of an Eye, 1992, p. 62.

2. Schmidt, P., “Introduction,” in Meyerhold at Work, p. xiii.

3. Murch, W., In the Blink of an Eye, 1992, p. 62.