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CHAPTER 4 |
Tension, Release, and Synchronization
All of the tools, the choreographic processes, and the editor's sources of intuitive knowledge about editing a film's rhythm are used by editors in service of fulfilling rhythm's purposes in film. The question in this chapter is: What are the functions of rhythm in film? The following discussion suggests that the functions of rhythm are to create cycles of tension and release and to synchronize the spectator's physical, emotional, and cognitive fluctuations with the rhythms of the film.
TENSION AND RELEASE
One function of rhythm in film is to shape, modulate, stimulate, and elevate the movement between tension and release. This movement is particularly crucial to drama, as John Sayles, American independent film director, reminds us:
. . . movies depend on tension and release for their impact. . . . The audience is made to expect something, the event draws nearer and tension builds, then the thing happens and the tension is released.1
The shaping of tension and release is also a function of rhythm in documentaries, in which tension may be created about, for example, the outcomes of events or the answers to questions, and in films other than dramas and documentaries, which might rely on a more directly visual, aural, or kinesthetic mode of tension and release.
FIGURE 4.1
The physical movement in this image from John Sayles's film Matewan (1987) poses a question that creates tension, which is: Will the character catch up with the train? James Earl Jones's performance helps the story to create stakes—we empathize with the movement of his face and body and hope he will get on board, and fear he won't, and worry about what is at stake if he doesn't. The shaping of the rhythm of this sequence in editing would involve shaping the duration for which we are held in suspense about those questions and the timing, pacing, and energy of the way the answers unfold. [Photo credit: Red Dog/Cinecom; The Kobal Collection]
Rhythm shapes cycles of tension and release by shaping time, energy, and movement through the film in patterns designed to provoke and modulate particular qualities of empathetic response. I emphasize empathetic here, because rhythm is a felt phenomenon; the spectators’ experience of rhythm, just like the editor's, is an embodied, physiological, temporal, and energetic participation in the movement of images, emotions, and events in the film. Empathy is feeling with (rather than feeling for). So whereas it is the job of narrative, information, or images to cue and provoke thoughts and emotions, it is the job of rhythm to modulate the rate and quality of the spectators’ participation in or feeling with the movement of these elements in the film. Rhythm does this by modulating the cycles of intensity and relaxation of the movement of images, emotions, and events in the film. The spectators perceive this intensity and relaxation of time, energy, and movement directly as forms of tension and release in their own bodies.
FIGURE 4.2
In the documentary A Brief History of Time (Errol Morris, 1993), editor Ted Bafaloukos, who has cut all of Morris's highly original and engaging documentaries, shapes tension around the big questions: Where did the universe come from? Will time ever come to an end? And the more personal questions of scientist Stephen Hawking's life, health, ambitions, and thoughts. [Photo credit: Triton; The Kobal Collection]
To elaborate on the notion that rhythm is perceived directly, I will briefly recap the points made about how rhythm works with the physical movement visible and audible in films, and the physical processes by which our bodies perceive and understand movement. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 of this book are about the editor's perceptions of rhythm, her processes and tools. But they also cumulatively point to the functions of rhythm in creating cycles of tension and release and synchronizing the spectator's rhythms to the film's pulse and its fluctuations.
Chapter 1 discussed mirror neurons through which, neurologically speaking, one participates in the intentional movement one sees. That chapter also discussed the notion of kinesthetic empathy, which is the felt recognition of movement that is seen or heard by a body that has comparable experiences of the physics of motion. These two significant modes of perceiving movement—mirror neurons and kinesthetic empathy—are both physiological. Their presence in our physiology means that the movement we perceive activates our knowledge of that movement's significance. Furthermore, this activation is an immediate, empathetic experience—we experience physiological tension and release virtually simultaneously with perception of movement patterns of intensity and relaxation.
Chapter 2 determined that the art of shaping rhythm is a choreographic art in that it involves shaping physical movement for affect. The core unit of this choreographic art is the pulse. A pulse is, in itself, a minute fluctuation of tension and release. The pulse is the energetic emphasis (tension) placed on one syllable or part of movement in a “measure” of two or three syllables or parts of movement. The de-emphasized part of movement in the measure is the release of the tension. Thus, whereas Chapter 1 established that movement in film has a physiological effect on spectators, Chapter 2 determined that editors shape movement pulses and phrases choreographically to modulate their affect. Cumulatively, the implication of these two chapters is that pulses and phrases of movement in film are choreographically manipulated into rhythms by editors.
Chapter 3 discussed the tools an editor has for shaping rhythms, which are also attributes of rhythm itself. These tools—timing, pacing, and trajectory phrasing—are used by editors to determine the qualities, rates, and intensities of movement in a film's rhythm. Connecting Chapter 3 back to Chapter 1, we can say that these qualities, rates, and intensities of movement are experienced by the spectator as the rise and fall of their own physical responses to the film. When time, energy, and movement are choreographically shaped by timing, pacing, and trajectory phrasing, they create cycles of somatic tension and release.
Rhythm's physical effect on the spectator is also often experienced as emotional affect. Because rhythm is direct address to the body, it is also, to some extent anyway, direct address to emotion, because “feelings,” in the sense of emotions, are physical, too. Torben Kragh Grodal talks about this in his book Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings and Cognition, and reminds us that story gives us cues about how to feel, but the strength of feeling relies on how the images, sounds, and movement are shaped to impact on us physically. He says an important part of the experience of emotions
. . . relates to involuntary body reactions. . . . These involuntary reactions are controlled by the autonomic nervous and endocrine systems, which regulate the viscera, the heart, stomach, lungs, liver and skin, and which play a major role in the constitution of emotions. The connection between “viscera states” and emotions has been known for centuries, because everybody experiences strong changes in the viscera when excited: tears, salivation, change of respiration, butterflies in the stomach, a pounding heart, blushing, sweating.2
In other words, emotions are, at least in part, physical experiences of movement in the body through rises and falls of intensity of activity. Grodal continues, “When a viewer chooses to watch a film, he thereby chooses to be cued into having constant fluctuations [my emphasis] of heartbeat, perspiration, adrenalin-secretion and so on.”3
The editor is trying to create an appropriately felt rhythm of these fluctuations in the audience. The questions are: How long to keep the heart racing at one rate? When, how, and with what to slow it down? It is not just a matter of finding the right amount of time to build tension or hold off release of story information, it's a carving of the qualities of that time, also, through timing, pacing, and trajectory phrasing. A film's significance is not just “this happened and then that happened” (although that is a rhythm, too—this, then that). A film's impact is in the way that this, then that, happened, including how fast or slow or bumpily or smoothly or forcefully or limply. As Professor van Leeuwen says, “rhythm plays a crucial role . . . in the way the story is told, in the game of revealing and withholding story information from the viewers to maximize both their active involvement in anticipating the events and their passive abandon to the story's events.”4
PRACTICAL EXERCISE
Murderer in the Dark
Murderer in the Dark, sometimes called Murderer's Wink, is a game for experiencing tension and release. Gather together six or eight people to play; a classroom of between twelve and twenty is also an excellent amount. Everyone sits in a circle and closes their eyes, then the game moderator walks all the way around the circle and, while walking, taps one person on the shoulder. That person is the murderer, and no one except the moderator and the murderer knows who he is. The murderer's objective is to “kill” everyone off without being discovered; his weapon is a wink. If the murderer catches the eye of another player and winks, that player has to count slowly to 5 while looking around the room and then “die”; the more theatrically, the better. To discover the murderer you have to see him wink at someone, but not at you.
The game is great fun to play, but the interesting part is the discussion afterward, which concerns time, the release of information, and tension. How much information do you have at the beginning of the game? You know there is a murderer but you don't know who—you are asking yourself questions: Who is the murderer? Will I be killed? When will someone be killed? With each death there is a shift both of tension and of information—you experience, in rapid succession, shock or surprise depending on how theatrically the death has been performed, then relief that it is not you, then escalating tension as the number of possible victims diminishes. So you could be next, and the tension, fleetingly released, begins to build again.
In working with rhythm, the editor is working with exactly these devices: time, energy, and the release of information to create tension. How long can a question go unanswered before interest is lost? If the murderer in your game is not bold and no one gets killed, the interest diminishes very quickly, because the tension of the questions “who” and “when” is answered by “no one” and “never”!
The release of information is not just a matter of timing, but also of energy—if a victim just shrugs and says, “I'm dead,” there is very little impact. If he suddenly stands, shrieks, and falls writhing to the floor, there is, perhaps, overkill. Modulating the intensity or energy of a performance to release and rekindle tension is part of the editor's job, too.
The tension is a combination of these three things—timing, energy, and release of information. Tension is in the unanswered question; rhythm is the time, energy, and movement that modulate its build and release.
FIGURE 4.3
A classic wink: Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour in Caught in the Draft (David Butler, 1941). [Photo credit: Paramount; The Kobal Collection]
So, whereas characters, images, or stories trigger specific emotions, expectations, and ideas, the rhythms of these modulate the rise and fall of the tension—the “resonance of bodily reactions”5—with which we follow them.
By modulating tension and release, rhythm acts on the spectators as a generative aspect of their acceptance and comprehension of a film. Rhythm refines the rides you take with a film—the rise and fall, the speed of the curves, the sense of balance or danger in the stability or suddenness of movement in the world of the film. It doesn't matter if the film is a thriller or a romance, narrative or abstract; the editor works with the “life of the object visibly recorded in the frame”6 to determine the timing, pacing, and trajectory phrasing of its movement, and spectators’ bodies respond to this rhythm.
FIGURE 4.4
One of the reasons that the murder in the shower of Janet Leigh's character in Psycho (1960) is so shocking is that it is so unexpected. Director Alfred Hitchcock, master of subverting our expectations, does not develop tension in the conventional ways, and so when the shower scene comes, our heart rates and other visceral responses jump very rapidly from a state of calm to a state of extreme activity. [Photo credit: Paramount; The Kobal Collection; Bud Fraker]
SYNCHRONIZATION
Riding the rise and fall of tension and release when watching a movie, the spectator's body rhythms and the rhythms of the film to some extent sync up into a physiological phenomenon of feeling with. The “ride,” rhythmically speaking, is the movement of the film composed in such a way as to influence the spectator's pulse, breath, attention, and other bodily rhythms.
As discussed earlier, rhythm is part of our biology, and to survive we oscillate with the rhythms of our environment, our planet, and our solar system. Similarly, to survive socially, we coordinate our rhythms with those of other humans. For example, we meet the energy and pace of others in conversation, and we synchronize with them to have an effective transaction. If, at a gathering, everyone is talking in hushed tones and with terse gestures, we match these to understand and connect with the people. If those in the gathering are laughing uproariously and flinging their words and gestures freely, speaking in hushed tones and with terse gestures won't coordinate and will either cause those in the gathering to change and converse to a new rhythm or cause you to be left out. “As we act together we synchronize. The rhythms of our actions become as finely attuned to each other as the parts of different instruments in a musical performance.”7
The implications of this social synchronization, for film spectatorship, is that the film becomes a rhythmical partner in a social exchange to which the spectator synchronizes. This physiological syncing function of rhythm in film is a significant source of affect. As philosopher Gilles Deleuze says in Cinema 2: The Time Image, “It is through the body . . . that cinema forms its alliance with the spirit, with thought.”8
Deleuze goes on to suggest that cinema forms this alliance by making the body pass through a sort of “ceremony.”9 This ceremony to which Deleuze refers is, I believe, a ceremony of synchronization. The film's rhythm synchronizes the body, influencing the spectator's physical and cognitive fluctuations to follow its own. My own description of this ceremony is of movies as a form of meditation for the unquiet mind.
SYNCHRONIZING WITH THE DIRECTOR
Sometimes tensions arise between directors and editors who “feel” things differently, and the editor has some tricky judgment calls to make in these situations. If a director feels the rise and fall of tension and release or the flow of movement in a different way from the editor, it could be because he is not seeing what is really there, but what he hoped would be there, or what he intended to have captured but didn't. In these cases, it is up to the editor to bring the director around to a new way of seeing the material. This may mean working without the director present for a while and shaping something that has its own integrity. Then, when the director sees it, there is an opportunity for him to say, “That's not how I intended it, but it really works.”
FIGURE 4.5
Working collaboratively in the edit suite under pressure, as seen in Phillip Noyce's classic Australian drama Newsfront (1978). [Photo credit: Palm Beach Pictures; The Kobal Collection]
On the other hand, sometimes directors and editors feel things differently because the director is deeply tuned to the material and the performances, and the editor doesn't yet see its potential to go in a particular direction. In these cases, it is really important to try to synchronize through the director. Use his sense of how things flow rather than your own—see with his eyes, feel with his heart rate, tune your kinesthetic empathy to his feeling for the rise and fall of tension in a scene or across the whole film.
In either case, it's essential not to make too big a deal of things too early. Much will change over the course of an edit and if there is a showdown over who is right about a given moment, then that moment will always be a sore point, no matter who wins. Furthermore, both the editor and the director actually lose in these showdowns because their experience of the contentious moment shifts from being a direct experience of the material to an indirect one: instead of seeing the moment, they remember the argument and impasse it caused and see it as a problem. Diplomacy skills are emphasized in the teaching of editing, and this is one example of where those skills can be used to good effect. If no standoff is created by the editor, then, later, when things have cooled down, it will always be possible to come back and have another go at the moment in question.
A cautionary note for both editors and directors: Editors hate it when directors snap their fingers or hit the table to indicate where they want a cut because these gestures, as well as expressing a kind of dictatorship or distrust of the editor's intuition, can actually jump between the editor and her own feeling for the material. On the other hand, these directorial gestures are very immediate physical responses and could save lots of time and discussion about how the material should be shaped. If the editor can just step back and not take them personally, the director's gestures can be a great guide to how he feels the material. My advice to directors is: Try not to snap your fingers, as that seems imperious, but do make the gestures that will clue the editor in to how you feel the material; that way, at least she'll know what she's working with.
Meditation is a practice that, through concentration, frequently on some rhythmically repetitive phrase or chant or breathing pattern, stills the fluctuations of the mind. The various objectives of this practice, from inner peace to complete enlightenment, are not what make it comparable with movies. What is comparable is the syncing or bonding that occurs through rhythmic connectivity in meditation. This aspect of meditation is imitated by the functioning of rhythm in film.
By shifting the spectator's physiological rhythms into sync with its own rhythms, film organizes the body's fluctuations into a single, focused, undistracted attention. The objects of meditation can only be realized when “the fluctuations of the mind cease.”10 The objects of rhythm in film are realized when the fluctuations of mind are subsumed into the fluctuations of tension and release in the film. Much of this work is done by story, structure, and performance, but some of it is done by shaping movement and energy over time to create the cycles of tension and release to which the spectator's mind and body synchronize.
CASE STUDY IN TENSION, RELEASE, AND SYNCHRONIZATION: BROADCAST NEWS
There are hundreds of sequences that could be chosen to illustrate the movement of tension and release in films. I have chosen this sequence from Broadcast News (James L. Brooks, 1987), not just because it works so well, but because it is a scene about the rhythm of the editing process. In it, there is a brief moment in which the synchronization that happens between the director and the uncut material is dramatized, revealing and illustrating the activation of mirror neurons and kinesthetic empathy (as discussed in Chapter 1). The other especially useful aspect of this sequence for talking about shaping movement into cycles of tension and release is its overtly physical expressions of emotion and events. The director, James L. Brooks, takes delight in shaping the physical expressions of rhythm to draw us, physically and psychologically, into the tensions of the situation.
Broadcast News is about the shift in the culture of television news coverage from serious journalism to entertainment. It is told through the stories of three central characters: Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), a producer who believes passionately in journalistic integrity; Tom Grunick (William Hurt), a handsome, airheaded news anchor who performs well but doesn't really understand what he's saying; and Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), an intellectual reporter who is too earnest and can't compete with the smooth, self-confident Tom, even though he's a better reporter.
At the beginning of an early sequence in the film, there is a tight cut to Jane Craig, the producer, in the edit suite, working to a deadline, commanding her online editor, Bobby (Christian Clemenson), to run the story they are editing one more time (Fig. 4.6). He protests mildly and she overruns him with overlapping dialog and a much more forceful tone. Immediately, with the timing of these first cuts and the energy of the exchange, a tension is created. Most particularly it is Holly Hunter's portrayal of Jane's physical tension that is driving the scene. Her tone, speed, and attack express a furious will to keep control, overlaid on an edge of panic. The editor of Broadcast News, the extraordinary Richard Marks, cuts between Jane and Bobby in such a way as to highlight, extend, and physically impress this tension upon us as we experience the flow of the story. Marks cuts back to Jane as she grabs her water bottle and drinks abruptly, and to Bobby as he stabs the keys of his console with in rapid-fire staccato. Even though they are both just doing their jobs and nothing too dramatic is happening, we experience these punctuations and emphasis points as a rhythmic volley that lifts the energy and attention.
FIGURE 4.6
Richard Marks, editor of Broadcast News (James L. Brooks, 1987), cuts to this scene in the middle of Jane Craig's (Holly Hunter) phone conversation and edit. She is multitasking, talking rapidly into the phone, watching the rushes, and barking orders at the online editor (Christenson Clemenson) all at once, which immediately establishes the base pulse and energy of the scene—this is as calm as things are going to get.
FIGURE 4.7
In (a) Holly Hunter is speaking the same line as the character in the news story she is cutting (b; character on the left). She imitates his cadence and says the words with him, essentially singing along with him to immerse herself fully in his intent and the rhythm that expresses it. She has raised her pen in a gesture like a conductor's and waves it sharply at Bobby, the online editor, to indicate where she wants him to cut in to the shot.
At this point in the scene, Holly Hunter's character, Jane, actually enacts the synchronization that takes place between the material and the people working on it in the editing suite. As the voice in the videotape she is editing says a line, Jane says the line, too, aloud, mimicking the videotaped character's intonation and intent (Fig. 4.7a). Holly Hunter perfectly plays out the way that Jane, as the person cutting the film, would mirror the video image, embodying it physically, as a quick and direct way of giving herself the physical feeling of the uncut material. This physical imitation of the material is like blinking or breathing with it, or as will be discussed later, “singing” with it. As the timing, pacing, and energy of the material inhabit the body of the person cutting the film, she has a direct physical feeling of where to cut. She knows what the phrasing should be because she can feel it, in her body. This moment gives a succinct insight into the action that directors and editors do over and over again in shaping the rhythm of a film; whether they are shaping it at their leisure or under the bone-crushing pressure of a broadcast news production, they physically imbibe the rhythms they see and hear, and shape them to feel right in response to the feelings they have for them in their own bodies.
As the scene in Broadcast News progresses, more characters enter the tiny cutting suite, each bringing with him or her a contributing rhythm. First is Tom Grunick, who, as played by William Hurt, is a placid, accommodating presence. His rhythmic function is as a “rest.” Shots of him, bemused and observing quietly, are dropped in between shots of other characters to give us breath, a contrast, and a bit of distance from the escalating tension. The entrance of Blair Litton, played by the inimitable Joan Cusak, brings with it the question at the heart of the tension of the sequence. Everything that happens for the rest of this sequence, both rhythmically and narratively, refers back to this question. Blair says, or rather insists, urgently, “We don't have enough time!” (Fig. 4.8), thus planting the most classic, oft-used, and reliable tension creator in motion pictures: the time pressure or the question: Will they make it in time? It is important to note that time pressure is not just a narrative device; it is, of course, a rhythmic device, because time is a key element of rhythm. The time pressure almost acts as another character or voice in the rhythmic composition being constructed here, because each character's rhythmic propensity is played out against it. Jane's tight, terse gestures get tighter and terser, for example. And when Bobby makes a little mistake, it triggers a major movement into another gear.
FIGURE 4.8
Holly Hunter and Joan Cusak play their characters’ relationships and intentions, the subtext of the scene, physically. Holly Hunter is shutting her eyes to try to shut out Joan Cusak's manic intrusion, with the realities of time, on her vision for the piece, while Cusak thrusts her energy and anxiety forward at Hunter with every muscle and intonation.
By the time this little mistake occurs, much has happened: new narration has been recorded, new relationship tensions have been revealed, we've cut away and come back to the edit suite, and we're down to 2 minutes before the story is due to air. Bobby fumbles (offscreen), says “whoops”, and everyone shifts (Figs. 4.9a and 4.9b). The actors move into position like a string quartet or a corps du ballet, and the director, James L. Brooks, begins to have some fun with the tensions and rhythms he has set up. Holly Hunter's character, Jane, the producer, takes the lead—her voice is the strongest and she has the most to lose here. She starts chanting, “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby,” at a rate and consistency designed to move our heart rates up a couple of notches. Her friend Aaron, the intellectual reporter who has come in to support her, plays the viola to her first violin. He punctuates her chant with low moans and a steady rocking. Jane's adversary in this scene, the hysterical timekeeper played by Joan Cusak, takes up the counter-melody with a steady stream of high-pitched squeals or grunts as though she is under torture of some kind, and William Hurt's character Tom, the cello in this quartet, grinds his teeth steadily, his eyebrows working contrapuntally to the hysteria around him. This is a staged bit of physically and aurally expressed rhythmic tension, and it gets me every time. I know it is coming, and yet when the rhythm begins, I still sync up to it. The rhythm acts on my body, and my conscious knowledge of its purpose, direction, and outcome is irrelevant to its physiological effect on me as a rhythm.
The moment ends abruptly with three shots: (cut) Bobby pops the tape out of the machine, (cut) hands it to Blair, and (cut) Tom says “GO!”
FIGURE 4.9
(a) When Bobby says “whoops,” all of the characters assembled in the edit suite in Broadcast News reveal their panic about the time pressure they are under. They move into position (b) and start a rhythmic chant that has the function of probably driving poor Bobby, the online editor, crazy, and of raising the spectators’ heart rates and blood pressure as we get caught up in the rhythm the characters create.
But the release is minimal—the tension of the little rhythm ballet described above is capped off with the punctuating three cuts and the word “GO,” but the tension of the scene's big question—Will they make it in time?—is not resolved; in fact it, is rekindled with the force of Tom's “GO!” And so ensues a beautifully cut madcap physical comedy sequence as Joan Cusak's character, Blair, all flying hair, flopping limbs, and flinging exclamations, dashes from the cutting room to the newsroom (Fig. 4.11). Every possible visual and physical obstacle, encounter, and energy in this sequence is shaped by the editor, Richard Marks, to have maximum impact in their trajectory and inspire the gravest and funniest kinesthetic empathy in the spectator. We feel every one of the great Joan Cusak's galumphing moves in our own body, and although it feels as though it is happening to us, it isn't; it is happening to her, and is therefore madly funny.
FIGURE 4.10
Three shots in less than 2½ seconds conclude this part of the Broadcast News sequence. In (a) Bobby pulls the desperately needed tape from the machine; he passes it to Blair in (b), nearly knocking Tom out with it; and in (c) William Hurt, as Tom, uses his energy to throw the tape and Blair into a headlong hurtling trajectory toward the newsroom with one word: “GO!”
FIGURE 4.11
Broadcast News Editor Richard Marks cuts together three shots to make a dazzling trajectory of Joan Cusak's move as she dodges a file cabinet drawer in her mad dash to the newsroom with the tape that is due to go straight to air in 15 seconds.
I find it interesting that my students consistently find this sequence both tension filled and humorous, even watching it twice in a row. The first time I screen it, I just let them watch and laugh. The second time, I break it down into all of the points articulated above, but, piece by piece, they still find it funny, and they are still filled with tension. I attribute this phenomenon to the power of rhythm over information. As we mirror and empathize with the movement of images and sounds, emotions and events on the screen, our hearts, pulses, breaths, and bodies get caught up with these movements even though we cog-nitively know where they will lead. If the film's movements are directed and cut so that we feel with them, then we synchronize to them, and their rhythms move us through cycles of tension and release.
SUMMARY
The function of rhythm in film is to create cycles of tension and release, which the spectator “rides” physiologically, emotionally, and cognitively. The ride is felt as variations on the pulse of a temporal world that is created in the process of editing the rhythms of the film. By syncing the spectator's rhythms to the film, rhythm functions in a way that is comparable to meditation; it provides a “restriction of the fluctuations of consciousness.”11 This “meditation for the unquiet mind” is not a path to enlightenment, but it activates a physiological focusing effect similar to that of meditation to carry the spectator along on the ride of the rhythms of the film.
This chapter on tension, release, and synchronization also connects the findings of the first three chapters to propose specific ways that the editor's various intuitions, processes, and tools shape the spectator's experience. The ideas about mirror neurons and kinesthetic empathy, about the choreographic shaping of pulses and phrases, and about the timing, pacing, and trajectory phrasing of rhythm have been looked at in the light of their impact on the spectator's experience of rhythm in film. The result of this discussion can be summarized in an aphorism frequently repeated by filmmakers: The editor is the film's first audience. The movement that the editor shapes into rhythm must first affect the editor in order to become the cycles of tension and release and the synchronizing force that move the spectator.
The conclusion at the end of the first four chapters of this book is that rhythm in film editing is shaped by editors through an intuitive knowledge of the rhythms of the world and of their own bodies as informed by the functioning of their kinesthetic empathy and mirror neurons. The same physiological rhythm detectors are, of course, present in the spectators, who imbibe the edited/shaped rhythms of the film physiologically. The editor's knowledge and experience of rhythm are gathered through participation in movement, so movement is the material that is choreographically manipulated to have the desired effects on the spectator. One could say that rhythm in film editing is this shaped movement or, more precisely:
Rhythm in film editing is time, energy, and movement shaped by timing, pacing, and trajectory phrasing for the purpose of creating cycles of tension and release.
The rest of this book will look at different kinds of movement and rhythm and how they work in the processes of film editing.
ENDNOTES
1. Sayles, J., Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie “Matewan”, pp. 114–115.
2. Grodal, T. K., Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings and Cognition, p. 42.
3. Ibid.
4. van Leeuwen, T., Introducing Social Semiotics, p. 186.
5. Grodal, T. K., Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings and Cognition, p. 4.
6. Tarkovsky, A., Sculpting in Time, p. 119.
7. van Leeuwen, T., Introducing Social Semiotics, p. 182.
8. Deleuze, G., Cinema 2: The Time Image, p. 189.
9. Ibid., p. 190.
10. Gannon, S., and Life, D., Jivamukti Yoga, p. 26.
11. Feuerstein, G., The Yoga-Sutras of Pata ñ jali: A New Translation and Commentary, p. 26.