Physical, Emotional, and Event Rhythms

As discussed in Chapter 1, the movements of actors, on however large (whole body) or small (blink) a scale, are the explicit expression of their internal rhythms and emotions. Leisurely strolling and frenetic pounding have different rhythms. The timing and energy of the movement within them is their emotion made explicit, and this is the material being composed into the film's rhythm.

The movement available to choreograph into meaningful patterns of time is not limited to the human body. Movements in the world of the rushes are that world's explicitly stated rhythms. Water, for example, has certain properties of movement that have various meanings. Rushing, trickling, boiling, and freezing water all contain different qualities of time, space, and energy, and these properties, when brought to the rhythmic composition of a film, extend their emotional meanings across the images.

Movement as a material from which edited rhythms are shaped is not limited to movement of images. It includes movement of sound, emotion, ideas, and stories. As Linda Aronson, author of Scriptwriting Updated, writes:

In fact everything about film—about moving pictures—is connected with time and movement in time, that is to say action, in every sense. Film consists of movement in all ways, physical, emotional and spiritual. In screenwriting, story is movement and our characters move through their own mental landscapes.¹

Aronson makes distinctions between different kinds of movement, when she refers, for example, to “physical, emotional and spiritual” movement. Making distinctions between these kinds of movement creates the possibility of articulating subtly different approaches to the shaping of each kind of rhythm. Below, I define and describe three kinds of movement that editors work with and look at the some possible approaches to them.

THREE KINDS OF MOVEMENT

One experience the spectator has of movement is the sensory experience of physical movement—of the purely visual and aural aspects of shaping of time, space, and energy. In this kind of experience, there is kinesthetic empathy with the rise and fall of the energy of the physical movement by itself, its freedom or boundness in space, its velocity, its curves, lines, grace, awkwardness, and so on, through a myriad of movement qualities. Following along with the arcs and flows of movement is a kind of ride in and of itself, in which the contraction and expansion of dynamics in time, space, and energy are a physical experience. The term I will use for the rhythms an editor shapes in response to physical trajectories whose meaning is direct, rather than representing something else, is “physical rhythm” (Fig. 5.1).

The next sort of engagement is barely separable from the first, and in many cases will have precisely the same source, but is experienced slightly differently. It is the experience of the trajectory of the emotions in relation to the trajectory of the movement. Performances and juxtapositions convey emotions and provoke emotions. The editor's attention when cutting psychological exchanges is not so much on the motion of the images as on the “dance” of the emotions. The editor is still shaping the physical movement (that's all she has to work with), but she shapes it with her focus on how it conveys emotion, not on how it conveys pattern or spectacle. The movement patterns created by an editor could be understood as physical experiences, because the emotions are being physically expressed, but in fact, the editor is watching for and creating a pattern of the dynamics of emotions seen on the screen. The term I will use for the rhythms an editor shapes from movement experienced as emotional movement is “emotional rhythm” (Fig. 5.2).

FIGURE 5.1

Bernadette Walong in No Surrender (Richard James Allen, 2002). Dance films and scenes are driven by physical rhythm. Rather than representing something else, the physical movement is the meaning. [Photo credit: The Physical TV Company/Dominika Ferenz]

The third kind of movement that I wish to distinguish for the purposes of this discussion is the movement of events. An event is the release of new information or change of direction for characters as they pursue their goals. Each significant change in a story or structure is an event. Some events are big and have repercussions for the whole plot; others are minor and change the direction of the plot a bit. In some films events occur rapidly, even dizzyingly; in other films there may be little change over the course of the whole, and the story may consist of just one substantial event. In either case, an event is a perceptible change at the level of story or structure. It is what happens in a story as distinct from the emotional exchanges (which may, of course, be the source of story changes) and image flow (which expresses and reveals the events). “Event rhythm” is the shaping of time, energy, and movement of events—the rate and strength of change over the course of the story or structure as a whole (Fig. 5.3).

FIGURE 5.2

Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek in In the Bedroom (Todd Field, 2001). The movement of emotion is the primary currency of this intensely felt drama. The spectator's ride is almost exclusively with the emotions being conveyed by the actors and shaped by the editor. [Photo credit: Good Machine/GreeneStreet/Standard Film; The Kobal Collection; John Clifford]

FIGURE 5.3

Bruce Willis in Live Free or Die Hard (Len Wiseman, 2007). Almost everything in this action-packed film is an event that changes the course of the plot or story. The actors are not known for the emotional strength of their performances, but that's not the point of this sort of film, in which the thrills for the spectator come not only from the fireworks of the visuals but also from the rapid-fire change of events. [Photo credit: 20th Century Fox; The Kobal Collection; Frank Masi]

These three types of rhythm—physical rhythm, emotional rhythm, and event rhythm—are cumulative. The physical rhythm sets up a kinesthetic empathy. The emotional rhythm relies on the physical, which is reframed as emotionally laden, to have its impact. And the event rhythm relies on both the movement of image and sound and the movement of emotion to communicate or convey its information.

All three kinds of rhythm are ultimately just strands of one rhythm—that of the edited film—but making distinctions does have practical uses for the editing process. Distinguishing between kinds of rhythm allows us to identify more precisely where a problem may lie or where the attention needs to be focused to make a rhythm work. It gives us something specific to look at and describe in our consultations about the progress of an edit, as opposed to trying to look at what has often been called “invisible.”

Distinguishing between the kinds of movement an editor is shaping is useful for the judging of editing, too. It is a way of describing what we know or mean when we say something feels right.

When the Australian Screen Editors Guild was trying to start up its annual editing awards, there was a lot of discussion about the difficulties of judging editing and the lack of shared language for describing good editing. We wanted to institute awards to give editors the credit they deserve, but the question of how to judge the editing almost sank the process. The distinction between the movement of events, of emotions, and of physical images and sounds proved very useful to me in putting forward a set of judging criteria for the awards. The guild steering committee adopted these criteria, and I am reprinting them here as an example of how the distinctions between kinds of movement and rhythm can be helpful in judging the whole.

To elaborate on how an editor shapes physical, emotional, and event movement, the next three chapters will each focus on a particular type of rhythm. Chapters 6 and 7 each have a case study to demonstrate the practical applications and outcomes of focusing on a particular strand of rhythm, and Chapter 8 has case studies focused on bringing all three types of rhythm back together to look at rhythm as a whole as “. . . indispensable in fusing together the meanings expressed . . .”²

ENDNOTES

1. Aronson, L., Scriptwriting Updated: New and Conventional Ways of Writing for the Screen, p. 40.

2. van Leeuwen, Introducing Social Semiotics, p. 182.