Cutting Rhythms

CHAPTER 12

Conclusion

In the introduction to this book, my approach was described as “problem-driven research,”¹ the problem being to find a way to describe modes of thinking about rhythm and the processes and purposes of shaping rhythms, so that rhythmic creativity in film editing can be understood and extended.

Because editors always say that shaping rhythm is intuitive, I began by inquiring into what editors mean when they say that. I found that what an editor is doing when creating rhythm is creating something that “feels right,” but that that sense of feeling right—that rhythmic intuition—is an explainable psychosomatic phenomenon and not a veiled and indefinable one. Making an edit feel right is the editor's contribution to a ...