The Technique of Film and Video Editing, 5th Edition

 

 

CHAPTER 29

The Picture Edit and Pace

Pace is most obvious in action sequences, but all sequences are shaped for dramatic effect. Variation in pace guides viewers in their emotional response to the film. More rapid pacing suggests intensity; slower pacing, the reverse. Karel Reisz explores the opposite of editing for pace in his discussion of Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), a film that was directed to avoid editing.¹ The entire film looks like a single long take. Reisz argues that too much screen time, which could have been used more productively, is wasted moving the camera from one spot to another.

Once the rough assembly is satisfactory, the question of narrative clarity has, to a certain extent, been satisfied. Shots flow from one to another ...