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Speed
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev
    I already barely touched this in the post about reviews. But anyway.

    Good films, TV series, etc often have a sense of high speed. Same as good presentation. Time become compressed while you are watching it.
    All of the elements contribute to such things - script, acting, operator work, music, editing and cutting techniques.
    You don't need to make constant chase scenes :-). But you still can maintain the speed, like "24" TV series did, and many others.
    It is also interesting that sense of high speed is almost always absent in amateur works.
  • 6 Replies sorted by
  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp
    Isn't that the same as "flow"? This is the sense of time disappearing quickly when you are really absorbed in doing something you are fascinated by (like sculpting, playing music, woodwork or whatever)...
  • CRFilmsCRFilms
    @Mark_the_Harp To a degree. Part of why it doesn't flow is because we're not carried away by what we're watching cause it's boring or uninteresting or badly made. That's part technical, but mostly creative. You really can't learn to be creative but you can learn to be technical. If you can't write better, you can cut better. Or rather, cut more often.

    More cuts creates a sense of movement, even in just talking scenes. When Robert Rodriquez made "El Mariachi", he shot it silent and then recorded the sound afterwards. This caused the sound to almost never sync up. To cover that he cuts on almost every line of dialogue. Cutting back and forth from the person speaking to the person listening. He cut the dialogue almost like action. It creates a sense of movement in the shot and you don't need expensive dollys or cranes/jibs.

    "Jump cuts" can also be used to put some movement into the scene. The French New Wave used "Jump Cuts" in long one take scenes because they couldn't afford to reshoot everything or even stop the camera and re-do the shot sometimes, so they just kept going and the flubs were cut out of the long take and they left in the good bits. The TV show "Homicide: Life on the Streets" used jump cuts to good effect, imho.

    Did a youtube search for some examples of French New Wave editing and found this nice clip:

  • kholikholi
    It's called pacing.
  • DUCKDUCK
    It probably wouldn't hurt if VK figures out a way to under/overcrank. Shoot at 22fps to play back at 24; hello Bruce Lee!

    The other posts are, of course, right. A lot of this is purely about how film is planned, shot, and edited. I think a big part is that most amateur works do fail to keep you enthralled enough to lose track of time.
  • brianlucebrianluce
    It's why people like Terry Rossio get 5 millions dollars for a 110 pages of Courier 12 point.

    It comes down to story structure -- which is about the easiest thing to talk about and the hardest thing to actually do.
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev
    Also want to mention here David E. Kelley
    This guy can write huge amount of stuff at very high level for very long time :-)
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