Task 10 - Understanding Pace

Films all have a different pace depending on their genre.

Action films have fast-paced editing and compared to romance films, where editing is slow and steady, action films look chaotic and confusing.

But that's the whole intention. Film makers use fast paced sequences to create anxiety, suspense, shock and disorientation in action films, particularly when there is some kind of combat going on. This is done to show how characters feel when they are fighting someone or something and this is most commonly done to show that the characters are feeling disoriented or confused.

Scene lengths in films also determine the mood that is currently being expressed between characters, so a romantic sequence would contain long scenes that didn't change frequently, these kinds of scenes are also used to create a relaxed and calm mood in the audience, possibly "the quiet before the storm" which is frequently used in horror movies to also create suspense before a character is attacked.

Scenes at the beginning of a film are also most commonly long because the film makers need to try to explain to the audience the story of the film, what is going on, where everything is set, what things are like for the characters being shown and so that the characters are also introduced to us.

It may also be noticed that scenes can get shorter and faster as the film nears its end as it tries to tell several story lines at the same time. To do this effectively, film makers use the method of 'cross-cutting' to intertwine to story lines that are being told from different perspectives into the same story. The method also tells the audience that the scenes that are being shown are somehow connected. The method is used in films when two things are happening in different places or when a character is reliving a memory and switches from memory to reality.

The first 'Scream' film shows cross-cutting at the start of the film when Casey is murdered and hung on a tree just moments after her parents get home. Cross-cutting is used to show what is happening to Casey as she desperately tries to tell her parents where she is and that there is a murderer in the local vicinity of their house and that she is trying to save herself somehow even though she was dead the moment the murderer got his hands on her, and what the parents are going through and are experiencing as they enter their home and see that there is something on fire in the kitchen and when they see their daughter smothered in blood hanging from a tree.

Task 9 - Non-Continuity Editing

Non-continuity editing started off with the "French New Wave" which became popularised between the 1950s and '60s. It explored what it was like to not follow the traditional Hollywood editing by using 'jump cuts' which were never used before and by breaking the 180 degree rule on purpose. These two techniques were used in conjunction with horror or confusion in films to show how disoriented characters in a film were. It was effective as the sudden disorientation that these methods caused made the audience remember that they were watching a movie, not something that was happen in real life.

Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut created the "French New Wave". It was a care-free type of editing that didn't follow traditional Hollywood trends of editing which always tried to maintain a sense of narrative continuity and instead drew attention to itself by using the lack of continuity that it created.

The 1960s film "Breathless" is a good example of what French New Wave was like when it was still new.

Jump-cutting is the method of jumping from scene to scene all of a sudden. It is used when scenes change locations or characters in different positions when time passes. Jump-cuts are quite useful when used correctly but can ruin a movie if overdone or not used properly as they can cut out useful parts of a story or can just ruin it as it could eventually confuse the audience due to the lack of information they are receiving. Jump cuts are most commonly used in action films where several characters are fighting each other and there is a lot going on, like in Matrix when the humans are fighting the robots.

The 180 degree rule is a continuation rule in films which is used so as not to confuse the audience with the locations of characters, objects and scenery. It is used to keep everything in the same place and to keep the audience from thinking that characters teleported and switched locations with each other. Some films do abuse this rule but only to show the audience how confused the character is or that something unusual is going on. An example of this is in a film called "The Shining" where the main character is talking to a ghost and he becomes confused as to how that is possible.