>> Speaker 1: The art of editing isn't just about placing one thing
after another.
Each frame matters.
And sometimes choosing more or less of them can make a big difference.
This is holding long and cutting short.
Two brilliant moments in editing.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: What happens when a shot stays on screen that seems out of place?
When there is no immediate relevance, no apparent purpose.
At first, maybe it's a mistake, maybe the director is just lingering to linger, but
after a certain point the intentionality becomes obvious.
Our minds switch modes from an unconscious viewing method of passively consuming
information to inactive, searching, meaning making mode.
We talked a bit about this late time with regards to horror in The Exorcist III,
how holding on this shot of an empty hallway for
long enough eventually convinces us that it won't be empty forever.
But if you like that, you'll like this,
our first brilliant moment from 2013's Ida.
After Ida and her only remaining relative, Wanda, take a trip to track down the fate
of Ida's parents and Wanda's son after WWII, both are left profoundly changed.
This is Wanda's response.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: If you're Game of Thrones fan,
you might remember how Miguel Sapochnik did this brilliantly in the recent season
six finale.
And without giving anything away,
you'll immediately notice the similarities to his window shot.
And here, as there, the brilliance of the shot lies in its relentless length,
despite its complete lack of apparently meaningful content.
The frame is twice empty, and yet it persists.
What does it mean to put a shot on screen?
What assumptions are made by the audience when they are shown something?
When we enter into a movie, especially a narrative one,
there's an unspoken contract between viewer and
filmmaker, that promises us we will only be shown relevant things.
The images will mean something.
There is meaning in the moment.
Thus the simple act of selecting a shot is a choice.
It is a message from the director and the editor to the audience.
This is relevant.
This is worth viewing.
This is important.
So, when there's nothing immediately relevant about a shot.
We have two options.
Assume the filmmaker has broken the contract, or
assume that the meeting will soon become clear.
And I think that here, as in most good examples of the over long shot,
we choose the latter and the inexplicable link arouses our suspicion further.
The longer a shot is held, the more it insists upon its own importance.
Every extra second without a cut is another decision.
This is still relevant, this is still important.
All of a sudden, it's not what's on screen that's speaking to us,
but the way it's on screen.
Which is to say we're not learning things from what's in the shot
from the story itself, but from the method of the story telling.
The film making itself contains clues to the story.
There's a president to this shot of this type especially because it's static.
The camera moves zero, it's as if it knows that the future will happen within it's
frame, that the actual be contain by its four wall.
But what we have in front of us is a record player,
a room and a recently opened window.
And when we've we run of things to watch in the frame our mind begins to wonder to
what might be happening outside of it, beyond it and into to film making itself.
And what we probably don't arrive at the right answer before we see it,
we believe that deep down after thousands and fact.
Thousands of cumulative hours of media experience, the audience can intuitively
predict the general shape of storytelling patterns with shocking acumen.
You know that something is afoot,
even before you're able to pass that suspicion into clear language.
So, when we finally do see her jump, it is sudden, but not unearned.
It's not this.
>> [MUSIC].
>> Speaker 1: That feels cheap, no, it shocks us and yet
makes perfect sense all at once.
Because it wasn't just the content of the shot we were learning from.
It was the length of the shot itself.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Filmmakers do the opposite of this too.
If we're talking about cutting short as a form of communication in itself,
the most obvious example is the smash cut,
the jarring abrupt ending of one scene in its abutment to another.
It cuts out time to reveal a meaningless In the removed portion.
Often, it's combined with an implied expectation that you'll see
something next that you don't.
Another variation is the smash ending.
Inception is probably the most iconic version of this, but
it is not the only one.
Cutting before something the audience is anticipating tells the viewer,
no, you don't get to see it.
But also in a sense it tells them, no, that isn't the point, so
if holding a shot from longer than feels natural is to suggest that something
important is going to happen.
One of the effects of cutting a shot shorter than we expect
is to say very specifically that it isn't.
So take a look at No Country for Old Men for our second brilliant moment.
>> Speaker 2: This is the best I can do.
Call it.
>> Speaker 3: No, I ain't gonna call it.
>> Speaker 2: Call it.
>> Speaker 3: The coin don't have no say.
It's just you.
>> Speaker 2: I got here the same way the coin did.
>> [SOUND]
>> Speaker 1: It's like a soft quiet smash cut and it feels so hopeless.
It feels cold, a cold subtle violence.
The Cohen's have already pushed us out of the previous scene without a satisfying
sense of resolution.
So we're already in a heightened,
scrutinizing mode asking ourselves did he kill her?
Did she survive?
And while we think the answer is pretty clear, especially if you take it in
context with the last scene we analyzed from No Country, we are primed and
looking for answers.
Before we talk too much about the cut itself, we wanna first look at the rest of
the Dave Coen where, for clues as to what the Coens are going for in this section.
This is a complicated ending.
Narratively, and especially thematically.
But I think the emotions are pretty clear.
The entire ending involves us, as an audience, Not getting what we want.
Our hero perishes.
The sheriff fails.
The villain makes off with the money.
We don't even get a final battle.
It happens off screen, and then not at all.
So, we are left waiting expecting a resolution, justice,
confrontation, comeuppance.
Stories come with neat endings we've been told.
Our myths wrap up nicely.
So, where's ours?
And the story is still going.
Just like the from Ida,
this is subconsciously tells us that there's something worth waiting for.
But the Cohens seem to be very specifically frustrating this
expectation and
nowhere is this more clean than in the car crash where the film appears to offer us.
Contribution before revealing it to be a misdirect.
The resolution never comes, chance really does prevail.
So this entire section is about us waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And it just kinda doesn't.
And and in the midst of all this, we get our moment.
And we're asking ourselves the same questions we ask in any shot.
Why are we watching him check his boots?
Why are we watching him walk off the porch?
This isn't something we usually see in films.
Irrelevant walking from place to place is usually ellipsed by transitions,
but we're seeing it here.
What's going to happen?
And then awkwardly, off rhythmically mid-step it cuts, it smash cuts.
Listen to the audio, there's no fade here as in scene transitions.
Additions prior.
It's a hard audio.
That says something.
Will something happen to him, we ask.
No the movie says.
No, he gets away.
This part doesn't matter.
We can skip forward.
There is no tense get away, no shout from inside, no witnesses emerge.
We are not actually showing you this moment, because it's trivial.
Painfully uneventful.
and the cut says this intentionally in its method, not its content.
You see, a story has two parts, it's narrative, the story that's being told,
and it's narration, the way the story is being told.
Here, nothing spectacular is happening, but the way it's being told,
that's where we're being played with.
That's where we're being talked to.
For a point of comparison, try the scene cut more conventionally.
[SOUND] Less impact, no?
But that wouldn't let the Coens talk to us through their storytelling.
Wouldn't have them teach us a lesson about how artificial happy endings are.
About how the universe has no justice.
Just cause, effect, and a little chance.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: So what do you think?
Do you have any other brilliant moments you want us to take a look at?
Any thoughts on the ones we mentioned here?
Let us know in the comments below and
be sure to subscribe for more Cinefix movie lists.
>> [MUSIC]