Editing a movie is one of the most important roles in a movie production line because he is the one who basically controls control what people get to see at the end. Good editing skills can make a movie stand out higher as opposed to bad editing can ruin the movie for the audience.

 PACING OF A MOVIE
this is a key aspect all of the editors should look out for actually the most recent movie Bohemian Rhapsody has done wrongfully, Yes they won the Academy Award for the best film editing, that's because they have done a great job in editing and telling the story but even the best editors can make mistakes we will see was it a mistake or they were trying to do something different their??

The following I'm going to show you is a scene from the movie Bohemian Rhapsody where Freddie Mercury And his band (QUEENS) meet John Reid for a business talk.

          

this scene concludes 62 cuts which is too much for a scene like this, here's how PACE of the scene VS No. of CUTS work

Normally Higher cut-rate (cute per seconds) is HIGHER this is used mostly in fighting scenes or scenes involving lots of action

A higher pace is normally used in fighting scene or scenes involving lots of actions, so what happens is the editor doesn't want the audience to keep track of each and every cut(scenes), in a higher paced scene like a fighting scene it may look very slow if the editor keeps the scene locked for one cut only and focusing on one cut for too long may gonna reveal fake actor movements since almost all of the fight scenes are unrealistic and CGI. So the editor used his editing power to up the pace to bring more activeness to the scene.

lower pacer rate vs higher pacer rate in movie editing


A slower pace is used in scenes like conversations or scenes with revealing sensitive information to the audience.

In this scene, Queens are having a very important discussion with John Reid and this meeting is very important to Queens since there future will be decided on this. If you go through this scene counting the no. of cuts the scene has 62 cuts which are too many for this kind of scene, as you already know.  It only makes it harder to keep our focus on the dialogues in the conversation. Clearly, the pace of the scene was misjudged by the creators of the movie. We can't blame just the editor in this case because the Director and Cinematographer should have given closer attention to a scene like this. The other explanation to this problem would be lack of footage and the usability of the footages given to the editor by the director, What I meant is let's think that the editor only has given very short clips and few close-ups by the editor then he has no other choice but to make something out what he has given.

So If you'll editing a scene in a movie you want to understand the pace of the scene and each and every cut should be motivated (means cut you're making should be related to the previous cut or the dialogue) and decide how to keep the audience interested in what's happening on the movie. These qualities will surely make you a better editor.

Thank You for Reading!!!

SHARE if you like the article and read the other articles as well.