Cut to the Chase

In a recent episode of Nerdwriter, video essayist Evan Puschank spoke about There Will Be Blood and how by simply paying attention to the length of the shots, a viewer can begin to understand their favorite film, if not completely, than at least better. It's a wonderful essay and one I can not recommend enough (Evan's Nerdwriter essays as well as Tony Zhou's Every Frame A Painting series are just about essential viewing for any aspiring filmmaker).

I used to believe that the longer the average shot length, the better. I thought that longer shots were more cinematic, more conducive to telling a richer, more thoughtful story. And maybe that's true for some films. I certainly wouldn't enjoy watching an intimate dialogue scene broken apart into a hundred separate shots. Sometimes it's better to let a moment or a performance breath.

However, over the last few years, I've begun to appreciate and even love a shorter shot length. That's about when I realized that there is a graceful way to do it, one motivated by story and character. Just look at Edgar Wright's Baby Driver from earlier this year, where the short average shot length puts us right there in the car with Baby. Or look at what Martin Scorsese has done throughout his career with films like Raging Bull and Goodfellas. There, the quick cutting draws us into the experience, alongside the characters.

Like almost everything in filmmaking, short average shot lengths need to be motivated. They have to serve a larger purpose. And that's also true of long takes as well. That ten minute unbroken shot may be technically impressive, but how does it enhance the story for the audience? Is it about the characters or is the shot simply about itself?

In a few weeks we're going to be shooting a new film called Get the Van Running. It's a short that, almost like The Future West was for Down and Yonder, serves as something of a litmus test for a much larger project that we're hoping to do one way. It'll be my first time going for that rapid, music video approach to filmmaking (something I believe is appropriate for a story about two aspiring musicians). It's been a challenge to write and plan, but I hope it will prove to be a worthy project.

It's something a bit different, and that's good.