Rhythm, Harmoy and Logic in Shot Division

[student_1]

Hello!
Could anyone please advise me as to how do I plan my shots? I know that while storyboarding u gotta plan ur shots but where does rhythm harmony and logic come in while I put the shots together?
Please help

 

[Digigenic]

Hey Student_1, welcome to the forums. 8)
The realization of how you implement rhythm harmony and logic into telling your story depends on how you yourself interpret the direction of the story and what type of story you’re telling. This is sometimes facilitated through the storyboarding process, where you create physical representations of what you’d imagined, being that these are elements that generally imbed themselves in your imagination early on when creating or reading the story, so it just depends on how you envisioned it playing out while you first experienced it. Though, after repetitious readings of the story, an analytical framework begins to shape the story and logic can recur to give it a nudge of practicality.

 

[Digigenic]

...also
when editing the project, you'll discover a different, somewhat systematic approach to retaining the rythm and harmony of your project. Because, once it's all laid out in front of you, you may very well end up with an entirely different film, happens all the time.

 

[student_1]

Thank you both.

 

[laurent.a]

You don't have to thank both, it's Jacob who replied :wink:

That is a very interesting question actually, sorry I didn't see the topic sooner...

The rythm is the most difficult thing to learn, I think.

It comes not only from each shot'rythm, but from the shot put together (as a sequence) and then from the sequences put together and that make the film.

Let's begin with a single shot. The rythm is given by many combined parameters :

The actor(s) or acting things 's play and rythm (I call an acting thing something that "plays" : a car moving, leaves on a tree moving with the wind...)

In the acting part there is the way the actor speaks (quick, slow... depending on the meaning of what is said...), the way the gesture, the way they move

the camera's rythm : still shot, tracking, paning, zooming... speeds, depending on what is in the frame...

The time lenght of the shot, depending on the action's richness or poorness. Sometimes things that happen in even only a few seconds can be boring or a long scene if a lot happens seems quick...

The question is not the time it takes, but the feeling of duration we have from the scene.

You have to notice, about moves (who have their own speed and rythm value) that the feeling of speed and duration depends on the camera parameters : a wide shot would give a slower feeling of the same action shot with a long lens. Also the position is important. If a car is coming in the axis to the camera, it would seem slower than going perpendicular to this axis.

Then when you edit the sequence and put shots together, you give another parameter to the sequence's rythm. Do you let the actor go out and then let him in in the next shot or do you cut before he's out of the frame, and then, take the next shot as he's already in the frame ? Cuts are like rythm bars in music, where you put them builds the rythm.

The way you manage intercuts at the shooting has then a BIG importance on the rythm you'll get editing.

The ting is to play with it. Like many forms in a movie, speed and rythm has to constantly be in a sort dialectic, not always "speed" not alwys slow. It's a matter of contrast. With light, colours, music, emotions, speed and rythm. If you put something speedy after a cool qsequence, you feel more the speed again. It's like puting a bit of cold color in a frame where the light is mainly warm. The cold bit will enhance the warm ambient. People don't notice. It's unconscious. But it works.