🎬⏯ What is pacing in film? Good Time and Uncut Gems Explained

Pacing is achieved through changes in shots and their duration, as well as camera and character movement.This article explores the concept of pacing in film using Good Time and Uncut Gems as examples.

I will discusses about external pacing and movement, including shot length and amplitude, and how they influence the overall pacing axis of a film.

And internal pacing, which is rooted in the narrative and a combination of many factors, including events, plot, and scene movement.

We often hear the word 'pacing' used in film criticism, as if it were some kind of 'high-class word' that takes the word up a notch. That is because the concept of 'pacing' in the film is abstract and has multiple definitions, making it difficult to summarize concretely.

In this article, I'll take a look at the Safdie brothers, an up-and-coming directing partner known for their fast-paced style, to help you understand what pacing is. At the same time, taking Good Time (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019) as examples, I will look at how directors use pacing to create anxiety and keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

SHOT

In everyday life, our audio-visual perception is of the same pacing. The appeal of cinema lies in employing audio-visual elements to achieve specific audio-visual effects such as speeding up, slowing down, intensifying, and weakening. We could encapsulate pacing as a regular variation of the various audio-visual elements.

One of the most perceptible external pacingic elements is the SHOT. To understand this better, I will try to abstract the concept of pacing by focusing only on the changes in the shot.

Feel the sense of tension and unease at the beginning of Good Time.

① 01:02-01:20, advancing from an extreme long shot of the city to a smaller shot;

② 01:20-01:45, close-up of eyes, as the mentally disabled Nick, one of the main characters, enters the scene;

③ Pull back slightly to start the story as Nick begins to answer questions;

④ 05:00-05:20, back-and-forth dialogue until Nick has an emotional breakdown.

It is often common to relax to a medium or close shot for such scenes with dull, stiff-eyed, communication-challenged characters so that the tightly focused close-ups can create a sense of intense oppression easily.

Let us compare it with the opening scene of the classic Blade Runner (1982) when interrogating the replicants, both of which have particularly similar content but a different emotional effects.

①② 05:19, close shot, the replicant is questioned;

③④ 05:44, the atmosphere becomes awkward;

⑤ 05:49, close-up, tension builds up.

Can you feel the effect of this shot's change? Compared to Blade Runner, the close-ups in Good Time seem to keep stepping on the heaviest 'note.

Here is a small conversation with a communication-disordered person in Prisoners (2013). It repeats the lighter 'note' with a close-up accent at the end.

①② 37:05-Medium shot-close shot;

③④ Dialogue. The officer asks to speak to the suspect alone. Keeping medium shot, forward and backward;

⑤ 37:44-Close-ups of bewildering.

In this regard, I have demonstrated the effect brought about by the single element of the shot, which changes regularly in the film.

External pacing and movement

It is in the changes that pacing arises. Two factors influence the external pacing of the shot editing sequence: the amplitude of the shot, which we have just focused on; and the length of the shot, i.e. the duration of the shot and the sense of temporal continuity of what is going on.

We can draw an axis "from the relaxed, calm, soothing, placid, slow-paced end of the spectrum to the tense, impulsive, impatient, lively, fast-paced section, with the normal pacing of our everyday visual habits in between." Large views create an effect that tends more towards the left end, while close shots tend towards the right end; long shots create an effect that tends more towards the left, while short shots tend towards the right end...

The elements that influence the overall pacingic axis of a film cover everything in it, and they are often interrelated and interlocked, acting between images. The complexity of their combination brings about a thousand different expressive effects and stylistic presentations.

Safdie brothers use the telephoto close-ups of the character's face frequently. Keeping the viewer focused on specific information and compressing the spatial depth to bring about dreamy bewilderment have become the hallmark of their cinematic style.

Capturing only one character's face in a single shot requires multiple cuts and frequent camera changes to show a whole dialogue. That means in the same amount of time, the duration of a single shot is reduced, so the pace is quickened.

10:50-11:09, a simple conversation is cut back and forth six times

Of course, we cannot talk about pacing in isolation from the motion of the lens; indeed, pacing is built on the dialectical relationship between them. Film motion encompasses both the movement of the subject and the movement of the camera. Smaller scenes mean less space, and then, to show a full sequence of action, the camera needs to pivot to the pacing of the character's movements. More camera movement naturally brings about a sense of movement.

Compared to fixed shots, motion shots are more pacingic and create excitement. The prolongation of time brought about by the movement expresses the mood.

Internal pacing and psychological techniques

If the external pacing is a choice of viewing style and perspective, emphasizing "how to see", internal pacing is rooted in the narrative, pointing to "what is happening in the picture? It is a complex combination of many factors, such as events, plot, and scene movement, that we need to analyze from a different perspective. Uncut Gems is a fine example of a film that maintains the style of the Good Time image while having a more sophisticated internal pacing technique.

Howard (by Adam Sandler), the jeweler, initially expects to sell an opal for a high price, but on the way, the imposing Kevin borrowed it. Plus, he is caught up in all sorts of trouble himself - addicted to sports gambling, family relationships in shambles, and thugs coming to his door time and time again to collect debts.

The back-and-forth, detailed ambush of the narrative itself creates a density of events. This density is reinforced by the multiple threads taking place simultaneously within the same space and time of the film, thus creating a pacing.

The scene in the middle of the film where Kevin Garnett arrives at the shop to return the diamonds is one of the most iconic moments. Let's see the internal pacing established in these short eight-and-a-half minutes (63:10-71:40) through a series of turns of events and outbursts of conflict.

1-2 - Howard receives three successive phone calls: a rush for diamonds from an auction house, a response to Howard's complaint from Kevin's team personnel, and a lover, Julia, trying to salvage a broken relationship. (negative)

3 - Kevin and De Mani come to return the diamond and are greeted with smiling faces (positive), only to find the door won't open and the party is trapped in a cramped glass security door compartment (negative)

4 - The door finally opens (positive). The championship ring Kevin demands as collateral was pawned by Howard for money to gamble with long ago (negative).

5-6-After lying, he finally gets back the diamond he's been longing for (positive). But he has a confrontation with his partner, De Mani (negative).

7 - In the middle of a tirade, the doctor calls to tell Howard that his rectal cancer test results are in order (positive).

8 - Going down the stairs, he encounters his lover, Julia, who pesters him and leads him into a confrontation (negative).

Look at the density of events and emotional folds in the mere eight and a half minutes. There are several similar sequences in the film. Positive and negative emotions alternate over and over again, irritating, happy, excited, embarrassed, and annoyed mood shifts at the drop of a hat, such is the creation of a strong sense of pacing pacing.

This sequence also showcases one of the features of Safdie's film, where multiple characters talk at the same time, several phone calls come in simultaneously, and voices are superimposed on each other in one scene. The influx of information is noisy, and the small scenes prevent the speaker from appearing in one shot. This audio-visual double-tracking deliberately brings the natural progression of events into conflict with the audience's audio-visual viewing habits, causing a change of pace in the audience's mind.

In the scene Good Time (27:14) . Four characters often speak at the same time, their voices superimposed on each other, each trying to talk to the other, while three characters also talk to each other off-screen via phone calls. This was an earlier attempt by the Safdie brothers.

In Uncut Gems this kind of dialogue scene is more often employed. (65:30-) In this scene, the three people trapped inside the door are talking, as are the three people outside the door, and there are moments when all the conversations are fully overlaid on top of each other.

There is a cognitive phenomenon called the 'McGurk effect', which refers to the fact that in the process of speech perception, the human sense of hearing is sometimes overly influenced by vision, resulting in mishearing. For example, when nearsighted people take off their glasses and communicate with others, there is always a sense of inaudibility. This is a response to the reliance on vision in the perception of human language. When we hear multiple conversations, we instinctively see the facial gestures of the speaker and eagerly anticipate the next cut. When this anxiety is mobilized, the pacing has already changed in our minds.

The intensity of the plot, the volume of information, and the impatience can also be exhausting. And just in between all the contradictions and twists, a little trick is repeatedly inserted - a close-up of the button that breaks up the action and makes the signature sound, forcing another pacing while also acting like an alarm clock to remind the weary viewer to stay awake.

1-The telephone button (64:08)

2-Doorbell (65:41).

3-Elevator buttons (71:15).