Blog Post #21 - Pacing in Films

Have you ever while watching a film, felt that it was too slow and boring, or felt that it was too fast and hard to process? This is caused by the pacing of the film's narrative, and scenes, Pacing is the speed of the narrative; how much happens in a given amount of time. Pacing is important to a narrative— Imagine if in a movie, the major plot points were only 10 seconds apart, this would make the story too fast, and take away the impact of the story. If the pacing of the film is too slow, it would make the story too long, boring, and unengaging.



I read two articles on premiumbeat.com, and studiobinder.com in order to develop my knowledge on the pacing of films.


Pacing should be planned for during pre-production, in places such as the script, or storyboard. Planning for pacing during pre-production will help the film's pace to seem more natural, and to allow shooting with a clear goal and focus in mind. 


My research helped me to learn that pacing can further be developer by a lack of, or presence of movement. Movement can create momentum from shots or scenes to other shots or scenes. Momentum can make transitions seem more smooth and clean, and can help to make the pacing feel faster, even if it is not. This also means that momentum and pacing from scene to scene must be appropriate, not drastically changing and being appropriate for the given scene.


Appropriate pacing for a film varies in different genres, and even depending on the story, and message being told in the film. For example, action films tend to have a faster pace, while a romance film may have a slower pace. Some genres, like a horror film may start off slow, but ramp up the pace as it goes on,


A way to control the pacing of a film is to make sure your script includes appropriate downtime, scenes or lines that do not push forward the script, these can include something like comedic scenes, or unimportant side plots. A scene can be extended, shortened, cut, or reworked in order to control the pacing of a scene.


I plan to use these rules and reccomendations of pacing in my project, as I realized during my last post that I may have planned for too much during the runtime of my project. I realize I may need to extend certain scenes in order to reach an maintain an appropriate and entertaining pacing. I will write a blog post in the next few days to speak on my ideas for adjusted pacing.

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