Konstantin Stanislavski, was developing. However, two concepts that are also very helpful to editors in training their eyes to see emotions move come out of Stanislavski’s “ method. ”
THE ACTOR’S ACTIONS
One important concept Stanislavski introduced to the training of actors is the idea of “actions. ” An action, in actors ’ terms, is the actor’s psychological intention spelled out as a verb. The reason for making his intentions into verbs is to give the actor something to do rather than to be: doing is active, being is passive. Most importantly, for the editor, the action, being a verb, implies movement of thoughts or feelings.
Actions in this sense make the text or the subtext into emotional move- ment. If an actor has the line, “May I have some cake? ” his subtext may or may not be the same as the text. He may be saying the words that ask for cake, but the subtext is asking not for cake, but, for example, for affection.
Actors will try to make their actions as active and emotionally accurate to their subtext as possible. “To ask ” is one possible action, but depend- ing on what the actor thinks is his real objective in the scene, “to ask ” might turn into “to plead, ” “to manipulate, ” “to distract, ” “to deceive, ” “to declare love for. ”. . . Whereas some of these may seem outlandish with reference to a simple piece of cake, it is important to remember that unless all the character really wants is cake, he could be asking for any number of things —love, time, respite, engagement, or forgiveness, for example. His objective is what he really wants; his action is what he is doing to get what he wants. His action is the energy that propels his movement.
An editor can look at the actor’s movement (including the sound movement of the voices rather than the words) and see what an actor is doing subtextually. If the editor can see the action, for example,
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pleading, behind the words, then she can discern a point at which the action has reached its optimal energetic point for the throw. The editor can perceive the action as a movement phrase, see where its cadences, breaths, stress points, etc., are, and make the cut at the exact point at which she wants to throw the energy to the next actor for precisely the impact she wants it to have.
If we look at an actor’s action as what he is really doing, then we can explain why cuts that don’t match perfectly in continuity still work. When the emotional energy is being shaped, we don’t notice little con- tinuity errors or mismatches because we are not watching the character reach for cake; we are watching him reach for affection. Our attention is not on the movement patterns in and of themselves, it is on their emo- tional meaning. If the cut throws the emotion well, then our eye follows the emotion, not the cake. The emotional movement is visible, as Murch tells us, in the rate and quality of blinks and also in the breath, the tilt of the head, the purse of the lips, the raise of an eyebrow, etc., and all of these movements, especially seen in close-up or medium close-up, are effective ways of throwing the emotion. So if an actor reaches for cake with one hand and then picks it up with the other, this continuity gaffe will go unnoticed if the actor is truthfully inhabiting the body of the character. If the actor is playing his action and throws his emotion to the other actor with movement such as a hopeful raise of his eyes, then, as his eyes lift up, the editor sees the emotion move and cuts to his girl- friend. Does she reassure or turn away from that hopeful pleading? The editor has thrown the movement of the emotional energy and opened the questions, “How will it be caught? ” and “What will be the effect this emotional cause has? ”
Throwing the emotion well is not just a case of deciding on the cadence of the emotion being thrown but how it is going to be received. If we go back to the dancers ’ improvisation, the dancers receive the energy as it is thrown, so what they are reacting to is not just the energy but where it is directed. If it slams at their head, they don’t shake it off their
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fi ngers. Film actors are not improvising; even if they were on set, now that they’re on fi lmstrips, they are not any longer. So, the editor can look both at the available range of reactions and at the available range of throwing actions before choosing exactly where to cut. The editor’s job is to shape the movement of the emotion by shaping a movement that feels as though the actor who catches it is responding to what was thrown. It is the actor’s performance that draws our “eye-trace ” 4 to the emotional movement; it is the editor’s cut that determines the trajec- tory of the throw.
BEATS
The Stanislavski “ method ” has another word that could be very use- ful for editors in shaping emotional rhythm, which is “ beats. ” There are a number of possible interpretations of this idea, but for our pur- poses we will say that the beat is the point at which an actor changes or modifi es his action.
For example, if a character named Joe wants affection but asks for cake, his girlfriend might say, “Help yourself. ” But if his girlfriend is with- holding affection and her action is “to ignore, ” then Joe, having failed to achieve his objective (getting affection) with his fi rst action, “ to ask, ” will then shift his action to any number of other actions as the scene and the director require, such as “to demand, ” “to inspire, ” or “ to insist. ” The change of action, or change of what Joe is doing to achieve his objective, from asking to demanding is called a beat. There may be any number of beats in a scene until objectives are achieved (Joe gets affection) or thwarted (his girlfriend breaks up with him). Keep in mind that, in the real world of a documentary or in a well-crafted drama, the other person, the girlfriend in this case, will also have objectives. She will have actions she is trying to do to achieve them and beats as she changes her action to accomplish her goals. The emotional energy is thrown between the two characters, back and forth. If Joe throws his request for affection gently, by asking, and the girlfriend throws back
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a block by ignoring, then the change of Joe’s action to demanding is caused by the emotional energy his girlfriend threw. This is a cause- and-effect chain. Asking causes ignoring, ignoring causes demanding, and so on. Emotion moves back and forth, like a tennis ball in play. But it is the editor who shapes the rhythm of the game. She shapes it by choosing the shots for the energy they contain, juxtaposing the shots to make a dynamic and credible emotional arc and trimming the shots to the frames on which the energy is optimally thrown and caught.
What is important for the editor is that a beat gives her the chance to see the end of one emotional energy trajectory and the rise of another. The energy of the actor’s movement will change according to the actor’s inten- tion, and editors who sensitize themselves to these changes can see beats as little movement phrases. For some it may be useful to articulate the change verbally, to pinpoint the movement on which the actor changes from asking to demanding. For others it may be just as useful to detect movement changes more abstractly, to see energy shift, to detect changes in timing, pacing, and trajectory, and to know that these are beats. Seeing beats in either way gives the editor the chance to see the rhythms inherent in the actor’s movement. For example, if Joe’s action is to ask, his eyes will move directly, and he is likely to blink at the end of his request, throw- ing it to his girlfriend with a simple and direct energetic motion. If his girlfriend throws back hostility by ignoring him, Joe will have a beat, a responsive shift of his action to this new emotional development. Possibly that beat can be seen as he looks away, blinks a few times, maybe bites his lip or sighs, possibly not. Either way, the beat will occur as he shifts into his new action, in this case to demand, and his eye, breath, head, and face movement will change again. The editor uses all of these moves as potential cutting points, because they are the movement from which she will shape the rhythms inherent in and constitutive of the meaning in the actors ’ exchange.
In sum, editors throw the emotional energy of one shot to the next by choosing which shots to juxtapose and the frames on which to juxtapose
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them. When the throw is caught and the response is thrown back, the editor has shaped a cause-and-effect chain. To shape the cause- and-effect chain effectively, the editor watches for the movement of emotion across faces, gestures, and sound. The ability to see Meyerhold’s preparation, action, recovery arc and Stanislavski’s actions and beats gives editors the ability to see emotional energy move and ways of cutting emotional movement into rhythms.