Anthony Roca ponders: > Recently, I was asked to speak on defining PACE in film. I was asked to > define PACE AND to describe it use in film. For me this primarily has to do > with editing and blocking and maybe scoring BUT it has been a few years since > film school AND does anyone have any other thoughts. I would love thoughts on > both areas I mentioned and others that might be part of pace. I suspect that actors, editors, directors and cinematographers may all have differing definitions, but that points out how "pace" may involve different (and conflicting) elements of acting, cinematography, music and editing. Overall, the word may connote simple speed, usually a matter of editing and movement (as in "MOULIN ROUGE is frenetically paced" or "Bresson's films are slow-paced"), or much more complex notions of appropriate timing in any combination of those elements (as in "In HENRY V, Oliver attempted to match the pacing of camera movement and editing to his delivery of Shakespeare's lines" or "The slow pace of Barber's 'Adagio for Strings' contrasts sharply with violence and pace of the action in scenes from PLATOON"). Delivery of dialogue can be another factor. My students are sometimes put off by the fast patter of characters in films from the 1930s and 1940s (MY MAN GODFREY, HIS GIRL FRIDAY, THE MALTESE FALCON, etc.) until they get used to it. Such definitions can apply to individual scenes as well as to films as a whole. Don Larsson ----------------------------------------------------------- Donald F. Larsson, English Department, AH 230 Minnesota State University Mankato, MN 56001 ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu