There are no rules in writing, but if you break them… Here’s a thing. There are certain ways of writing, certain ways of doing all sorts of things really, that are frankly naff and yet there are people who do them well. I would tell you, for instance, that the sole way I can stomach reading a narrator is if they are lying sods who are out to fool me and preferably along the way are also kidding themselves. Unreliable narrators, can’t get enough of them. Regular narrators, forget it. A regular narrator is just the writer unable to dramatise plot exposition.<\/p>\n
But then you get Frank Darabont’s screenplay for “The Shawshank Redemption” and you might argue that the narrator isn’t fully in control of what he’s saying, but really, no, it is straight, ordinary, regular narration, yet it works. It is somehow human. Break it down sentence by sentence, consider the performance as well as the writing, and I don’t think you can reasonably conclude anything other than this should not work but it does.<\/p>\n
This is on my mind because, while this may seem unrelated, I also cannot bear jump cuts in videos. Stick with me here. Jump cuts are that thing where sometimes someone has cut a bit out of a video and didn’t know how to join the ends properly, in which case I think they’re insulting me by not having bothered to look into that. It also sometimes when someone has deliberately put in jump cuts because they apparently believe it’s exciting and if they ever spend more time on actually making their material better instead, do let me know. <\/p>\n
But.<\/p>\n
I just watched a four-minute video that contains 223 jump cuts.<\/p>\n
And I didn’t just watch it as in I saw it right now, I’ve watched it before, often, and I am sure I will watch it again, often, because it is superbly well done. <\/p>\n
It’s OK Go performing a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR, but doing so when NPR was moving offices. The song follows the band as the original office is taken down, as they all travel across town, and as the new office is set up again. One song, with titles running four minutes and 47 seconds, so say an average of one severe jump cut every 1.3 seconds.<\/p>\n
Joyous. That’s what it is.<\/p>\n
Have a look. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Wm63LibDiFk<\/p>\n
I think you can make a case that the cuts were integral to the whole idea, that it certainly wasn’t laziness and it was far from ignorance. There was a point and it worked, I think that much is certain.<\/p>\n
But I also think that it’s talent. Indefinable but unmistakeable talent. Doing the wrong things so well that they are right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are no rules in writing, but if you break them… Here’s a thing. There are certain ways of writing, … Continue reading