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What is worth noting here is that, whether the effect comes after the spectator has been prewarned, or whether it comes as a shock, it must be planned from some way back. If suspense is aimed at, the spectator must first be shown what to wait for. If a shock is intended, the prewarning must be, so to speak, negative : the spectator must be deliberately led away from the significant event before it can come to him as a surprise.
The choice between anticipating a climax and bringing it on as a surprise arises on a more routine level every time an editor cuts to a close shot. The question arises when a particularly startling event is just about to occur — say a character is just about to take poison — whether to cut to the close-up at or before the crucial moment. If the cut to the close-up occurs some time before the actor swallows the poison, then the very fact that a close-up has come on the screen will make the spectator anticipate a climax and feel suspense for it to happen. Alternatively, if the cut to the close-up coincides with the moment the lips touch the glass, it will come as a surprise. In the example we have just quoted, the editor, after giving the spectator a shock, chose to hold back the really frightening image for a further fourteen frames, thereby adding a momentary uncertainty and suspense before the final revelation.
Pace : Rhythm
In our analysis of the final chase sequence from Naked City we saw how the director and editor contrived to vary the state of tension by continually altering the rate of cutting. By various mechanical means they controlled the speed of the passage of events and thereby the degree of excitement evoked by the scene. We must now turn our attention to the different mechanical means of controlling pace which are at the editor's disposal.
The variation of pace is significant only in so far as it quickens or dulls the spectator's interest in what he sees on the screen. In any discussion of it, it is therefore important to distinguish between the pace created mechanically — by simply making the images come on the screen at a faster rate — and the pace generated by the inherent interest of the story. A sequence can be at once fast-moving and dull — witness the chase at the end of almost any second-rate Western ; or it can be slow-moving and tense — witness some of the famous Hitchcock suspense scenes. However quickly the passage of events at the climax of Naked City had been
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