Whiplash: How Directors Control Physical Elements Of Film

A huge part of film and how film is made is how directors control physical elements of filming to display themes in their movies. This results in a powerful way of expression oneself through film. This can be done in many ways, including editing. Editing is taking footage and crafting that footage together to make the film and directors can use various techniques to make the best version of a film possible.

In 2014, Damien Chazelle released his Drama film that was nominated for 5 Oscars and won 3, including Best Film Editing, Whiplash. Whiplash is about a young musician who is willing to work as hard as he possibly can to be the very best. Whiplash revolves around a young man named Andrew, who is going to school and wants to be a famous drummer. In

A major scene that not only set the tone and theme of the film, but also establishes the editing, is when Andrew attends his first practice with his new director, Fletcher. Andrew is a little nervous at first, but Fletcher comes and talks to him about his musical background. The more Andrew and Fletcher talk, the more the editing slows down. The scene started off with slow editing, but as soon as Fletcher started talking to Andrew, it speeds up. During their conversation the shot would change every time a character spoke. As Andrew got more relaxed, the editing slowed down to every other line the character spoke. Then Fletcher told Andrew several times that he just needed to relax and from that point on, the over the shoulder shot stay on only Andrew and is without editing, even when Fletcher walks away. Andrew then walks back into the practice room and begins to get ready for rehearsal. The editing shows that he is very relaxed because there are very few cuts and he is moving in almost slow motion. When Fletcher walks in the slow motion stops, but the slow editing remains the same. This all changes when Fletcher points out that Andrew screwed up. As Andrew continually screws up, the