Pace (speed)
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D. W. Griffith said, "Pace is the secret of the director's art...[It is] the ebb and flow of...tides of excitement, the rhythmical movement of events toward...consummation."
All time arts - music, dance, drama, film - are enormously concerned with pacing - with rhythm or tempo. As the film director translates events in a script into actions that make up scenes and sequences, that is, as the director shapes the actors' performances and stages the other actions in front of the camera, one of his or her paramount concerns is pacing, making the action swell, subside, and swell again.
The director does this to keep the scene from losing its energy and intensity. Later, after the shooting is over, the director, working with the film editor, will further control, construct, and perfect the pacing in the way he or she builds shots into scenes and sequences.
See also internal rhythm and external rhythm.
