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In today’s tutorial, one of the pieces of recurring advice that really stood out for me regarding the editing of our documentaries was the importance of leaving space within a film. That is, allowing space between speech so that it doesn’t turn into a bombardment of talking; something that people will begin to tune out to.

A great example of this can be seen in many of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, which contain long stretches of film with little to no dialogue. Indeed, this may be said to be a staple of Japanese cinema, particularly in animated films, as similarly noted by Scott McCloud in Blood in the Gutter. The effect of this varies, but often it sets the tone of the film, and allows peace between shots. The sample below is from the 1988 film My Neighbour Totoro, in which the long stretches of silence within the film go a long way in creating an incredibly intimate scene, as the films ensures that the smallest things are noticed; whether that be the croak of a frog, or the sound of a raindrop falling onto an umbrella. The scene also serves to establish and characterise the relationship between Totoro and the little girl Satsuki. It almost seems counter-intuitive, that stretches of audial absence could create an intimate experience and connection between the viewer and the subject, but this is something that I have seen recurrently as an established technique for doing just that. Films must be allowed to breathe.