Alexander Vousden - Rule of 6

As we discussed in class, Walter Murch’s “Rule of Six” consists of six elements to building the story within an edit. He put the six elements as a list of priorities. These priorities can be used as a plan for your edit or a guideline to follow that ensures the audience’s interest in the film. I wanted to list them out and go more in depth with them.

The most important is emotion. Telling the emotion of the story is the single most important part when it comes to the editing stage. Murch says emotion “is the thing that you should to preserve at all costs”.

When editing, the editor should ask ‘does the edit move the story forward in a meaningful way’? Each cut you make needs to keep the story moving. If the story isn't advancing, its confusing or boring the audience.

Having rhythm is making sure cuts are put in a rhythmic sense. Cuts should be smooth and make sense to the story. Like music, editing must have a beat/tempo that gives it good timing.

Cuts affect the location and movement of the audience’s eye trace. An editor should always be aware of where in the frame you want your audience to look and cut accordingly.

The last two are the two dimensional place of screen and three dimensional space. This is where the 180 degree rule states that you draw an imaginary line in between your characters and keep the camera on only one side of that line. This also must be done in editing.