"Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out." -- Martin Scorsese

If you are interested in film, editing, and in action films especially, then these short video-essays by film Critic Jim Emerson make for fascinating viewing. In the first, by dissecting the chase sequence from Christopher Nolan's 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight, he explores the language of film and how directors and editors will often dispense with visual logic and break the rules of filming in the pursuit of bigger, bolder, but not always better, action.

"Ultimately, everything about the movie -- the characters, the story, the emotions -- all come down to what is inside the frame, what's left out of the frame, and the associations that are made between different shots, as they're all pieced together. Compositions, angles, camera movements -- they take on different meanings depending on their relationships to the other shots around them. So, something that maybe isn't in the frame, something outside the frame, or something that may happen in the cut between two shots, can be implied, depending on how the pieces are put together."

Parts 2 (on Phillip Noyce’s 2010 film, Salt) & 3 (in which Emerson takes on classic chase scenes from Don Siegel’s The Lineup (1958), Peter Yates’s Bullitt (1968) and William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971)) are below, too.

In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight) from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

In the Cut, Part II: A Dash of Salt from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

In the Cut Part III: I Left My Heart in My Throat in San Francisco from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

The videos and an accompanying essay by Emerson can be found at:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/IN_THE_CUT_The_Dark_Knight_by_Chris...

And an annotated transcript is available here:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2011/09/annotated_transcript_in_the_c...