Why great filmmakers HATE this in a scene.

Beginner filmmakers struggle with pacing their films, but the 2 concepts in this video will give you a major leg up when creating your next film. Professional filmmakers understand how crucial pacing is for creating an entertaining film, and hopefully this video will help open your eyes to where you can remove shoe leather in a scene, or slow down for your most captivating moments.

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I've been making short films for 20 years, starting at age 11. I directed my first feature film, Bad is Bad, in 2010. Made for only $6,000, the film went on to reach over 7 million views and garner critical acclaim. More recently, my short film, Will "The Machine", screened and won awards at film festivals around the world. Released online in 2019, it reached over 1 million views in just a month. I also work as a video editor, cutting ads for clients such as Apple, Netflix, and Beats by Dre.

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00:00 The Importance of Pacing
01:14 The Cheat Code to Good Pacing
02:03 Pacing in Heat
03:35 Slowing Down & Nut Hands
05:39 Shoe Leather
09:44 Shooting an example scene
11:38 CineMatch
12:53 My Example Film (Bad Pacing)
14:37 My Example Film (Good Pacing)
15:47 Final Thoughts

[tinderbox]

The freeway scene in "Heat" works because we don't know Pacino's intentions. Is there going to be a car chase, a shootout, will he arrest him, kill him? That tense buildup leads instead to a surprise offer of going for coffee, keeping it unpredictable for the audience. Also says a lot about both characters that they're able and interesting enough to have a temporary "truce" to do that.

[antgonus]

I'm not sure about the examples he made. I actually think the "slow pace" one works better. That paused rhythm helps to convey the character's procrastination and lack of capacity to concentrate on work. While the "better pace" one feels choppy and tells an absolutely different story (the character doesn't really care about work, he's not procrastinating). Good editing is knowing when and how to use a slow or fast pace in each situation.

[epochgd]

Honestly, the second example seems better for an actual film scene, and the first example works as a standalone skit (just my opinion). Scenes also depend on the context.

[bangcolt]

The reason that Michael Mann includes the montage in building up to the much-anticipated first time that De Niro and Pachino share screen time together, is because it allows him to play Moby’s cover of Joy Division’s “New Dawn Fades, ” which is awesome.

[skm]

Watched the definition of "shoe leather."

In a local film event made in a town where a famous director hailed from, an entry had a guy in a trench coat say he was going somewhere, then spent minutes on him walking along the sidewalk at medium distance -- sometimes left-to-right, other times right-to-left -- until he reached the destination.

I still remember those lost minutes of my life.

[MatadorShifter]

Sergio Leone was an absolute master of shoe leather. Many of his scenes might sound like unnecessary fillers when you hear them described with words, but once you see them you realize they're really not and that this guy was a genius of how he made the viewer physically feel the surroundings where the characters were by delivering very specific material to the eyes and the ears.
Once Upon A time in the West was an absolute pinnacle of this part of Sergio Leone's style

[RecDougs]

ngl starting the scene with him just typing in the "bad pacing" one makes the reveal of the flash game mid-phonecall really good

[rizzo-films]

This is AWESOME. Something I want to add is that Heat does show characters do "boring" or routine things, but the way they're shown and when they're shown makes them significant. An example is that the whole opening of the film shows De Niro getting off a train, walking down an escalator, walking through a hospital and stealing an ambulance in a very dry, precise way. The end is eventful, but everything else could be seen as boring. It's not because, I think, it's happening at the very beginning. We don't know a thing about this man, so every second we spend with him is potentially revealing the mystery of who he is or what he's doing. By the time we see him stealing the ambulance, we realize that we've just watched a very precise and calculating professional do perfect work, a perfect setup to his character. I think as editors starting out are looking mercilessly around for slow, "boring" things to cut out, some things, if they're shown at just the right time and place can actually work. I think a lot of people are interested in process, seeing how people work and do things, so put that in at the right time and something boring or mundane could be brilliant. (not a critique on your video, just branching out on the topic. Great work!)

[NathanVMountain]

SSC: Tries to show examples of Better Pacing vs Shoe Leather Pacing Also SSC: Accidentally makes the slower paced version better than the rushed choppy version 🤣🤣

In all seriousness though, I get what he was going for, shoe leather pacing is one of the most classic "student/first time filmmaker" mistakes where they show 3 transitions shots of someone walking from one location to the next. But there's a difference between Shoe Leather Pacing, and slow pacing where you let the film breathe a little to allow the audience to sit within a moment you want them to savour or the slower pace just works more with what we are feeling with our characters. Tbh rushed choppy pacing is actually self destructive in high end entertainment because you'll find studios cutting out a lot of necessary parts that they will deem "fluff" and "not necessary", and then they wonder why everyone thinks the film is rushed and no good!

No offense intended to SSC, I'm sure he knew all this but it just didn't come across his mind when making the video 💙

[jweezyable]

I think that the slow pacing worked better for that example, but I understand that most movies have little time to do small stuff and need to cut fluff. I think having another movie scene you dislike for "shoe leather" would have made a stronger example for those of us who are brand new to film and concepts.

[RonanAquilius]

I preferred the "badly paced" example. I don't think "shoe leather" is as black and white as explained in this video. Sometimes it's good to leave in bits that on surface level might seem boring but actually add subtle value to the scene. There is a false equivalence in this video stating bad pacing = slow and good pacing = fast. In my opinion the faster paced example at the end was the badly paced version, not vice versa.

As for why I preferred the slower paced one, it conveyed some sense of humour in regards to his procrastination and his thought process unlike the faster paced version which just felt like a meaningless slideshow.

[Markevans]

I’m pretty unconvinced, I think about Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001 a space Odyssey and just how much shoe leather is in it, it just wouldn’t be the masterpiece it is if there was a lot of shortcuts. He sells these long cuts with the music and intriguing visuals. I’m glad there’s been great directors out there that didn’t buy into your conventional wisdom.

[ICLHStudio]

I think a really interesting set of counter examples to the standard 'cut out the shoe leather' style is to look at pretty much any of the Studio Ghibli films, there is so much care and attention put into the animation of tiny little shoe leather moments (I remember there being a scene in Ponyo that spends a lot of time on the mom putting the groceries away, and it works surprisingly well with the pacing of the movie); I think there's something about the deliberate and intrinsically exaggerative nature of animation that elevates these mundane moments to keep them from being the filler they usually would in live action.

[edward]

I think the slow pace works much better (although it's not without some problems). The slower pace, allowance to let the audience actually laugh at the jokes and general willingness to sit with the performance to let your character lead the audience instead of the editor rushing through each moment all come together to make something which is far more engaging. I can't process that the character is lazy and distracted when you don't give me time to process that before you're rushing me to the next step. The first one gives me so much detail about the character, so much is learned about him and how he is avoiding work; the second one has an unclear character who I know nothing about

[FilmRunnerMedia]

I just rewatched Heat a couple weeks ago. There's definitely something compelling about that movie. At just under three hours, I was having a little conversation with myself wondering if everything in the film was completely necessary. In the end I decided that I like the movie and I should stop talking to myself.

[alexanderloeb]

Lolol 1:41 “A… 2… 3…” I was wondering if this was to prove a point about filmmaking 😂

[N.E.U.R.O]

Sometimes it's nice when a movie lets you chill or hang out in a world, like in blade runner when deckard grabs a drink or is just reflecting on everything

[stevewilson]

Heat is the perfect example of a film that's equal parts style and substance.

It is one of the sleekest-looking films ever, yet every frame seems deliberate and meticulously filmed. The performances are strong across the board and the writing is delivered almost flawlessly from everyone on screen.

It is one of the quickest-moving 3 hour films I've ever seen or at least that I can think of off the top of my head. It seems like there wasn't a single wasted frame throughout the entire film.

I know nothing about the technical aspects of film making. I'm just a major fan of American cinema. Although it's quite obvious why Heat didn’t receive all the top nominations and win all the top awards, that wasn't what Mann was going for anyways.

It's an example of what good art is supposed to be: Mann made the film he wanted to make and it just so happened to connect with a large audience and is now considered one of the most important films of that genre ever made.

[miketrotman]

Actually, we've been waiting 40 years for that moment by the side of the road when DeNiro and Pacino are finally in a scene together. Mann must have known this on some level, and he lets that moment unwind like a sigh across years of dreaming and waiting among moviegoers. The brief car chase is almost meta in its likeness to a kind of foreplay, drawing out by the second that almost unbearable wait for an ecstatic release of wish fulfillment that transcends this story to achieve a historic moment for American film.

[ShyGuyTravel]

A lot of self-consciously arty filmmakers keep the show leather in, to an extreme, to subvert expectations or something. The worst example I’ve seen is a low-budget independent art film whose entire first scene is a man lethargically getting out of bed in the morning and going to the toilet. Films like this make me want to cry.