We’ve seen it in every film and TV genre out there. We see it in international film works as well as local indie projects. Breathing is there in the action thriller during a car chase or the kissing scene that makes up a romantic comedy or a sitcom before and after the cued laughing track that accompanies an actors’ dialogue. Breathing is an important creative element in documentary filmmaking as well. Those pauses subtly layered with music can make and break a scene, a segment, a soundbite. Breathing helps end cadences, pitches, or reverberations that come about as the film rolls. It can even end and begin one chapter after another. It’s highly crucial that the simple aspects of allowing films to breath is not overlooked in the filmmaking process.
Nature documentaries that you often see on National Geographic or the Discovery Channel have this breathing element on point with their works. Producers allow for the capturing of nature to take its course with or without background music. If it’s a climate change piece allowing the breathing aerials or drone video to capture the melting ice and all the natural sound that comes with such an effect is pivotal for audiences to take in. Heck, anybody can speak on camera about what’s happening to the physical environment based on evidence of global warming. But, a segment that includes various video clips that allow for it all to breath shows and reveals more than it tells and explains. Breathing is also found in more complicated documentary storylines like sociopolitical pieces that cover issues like economic inequality (PBS Frontline’s Money Power and Wall Street), race relations (Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro), sports narratives (Ezra Edelman’s Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals), and even biographies (MTV’s Tupac Resurrection). In these documentary film narratives the story builds in paces of pauses without being jam-packed with information, material and sound. These documentaries allow audiences to patiently take in the nuanced message of its given themes for emotional affect and self-reflection. There’s a reason why feature-length titles like these exceed pass the 60-minute mark. Breathing is a matter of being timely.
Where young artists or inexperienced filmmakers fall short in this breathing element is they fall into the tendency to not pace through their film’s story. Breathing is not usually scripted-in. Nor does it come with storyboard illustrations. And, it falls short to fit in a documentary film outline. Inserting or finding those vital yet simple moments of breathing in a film is something that often should be imagined and envisioned. It comes directly as an element called symbolic imagery–where a cutaway to a random shot can play in effect to a film as a metaphor or simile does in a writing prose. Breathing in this regard is as much part of film language as is the slick movements of the camera in an important scene or the right music score that captures the sentiment of a given segment. What breathing really allows for is pressure points in the film to release any air-tightness that needs to get out. It eases messages and leitmotifs into the longevity of a documentary or TV series.