Introduction

With a rich history of producing countless of award-winning animated feature films, it is no longer a surprise how Pixar Animation Studios is able to produce a magical montage like The Married Life, a brilliant five-minute masterclass in narrative exposition (Bradshaw, 2009) from their multi-award-winning feature film, UP (Pete Docter, 2009). The Married Life uses the application of “trajectory phrasing” (Pearlman, 2016) in it’s rhythmic construction which portrays the intentions and emotions that exist within the narrative of the montage.

Trajectory phrasing is a part of rhythm-shaping in the art of editing – a technique to simultaneously convey and retain the consistency of a heavily emotional story. With a carefully composed mise-en-scene, a seamless transition between shots no matter the nature of two shots, cutting that holds a particular information per shot and experience in knowing how long to hold a shot – it is this combination that allows the audience to comprehend the direction of the story and feel the character’s lingering sense of emptiness for a long period of time.

Trajectories within actions

In Figure 1, we are introduced to a young and cheerful Ellie, who casually expresses her fondness towards a young, introverted Karl. In the next shot, the audience sees Karl walking from the shadows of his room out to his moonlit bedroom window. He leans on his blue balloon and looks out the window with his eyes heavy-lidded, presumably trailing Ellie off.

The combination of Ellie’s dialogue, “you know, you don’t talk very much. I like you,” and her quick movements that accompany her jovial personality altogether behaves as an impetus to the entire scene. Afterwards, in response, Karl carries out a sequence of actions: he walks towards the window with a look of wonderment on his face, followed by a look of admiration as he leans on his blue balloon. Karl’s three-second act of response is a nexus to the chains of trajectories that follow throughout the whole montage, a link which sets the audience’s expectations of The Married Life’s overall theme that are the ideas of Karl’s future intentions. When Ellie’s intentions are clear, Karl’s intentions in response becomes equally fathomable, the audience comprehends the narrative dynamics owing to the flow of trajectories, which renders the entire scene emotionally gripping.

To support this statement is an excerpt from Goddard’s conversation with Agns Guillemot from the article, Montage My Fine Care (Cahiers du Cinéma, 1956), to which he says, “.. You notice a young girl in the street who attracts you. You hesitate to follow her. A quarter of a second. How to convey this hesitation? Mise-en-scene will answer the question, ‘how shall I approach her?’. But in order to render explicit the other question, ‘am I going to love her?’ you are forced to bestow importance on the quarter of a second during which the two questions are born.”

Trajectories between two shots

In Figure 2, the first image on the left serves as a climactic turning point of the film. The mise-en-scene is designed to draw the audience in with the prominent feature that is the mural of a stork delivering a baby, a culturally famous symbol of a pregnancy made popular by Hans Chrisitan Andersen’s “The Storks” (2001). Combined with a primary use of the colour yellow, which according to Goethe (1810 , p. 307), is a colour that conveys excitement; this mise-en-scene that is further enhanced by the natural daylight coming from the window was crafted with the intention of conveying the emotional excitement that Karl and Ellie are experiencing as they eagerly open their arms to the new world of parenthood.

However, this uplifting energy presented in the first shot is then redirected by a camera pan into a dark environment, resonating a much lower energy as we are presented with the couple, situated in a dimly lit clinic room. The audience is presented with a contrastingly tragic scene of Ellie’s failed pregnancy as she sits on a chair, crying.

The seamless flow between these two contrasting energies – one highly spirited and another, low; are what Pearlman (2016 , p. 55) refers to as a “colliding trajectory”, where, regardless of whether two shots are linked together with a transition as smooth as the dolly pan, the colliding energies between the two shots are what creates a shock factor that moves the audience’s emotions to create an impactful scene.

Trajectories presented by multiple quick-cuts

In Figure 3, Karl and Ellie have picked themselves back up after their devastating phase in life, deciding to take life as it is and work their way towards their dream of moving to Paradise Falls. This fourty-second sequence is chained together as a series of quick shots, effectively cut with ellipsis in-betweens to achieve an illusion of time that is quickly passing by. To achieve a balance of cutting and piecing the ‘right’ amount of information within each cut in order to achieve a consistent flow of trajectories requires much experience on the editor’s part.

As Murch (2001 , p. 16) had mentioned in his lecture, “If you are in an actual fight, you will be blinking dozens of times in a minute because you are thinking dozens of conflicting thoughts a minute— and so when you are watching a fight in a film, there should be dozens of cuts per minute. This would make the audience participate emotionally in the fight itself”. Similarly in The Married Life, the editor arranges approximately 10 cuts per 10 seconds, activating what Restak (2008) refers to as the “mirror neurons” in the audience’s brains that allow them to feel personally and emotionally involved in Karl and Ellie’s lives as they process these series of thoughts in short period of time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when a scene is made of the right combination of cuts, holds, and transitions, it is able to create a consistent flow of trajectory that retains the audience’s attention and for them to develop a strong sense of emotional attachment towards the two characters.

Goddard (1956 , p . 2)’s ingenious quote can be used to conclude the application of trajectory phrasing in The Married Life, to which he says, “cutting on a look is, in effect, to bring out the soul under the spirit, the passion behind the intrigue, to make the heart prevail over the intelligence by destroying the notion of space in favour of that of time”.

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Bibliography

Bradshaw, P. (2009) ‘Up’, The Guardian, 9 October. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/oct/09/up-review (Accessed: 1 December 2021).

Pearlman, K. (2016) Cutting Rhythms. New York: Routledge. Second Edition.

Sax, Boria (2001). The Mythical Zoo. Oxford, UK: ABC-CLIO. pp. 153–4. ISBN 978-1-57607-612-5.

Goethe W. (1810). Theory of Colors. London: Frank Cass.

Murch, W. (2001) In A Blink Of An Eye. California: Silman-James Press. Second Edition.

Restak, R. (2006). The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love. New York: Harmony Books.

Godard, J.-L (1956). Montage My Fine Care. Paris: In Cahiers du Cinéma (1996).