Fencing All the way to Rio

“Fencing is always on my mind,” says Brooklyn-native Nzingha Prescod. “It can be hard to find motivation to do this every day.” In Nzingha, a short documentary film about the 24-year-old American female foil fencer, director Anderson Wright captures the passionate Prescod as she trains for the August 2016 Rio Olympic games. A cinematic sequence narrated by Prescod’s inner dialogue walk us through the fast-paced, high-stake competitions that made her fall in love with the sport. Viewers navigate through her mind with the use of jump cuts and high-tension audio tracks. Sound design, jump cuts, and POV shots from inside a Brooklyn subway station enhance the strategic and high-stakes nature of the sport.

NZINGHA from Anderson Wright on Vimeo.

After filming a series of indoor and outdoor training sessions, a POV shot cuts to Prescod’s window-view from a moving subway––where she is riding alone (2:01). “When I fence the best, I visualize it,” she says. A series of intentional jump cuts begin at this close-up profile shot (2:08) and continues for 10 seconds. Implementing these cuts in post-production speeds up the rhythm of the story while the layering of audio bites makes the viewer feel Prescod’s mind racing. This leaves the audience feeling anxious and intrigued, awaiting the next scene in Nzingha.

The sounds that accompany this stylistic back-and-forth editing set the emotional tone of the story. At approximately (2:11), a blurry wide shot of outside the Subway car cuts back to a medium shot of Prescod “thinking out loud.” Dialogue, sound effects, and music comprise the audio in this scene. The sounds from inside the train to outside in the tunnel are particularly fascinating, for they complement the context of Prescod’s inner dialogue.In a distant echoing voice, she shares her inner thoughts when fencing in real-time (2:13): “Don’t hesitate. Push. Pull. Close the distance. Take the blade. Pressure. Release.” Different elements of audio complement this fast-paced rhythm. We hear the sound of the Subway train whizzing by soon-to-be passengers from inside the tunnel and when we return to Prescod on the train, the clanking of train-tracks reverberate off the underground walls. At (2:15), the sound of screeching breaks on the tracks sets the ambience; the restriction of train movement alludes to the scene coming to a halt or coming to a head. A wide shot of two fencers in the tunnel fills the frame as the train whizzes past. This is the first and only time we see them in this scene.Twenty-three total shots from the subway scene have a duration of less than half of a second. The stylistic decision to edit these close–to–wide shots as jump cuts on an isolated train-ride with three high-tension audio tracks creates a heightened experience for viewers in a matter of seconds. We begin to feel the subject’s dedication to attention and precision as a fencer because in competition, you too have less than half of a second to think.