Ora Dekornfeld’s New Yorker video, Fighting Cuba’s Boxing Ban, is a beautiful example of how to effectively use pacing and camera movement to mimic the boxing experience and transport the viewer into the sport. The result is that the video feels lively, creative, and keeps the viewer on their toes. It makes you feel a part of the story, and in turn, like you can truly get to know and empathize with the characters.
After a few contextual shots at the beginning, Ora introduces us to our main character, a girl joined by her brother. She follows them down the street with her camera from 10-30 seconds, and rather than use a stabilizer, she uses the camera movement to help us feel like we are there walking with them. As the girl starts to punch toward the camera, you start to feel like you as the viewer are ducking punches. Since this is our first intro to these characters, Ora gives us three medium close up perspectives of them walking – front, side and back, cutting on the action. This allows us to get to know them and also get a sense of the neighborhood, providing context for where the story takes place. She does this again later in the film around the 6:35 mark, replicating the same shot from behind, but now with her mom, creating a visual thread between the moments she shares with people who support her.
Ora starts playing with audio at around 30 seconds, using a J-cut to fade in the audio from the next scene of a man playing drums on his bicycle. She quickly cuts to other medium and close shots of the neighborhood while the drumming continues in the background. In this way, Ora makes us feel the fast-upbeat culture of Havana. She does this again from 3:10-3:23, cutting quickly between jump cuts of boys getting ready to box, matching the beat of a drum, making you feel the exhilaration they feel as they get ready. Again, at 6:45, she pulls this in, cutting between different angles of medium boxing shots, some even shots of different people punching into the camera. Combining all of these angles allows you to see the entire scene, and makes you feel like you are in the action. Finally, at 3:30-4:30, she cuts again between match action shots of the girl boxing, while cutting in interview shots of her punching toward the camera, bringing to life the girl’s quote “it’s really fun.” She even ends this scene with a quiet moment that jumps right back into quick match action cuts before the match ends. This way of slowing down and speeding up replicates the uneven pace of boxing.
I love what she does at 44 seconds, linking two scenes together through music. She brings us into a new scene, following a man as he puts in a CD and turns up the volume on his stereo system. At the same time, she raises the volume of the drumbeat that has been playing over other footage. Though we know this beat is coming from somewhere else, she magically makes us question its source, making it seem as though he has the control.
Ora strategically uses conceptual match cuts from 48 seconds to about 1:40, to make us see boxing differently. She switches back and forth between a sequence of boxing and a sequence of dancing to bring to life what the man in the audio is saying about how important dancing is to being a good boxer. She switches between close and medium shots (instead of wide), so we as viewers are forced to look at boxing and dancing differently, strictly focusing on how their body parts move so we can draw comparisons between the two. The fact that Ora also cuts this sequence over a melodic Cuban ballad also helps us see boxing as more like dancing.
From the 2-3-minute marks, Ora plays with different types of camera movements to add variety to her shots. Around the 2-minute mark, she uses a beautiful mounting move, moving around the girl’s head to reveal rays of sunshine. This nicely mirrors another moment at the 5-minute mark when she does this a second time with a different character. Later, around the 2:55 mark, Ora uses a motivated movement, following boys as they move off-screen behind a wall. She cleverly uses this movement as a transition to the next scene, where a motivated movement in the opposite direction follows a new character onto screen. In this way, two completely different scenes blend into one another. Finally, she uses motivated movements again from 4:30-4:50, by tracking the girl and her coach with a medium shot, which makes you feel like you, the viewer, are in the ring with them boxing.
Ora ends the film pulling together all of the editing techniques she’s introduced so far, to make the viewer feel exactly what the girl is feeling as she approaches her big competition. First, we see the girl walk to her match, as Ora jump cuts between shots of the girl walking, to make us feel that time is passing and that we are getting closer and closer to the competition’s start. She jump cuts between medium and close up shots of the girl and other kids getting ready for the competition, matching her cuts to the sound of the girl’s inner mantra. This makes us feel like we are there getting ready with her, practically in the girl’s head. At 8:28, Ora uses depth staging, with the boys out of focus in the foreground and the girl poised in the background, to make us feel the challenge our main character faces as the only girl fighting. Finally, Ora cuts back and forth quickly at 9:40 between archival footage of the girl’s dad training her and shots of her fighting in the competition. The cuts speed up as the intensity of the match speeds up, so we feel it. All of this combined makes us feel like we are in the girl’s thoughts, thinking back on all that has led her to this moment, which makes the viewer really understand how important this is to our character.