The “motion blur” technique, essential in animation to create fluid, natural transitions, can be applied to screenwriting to make moments of narrative transformation more organic.
Fluid motion technique
What makes the movement of a cartoon fluid is, on the one hand, the 24 frames per second that break down the various positions of movements, and on the other, the slight blurring present in each still image on the edges of moving objects or bodies. Indeed, at 24 images per second, when filming relatively rapid movements, with each image exposed to light for 1/48th of a second, the edges of objects and the objects themselves appear slightly or very blurred (because they were moving during the time the shot was taken). You might think that this is a defect. But if each image were exposed to light for 1/1000th of a second, for example, and each image decomposing the movement was sharp (this is very easy to do in contemporary cameras), it would seem a priori more correct. But the movement would be, as we say, “stroboscopic”: the sensation of movement would be jerky, there would be no fluidity, and it would be extremely painful on the eyes. You can watch a few seconds of this type of movement, but beyond 30 seconds, it’s unbearable and you can’t watch the film any more. We reserve this for very specific effects.
So, for movement to be technically fluid and felt as natural by the viewer, there must be blur on the movements. This is well known in animation. For example, After Effects digital animation software incorporates the Motion Blur filter, which is always applied, and is one of the conditions for successful animation.
The application of this technique in the script
We can apply this concept of motion blur to the narrative itself, i.e. right from the script stage: when something moves, when there’s a transition from one state to another-be it psychological, mechanical, geographical, etc.-in order for it to appear natural and be experienced as such by the viewer, there needs to be imprecision, vagueness, surprise and incoherence in these moments. This is what will give the movement an almost natural beat-of-life dimension. If the movement is too perfect, it will feel mechanical, it will give an impression of rigidity, we won’t feel it as natural, and we’ll find it hard to believe.
So I encourage you to think about motion blur when writing a screenplay, at moments in the story when there are strong changes: birth, death, an encounter, a tipping point in the story.
