Composing Emotional Time

This text emerges from years of working across dance, music, and film. Before approaching cinema through narrative, I learned to think in rhythm, intensity, and transition. I now understand filmmaking as a process of composing emotional time—where meaning is carried less by information than by how emotion unfolds in duration. This way of working informs both my films and how I engage with others’ work at critical creative stages.

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Through repeated collaborations with European filmmakers, I began to notice a consistent difference in how we approached cinema—not in intention, but in where our processes began.

When I write or edit a film, I do not begin by organizing narrative information. I begin by sensing how emotional intensity moves through time—where tension accumulates, where it disperses, where it is stretched, and where it is interrupted.

From this perspective, emotional dramaturgy precedes narrative dramaturgy.

This does not mean narrative is irrelevant. It means narrative only needs to roughly hold.What ultimately carries an audience is how emotion is composed, modulated, and sustained over time.

The Origins of Emotional Dramaturgy

Before I began working seriously with film, I spent years studying Chinese classical dance, folk dance, Western contemporary dance, and piano. In these disciplines, emotional movement over time is not a byproduct of story—it is the primary material.

A seven-minute dance can hold an audience without narrative continuity.Through spatial composition, bodily dynamics, rhythmic acceleration and suspension, musical phrasing, and lighting, emotion rises and falls with precision. Meaning is carried through timing, density, and transition, rather than through information.

This background fundamentally shaped how I approach cinema.

Emotional Dramaturgy vs. Narrative Dramaturgy

Most film discussions start from narrative logic:

• Is the information clear?

• Is the conflict articulated?

• Are character motivations consistent?

My process works in the opposite direction.

I start by asking:

• Where and what is the emotional climax of the film?

• What needs to happen before it as a set-up?

• Is tension accumulating or leaking?

• Is emotion being stretched, compressed, or abruptly interrupted?

Narrative structure follows emotional structure—not the other way around.

A Slow Climax Needs Speed Before It

In editing, I often return to this principle:

If a film’s climax is carried by a long, slow shot,

then what comes before it must be faster—gradually accelerating.

Otherwise, the slowness has no weight.

Slowness is not a tempo.

Slowness is a relationship.

It only works when the audience has already been pushed into a high emotional density.

Film as Symphony

I think of film more as a symphony than a logical explanation.

Rhythm, density, pauses, repetition, variation.

Different timbres layered together—

light, space, performance, editing, sound, dialogue.

In this system:

• Dialogue is just one instrument

• Narrative is one voice among many

• Logic serves the experience—it does not govern it

Why Logic Fails Across Cultures

In my work, emotion proves more stable than logic, especially in cross-cultural contexts.

Logic is culturally coded.

The same action can signal respect in one culture and disrespect in another.

Even within the same religion, fundamental concepts are interpreted differently.

A film that relies heavily on logical coherence is therefore likely to collapse when it travels across cultures.

Emotion does not.

Tension, longing, fear, relief—these are bodily experiences. They do not require translation.

When Emotional Time Is Composed Correctly

My experience tells me that when rhythm, atmosphere, movement, and emotional density align, the audience will complete the logic on their own.

We don’t feel because we understand.We understand because we feel.

For me, filmmaking is not about explaining a story clearly. It is about:

Composing emotional time.

Jan.12, 2026