While current Best Director Oscar winner Damien Chazelle certainly didn’t invent the whip-pan, he’s made it a trademark of his first three films, as shown in this video essay from Alejandro Torriggino. A whip-pan, a rapid horizontal movement of the camera, can imbue a scene with a frenzied, kinetic energy and can also give the audience a more exact understanding of the blocking of the characters in a scene than a more traditional cut would.
It’s probably no coincidence that Chazelle has used this technique so liberally from his debut “Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench” through “Whiplash” to his Oscar-winning smash “La La Land,” and that all of his films share an affinity for jazz; the whip-pan can be thought of as a film corollary to the changes in time signature and syncopation that distinguish jazz and give the music its frenetic energy. It’s also a great way to portray live musical performances on film, both in tone and in replicating the experience of a live spectator looking around the stage.
Now that the youngest ever Best Director is moving away from the subject of jazz for his next film, “First Man,” a biopic of Neil Armstrong, it will be interesting to see if the whip-pan remains one of his favorite techniques.
Damien Chazelle Jazz “Whip-Pans” in all three films from Alejandro Torriggino on Vimeo.