Control the speed of the whole video with cut length and how often you cut. A run of short cuts builds tension, and a long cut gives a pause and a lingering feeling. Too slow is boring, and too fast makes it hard to get absorbed in the characters.
Every edit. Make cuts shorter and shorter right before the climax, and keep the cuts for big emotional moments and the final cut long.
Generated clips are all about 4–5 seconds long, so joining them as they are makes a flat rhythm. In the shot list, first decide the edit length of each cut (for example, 3 s → 1.5 s → 0.8 s). For a cut you will use short, write the prompt so the action happens within the first second. For a cut you will use long, pick one with even movement, like a locked shot or a slow push-in. In editing, set the length with trim and join the sound separately.
Editor instruction: shape the pacing by shortening each shot toward the climax; hold the opening shot for 3 seconds, the next for 1.5 seconds and the last for 0.8 seconds, then join them with hard cuts. Command: ffmpeg -i s1.mp4 -i s2.mp4 -i s3.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]trim=0:3,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[a];[1:v]trim=0:1.5,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[b];[2:v]trim=0:0.8,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[c];[a][b][c]concat=n=3:v=1:a=0[v]" -map "[v]" paced.mp4
Psycho (1960) — In the shower scene, the contrast between long and short cuts builds terror without showing the violence directly (StudioBinder) · There Will Be Blood (2007) — Its slow pacing, with an average cut length of about 13.3 seconds, never gets boring thanks to composition and camera movement (StudioBinder)
Not verified