The Cow Must Have Its Own Story: Emotional Architecture in Storytelling

Jennifer Beman
Aug 18
2 min read

Movies are fractile.

The dramatic arc of the movie contains the dramatic arc of each act, which contains the dramatic arc of each scene, which contains the dramatic arc of each moment,which contains the dramatic arc of each shot.

Each level carries the shape of the whole, just like a fractal — a pattern that repeats itself at every scale, endlessly detailed, endlessly alive.

At least, that's what we're aiming for.

Every Shot Has a Dramatic Arc

Every shot starts where it does for a reason. Every shot has a reason it starts where it does, a build, emotional movement, an end.

In documentary editing, we sometimes forget this at the shot level.

There's an old criticism that you still hear sometimes that you don't want to be too "say cow/see cow."

The Frost Report did a hilarious send up of this in the 50s and sparked the British version of 'say cow/see cow: "That's a little too Lord Privy Seal." Still makes me laugh.

But I think this admonition underestimates the value of this what we are really trying to do — we DO want to see what we are talking about, we do want to see a cow if we are talking about one. It's just that the cow has to add meaning over and above just being a cow.

The cow must have its own story.

It must arrive with a sense of presence. It must contain metaphor that adds meaning in the emotional landscape of the scene. It must do something — surprise us, anchor us, create tension, create relief.

The cow — every shot — must earn its place in the movie by carrying its own miniature story arc.

Because if you only think at the macro level — just getting across the right facts, checking off the right visuals — your film will feel flat, mechanical, dead.

But when every frame carries intention, energy, and movement, something deeper happens.

Emotional Architecture in Storytelling

When a film feels alive, it's because the emotional architecture in the storytelling is recursive —like a spiral staircase:

Each step builds on the one before it.
Each turn reveals a deeper layer of story.
Each moment carries the DNA of the whole.

Good editors, consciously or unconsciously, shape narrative energy at every level:

Not just "is this scene clear?" but "does this moment breathe?"
Not just "is the story logical?" but "does this image move?"
Does this scene have layers that would reveal different things to different viewers?

The audience may not know why they're leaning in.But they feel it.

Because story is embedded at every scale.

Zooming Out: The Story Inside the Story

Even this blog post — even this thought — carries its own small version of the pattern.

Zoom out, and you see:

A post about the cow.
Inside it, a meditation on storytelling structure.
Inside that, a philosophy about how we experience meaning at every level of life.

Narrative is recursive.Meaning lives at every scale.The cow must have its own story.

And when it does — when every piece of the film carries its own pulse, its own momentum —the whole work feels inevitable.

Alive.

True.