I agree with this so much (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Tuesday, May 31, 2016, 23:02 (2947 days ago) @ Kahzgul
edited by Cody Miller, Tuesday, May 31, 2016, 23:08

The fact of the matter is that there's really no hard and fast rule for all situations. That's what makes editors artists and not algorithms.

Ding Ding.

Walter Murch lists a hierarchy for what you should think about when you make a cut. He calls it the rule of six:

1. it is true to the emotion of the moment
2. it advances the story
3. it occurs at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and “right”
4. it acknowledges what you might call “eye-trace”—the concern with the location and movement of the audience’s focus of interest within the frame
5. it respects “planarity”—the grammar of three dimensions transposed by photography to two (the questions of stage-line, etc.)
6. and it respects the three-dimensional continuity of the actual space

Now he is a well respected editor, and many people always follow the rule of six when evaluating an edit. In one of the films I cut for my senior thesis, I purposefully broke these rules. For the film, I established my own hierarchy. Much of the thesis talk was in explaining why. That film won the Adobe design achievement award in 2007 for live action.

There are no rules set in stone.