“Action!” “Cut!”

They’re the two most common words you might expect to hear on a film set. One gets the cameras rolling; the other stops them. The question then becomes what to do with all the footage.

The art of editing, of assembling various camera angles of various scenes for dramatic effect, has long been a crucial component of cinema, from D.W. Griffith’s crosscutting in “Birth of a Nation” to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” shower scene to Paul Greengrass’s white-knuckle “Bourne” action sequences.

At the same time, though, a counternarrative of cinematic tortoises has nestled alongside these itchy-splicing-finger hares. More and more directors are using long takes — scenes unspooling in real time, free of edits — as a sobering reminder of temporality, a virtuosic calling card, a self-issued challenge or all of the above. The trend may have reached its commercial apotheosis with the 2015 Academy Award winner, “Birdman,” which told the story of an action hero’s attempted Broadway comeback seemingly in real time. (Peak TV has also gotten involved, in a particularly daring 2017 “Mr. Robot” episode as well as extended action sequences in “True Detective” and “Daredevil.”)