Cuts & Transitions

Cuts & Transitions

It's very essential for a film maker to know where to add a cut & transitions. in between of the shots, for going to a next situation or scene. Every film director ensures adding a cut, and transition at the right place in the right time in the story, A cut & transition has it's own significance, and helps adding texture to your film. A cut whereas is also a part of the transition. During the shoot, or even in the pre-production stage where you write your screenplay the writer, and director makes sure that the pace of the story goes more interesting, and when to make your audience feel more curious as well, and enthrall them. As our cinema has developed, with different film making styles, various cuts & transitions had evoked with time as well. Putting a cut & Transition arbitrarily without knowing what's the meaning will make it futile. From different shots we add different cuts & transitions which makes a proper scene for a sequence, for the film to be complete. There are various kinds of cuts & transitions in a film. The most common type of transition is a cut, where one shot instantly replaces another shot showing a different scene, and also a common way to join two shots together as well. Cutting on Action is where the cut is added in between the action of the character, for example when the character is walking, or stunts is performed as well, etc. Then moving on to the next one is another common type of transitions that is the Fade in and Fade Out, in which Fade Out shows a black screen, and usually is used to conclude the ending of a film, whereas Fade In is just the opposite where it gives way to the pictures, and usually used in the beginning of the films, and also fades are used to imply on the major and intense scene. A dissolve where as is the overlapping of one shot to another, one,with disappearance of one shot, and the next shot applying on it. There is Cut Away, which is added in between of the on going situation, for example if you are showing your character something, the shot of your character's dialogues and a cut away is added in between to show the audience what are you talking about, it's also used to get into the head of your character as well, like an abrupt memory. Cross cut is another transition which is added in between two different locations, for example a phone conversation. It also helps increasing the curiosity of what will happen next, also showing what's in the mind of your character. Jump cut is another kind of transition which happens to show time transition for example, and are cuts between the same shot. Like a scene of a line in a bank decreasing, it also adds urgency in the scenes as well. Match cut is an artistic type of cut which helps matching one shot at one place with another shot as well. For example if your character is throwing an object, and in just the next scene the object matches something else. It's also between two different objects, compositions also, it also helps in time lapse.  Smash cuts are abrupt transitions, such as waking up from a nightmare, and also are uninvited as well. An iris is a stylistic transition, and is old fashioned as well, where the screen just circles one part of the subject with the rest in black. They are also mostly found in cartoon for example Bugs Bunny. There is also Wipe in which the transition pushes the shot away from the frame, with the next one appearing on screen, which is a contrast from one scene to another. Invisible cuts are like hidden cuts, for example if the candle blows out from a scene, and the character lights it once again. The L - cut hence is for the audio basically where your audio from one shots moves from the next shot.  J - cut is where used when the audio of the next scene come before in the present shot, for the audience hear in the audience's point of view. 

So hence, these are the different kinds of cuts & transitions used in a film with it's own significance, and artistic representation as well.