In this article, we will explore 6 Essential Points To Select The Right Transition For Video Editing. How to select two imporatant shot for slecting right transitiol for your film. These point will
The following list is meant to serve as a jumping-off point. These criteria are some of the major reasons for considering a cut when dealing with most material, but, as with many moments in the filmmaking process, other factors not mentioned here may come into play. Using this list will put you in very good shape when editing decisions need to be made.
1. Information
A new shot should always present some new information to the viewer. In a motion picture, this may primarily be visual information (a new character entering a scene, a different location shown, an event whose meaning is not quite known yet, etc.), but it may also be aural ( voice-over narration, the clatter of horse hooves, a speech, etc.). A smart editor will ask himself several questions: What would the audience like to see next? What should the audience see next? What can’t the audience see next? What do I wish for the audience to see next?.
Remember, one of the many tasks set up for the editor is to engage the audience both emotionally (to make them laugh, cry, scream in fright, etc.) and mentally (to make them think, guess, anticipate, etc.). Asking the previous questions can generate clever or less-than-straightforward ways of showing the same story. In a mystery, you may purposefully show misleading information and in a romantic melodrama, you may show the audience information that the characters do not yet know. Regardless of the kind of information presented, the fact that it is there to engage the audience, get them involved, and get them thinking helps keep them interested in the motion picture.
When an audience member is thinking and feeling they are not paying attention to the physical act of the edit and this engagement helps keep the movie running strong and smooth. It also means that the editor has done his or her job well. It must be understood then that this element of new information is basic to all editing choices. Whenever one cuts from one shot to another, one has to ask that if there is no new information in the shot that is being cut to, then why is it being cut to. Is there a better choice? Is there another shot perhaps, from the same scene, which does provide new information and fits into the story as required? No matter how beautiful, cool, or expensive a shot maybe if it does not add new information to the progression of the story, then it may not belong in the final edit.
2. Motivation
The new shot you cut to should provide new information, but what about the shot that you are cutting away from? What is the reason to leave that shot? When is a good time to leave that shot? There should always be a motivation for making a transition away from a shot. This motivation can be either visual or aural. In picture terms, the motivating element is often some kind of movement by a subject or an object in the current shot. It could be as grand as a car jumping over a river, or as simple as a small movement of a face. Perhaps a character in close-up only moves his eyes slightly to the left as if looking at something off-screen. Editing logic would hold that you could then cut away from his close-up and cut to the object of his interest. The
motivation to cut away comes from the movement of the actor’s eyes. The reason for cutting to the next specific shot, let us say of a cat, is to provide the audience with new information. It shows them what the man is looking at.
If you wish to use sound as a motivating element, then you would need to address the editing of both picture and soundtracks more precisely near that transition. In its most simplistic usage, the sound could be generated by something visible in the shot currently on the screen. As an example, a man standing in a kitchen in a medium-long shot (MLS) watches a tea kettle on the stove. The kettle begins to whistle. The sound of the whistle starting in the MLS can motivate a cut to a close-up of the tea kettle showing steam shooting up from the spout causing the louder whistle. It should be noted that because the close-up shot actually magnifies the visual size and importance of the tea kettle, it can be appropriate to raise the volume on the sound of the whistle in your audio track as well. This lets the size of the visual object influence the volume level of the sound that the object is producing. Changing this scenario slightly, let us now say that the man is sitting at his dining room table in a medium shot.
The tea kettle begins to whistle but the tea kettle is not visible within this medium shot’s frame. You may then cut to the same close-up of the tea kettle that we used in the previous example, again with a louder whistle on the new shot’s audio track. In this case, the audience will accept the domestic whistle sound of the tea kettle even though they do not see the tea kettle. The payoff, and new information, comes when you cut to the close-up of the tea kettle proper. The audience does not notice the transition from one shot to the next because they are processing the information and it makes sense in their knowable universe.
A third and more advanced way of using audio as a transition motivator is rather conceptual in its design. An editor may create what is called a sound bridge. A sound, seemingly generated by something not seen or known to the audience, begins undershot one. It motivates the transition into shot two, where the origin of the strange sound is revealed. To modify our tea kettle example slightly, let us say that we are seeing the man in the kitchen with the tea kettle in the MLS. The audience begins to hear what they may interpret as the tea kettle whistling. This motivates the cut to a shot of an old steam engine train’s whistleblowing. The sound of the train whistle acted as a motivator to leave shot one and it acted as a bridge transitioning the viewer into the new information and new location of shot two. The audience does not notice the unexpected transition because the new visuals of the train whistling give them information to process and it follows a knowable logic
