Transitional Philosophies in FCP minnor

we usually do trouble shooting in here so i would like to trouble shoot transition philosophy. a lot of new fcp users have a hard-time with usage of transitions. some people including me when i first started thought that every cut needed a transition. as i grew in knowledge thru this very forum i learned that every cut doesn't need a traditional transition. because i am a studier i read quite a few web pages on editing related subjects. i spend at least 3 hrs a day looking at different channels and dvds to study different styles.
i have noticed some constants such as:
1. whenever, you see nearly anything dealing with x game type activities you are certainly gonna see some blurred zooms and blinks. there will be at least 3 particle bursts or streak trans and 9 times out of ten some 3d text that zooms in from behind the camera.
2. in tv drama you are more than certain to see at least 2 - 3sec dissolves, 1 split screen and 3 color dips.

these are justa few things that i have notice.

this may be a bit of a geeky topic but i know i am not the only one that can't watch anything on a screen without analyzing every cut, filter, lighting config, and camera angle.

alot of what creates our style lies in how the cut meets the next. lets take a few popular genres and give some insight on how we see the cut.

genres

a. sports
b. thrillers - i.e saw, grudge, holloween, amityville horror house
c. corporate - sales vids, training vids, expos


i briefly just talked about 2 transitional styles i have noticed. has anyone else noticed these things?

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

> 2. in tv drama you are more than certain to see at least 2 - 3sec dissolves, 1 split screen and
> 3 color dips.

Some interesting observations above, Jeff, but what you're saying here is not true. Good professional TV shows tend to have a vocabulary created in the first season, and some techniques are just not in the palette. For example, 24 has lots of split-screens, but never uses a dissolve because of its real-time conceit, and never any kind of colour dips or speed changes. No time lapses of any kind. House, M.D. uses dissolves, but never split-screen, and the editing style tends to be elegant, restrained and classical rather than aggressive, flashy and "post-modernistic". Buffy the Vampire Slayer was mostly classical, but opened itself to goofy touches (eg. split-screen) for very special occasions -- a more malleable editing palette than the above two shows. So to generalize and say "every show has x number of y" is not accurate.

As long as it fits the tone and content of the show, all techniques are game. But if a new editor gets hired on 24 and starts to do repeat actions, post-production slow-mos and time-lapse wipes, then that editor doesn't understand the style of the show, and its central conceit.

> some people including me when i first started thought that every cut needed a transition.

This is true. Every group of young film students I've ever taught always contains at least one young editor who goes down the list of transitions alphabetically, using every single one with no rhyme or reason.

As with every cut, super, sound, music piece and effect you put into the cut, if it doesn't express something, there's no need for it. Visual "beauty" can be an end in itself, but only to a limited extent.


www.derekmok.com

I agree with Derek. The transitions you use should serve the pace, style and genre of the piece you are working on, but there's no rules like 'you must use three dips to colour for every seven dissolves', for example.

The main driving force of the style is the content. If it's an English period piece, no whips or blinks, and no whacky transitions. But if it's a parody of an English period piece, you might have some goofy stuff like clock wipes, or push slides. The comedy is enhanced by the silly transitions.

The difference is you could also do the parody without the weirdo transtions and it would still work. A clock wipe in the middle of a serious drama makes a mess of the believablity.

For the most part (and most students don't want to hear this) the place to put transitions is where they feel right. There's not really a formula. There's .. patterns.. but no ratio formula.

For example, a dip to black might be used to indicate the passing of time, or a change of location. Or it could be used to indicate that more is about to happen but you're not going to get to see it - like in a sex scene. It's not very useful in the middle of a X-Games downhill skate event, but you could use it in a music montage about the competitors in the same race. No good in a news or sport story, but useful in a reminiscent documentary about a newsworthy event.

The content dictates the structure of your cut. Even when you are subverting the content.

> If it's an English period piece, no whips or blinks, and no whacky transitions.

If only Shekhar Kepur had listened to you on Elizabeth, Jude! Jill Bilcock may have edited Road to Perdition, but I think it was a fatal mistake to edit Elizabeth as if it were Romeo + Juliet. The jump cuts immediately dated the film to film styles after 1960 and Breathless.

> For example, a dip to black might be used to indicate the passing of time, or a change of
> location. Or it could be used to indicate that more is about to happen but you're not going to
> get to see it - like in a sex scene.

I'd like to offer up two alternate viewpoints here:

a) American films overuse the dissolve for sex scenes. Some of the greatest sex scenes ever filmed and edited -- Don't Look Now, Pola X, Betty Blue, Enemy at the Gates -- do it in real time. French films are especially great in this department, often using time-lapse cuts instead of dissolves to convey passage of time in a sex scene. You still convey the passage of time, but you also gain a much greater sense of proximity and intimacy when you don't soften it up with dissolves.

b) While cinematic techniques do have common usages (eg. dissolves are linked to passage of time or point of view), equating a technique with a certain expression can be overdone. For example, my most frequent director collaborator shot a short film for Fox recently. Half the film
takes place in a subway station. Some shots were done with the camera on the subway tracks shooting up at the characters on the platform, and I asked my director friend why the angles were so awkward. Turns out his DP thought you couldn't do handheld in the tracks because "handhelds were only for point-of-view shots and there's no one down on the tracks". If he had not had this grievous misconception, they wouldn't have had to build dolly tracks on the subway tracks and the angles would have been far better. So it's the same with editing techniques -- you don't have to dissolve or fade to black in order to do time passage.


www.derekmok.com

Yeah I agree. You don't have to. In lots of cases less is more, as well.

But there are conventions that audiences have been trained to recognise, like the wiggly warp and tinkly sound that signifies a dream sequence, or remembering something, or that dipping to black means there was sex, but you can't watch. Or fading up from black, which means 'some time later'...

> or that dipping to black means there was sex, but you can't watch. Or fading up from black,
> which means 'some time later'...

There's a German film called Bandits which I frequently use in teaching editing. The director, Katja von Garnier, used this bizarre "flash-forward" technique where you'd see a girl playing guitar and trading hot looks with a guy. Hard cut forward to them frolicking in the mud. Then back to the hot looks, she tosses down the guitar and marches out into the woods, ostensibly refusing his invitation, but tempted. So what you got is a mix of destroyed suspense (the director doesn't want you to wonder if they'll have sex), time lapse, dream sequence (is the mud sex real or in their heads?), and foreshadowing (the mud scenes are real, colouring what's happening in the guitar scene). A scene whose expression is purely through editing, like the statues in Potemkin.


www.derekmok.com

i have sen that bandits style flash foward used a lot. i was watching this old movie think it was cape fear (could be wrong). where they used this same flash foward technic to show a muder.
they show a dude rushing twards a house, dip 2 colour ( grey ), they show the window broken, dip, they show a lady sit up in the bed, dip, knife is in the air, dip, lady strugles blood stained in blood staind sheets, dip, body being drug away, dip, killer is acting like a grieving husband while being told what has happened to his wife.
it worked really well.

in the movie any given sunday the transitions they used to show how jamie fox's team was allowing him to be sacked over and over and when the defensive player was paralized in his last game. they used some simular flash editing. oliver stone uses that flash thing a lot.

momento, was also very good. thru the hole movie the color dips seem to move the movie in the perspective of the main charactor.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Has anyone noticed the transitions used in "Lost"?

It's a five to six second sound effect leading up to and culminating in a .......cut!

Cameron Young

yes, i have noticed that about lost. i think they do that to accentuate the dementia of the storyline. i think that they are a bit to liberal with the blurs but it works.

as an opposite style to lost.
i just got finished watching 'the wire' (hbo) it is nearly all hard cuts and fits that harshness of the subject matter. another this is that wire really uses a lot of plain jane camera work which some people try to spuce up with dynamic transitions. they hardly ever have a scene that is shorter that 4secs even if they action calls for it.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"