Film Studies - Transitions - Essay Example

A filmmaker is required to carve up the action into discrete shots and re-assemble them coherently to hold the audience’s visual interest (Sikov 2010, pg.55).

The simplest transition is cut. A director films a shot(the basic unit of filmmaking) and has it developed. He/she films subsequent shots and has them developed as well. The director trims each shot down to the wanted length and attaches the strips of film together with a piece of tape. This implies that the director has cut from one shot to another using celluloid. The same effect can be created electronically with two shots taken in the video without the need for a tape.

Editing is a human activity, unlike the camera’s mechanical recording of images, editing is quite specifically a matter of active decision making the product of human choice. Cameras can only record while directors and editors cut out unwanted parts. Other important transitions include the fade-in and fade-out; the iris-in and iris-out; the dissolve, and the wipe. However, these effects are mostly used as transitions from scene to scene or from the final shot of one scene to the first shot of the next scene (Sikov 2010, pg. 56-58). Read More