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Editing: Editing tips

A winning hand in the editing game means knowing the right transition for your edit. Introducing the second most popular transition in movie and TV history: the dissolve.

After the "cut," the dissolve gets the most screen time amongst the guild of transitions. We see it countless times, but do we know why and when it is usually used? For consumers, it may not be so important, but for editors, it's crucial.

We usually edit to change the duration of time, most often by shortening screen time of an event or, on occasion, lengthening it. We may condense a two-hour poker match to four minutes, beginning with the dealing of the first hand and concluding with the triumphant winner. In effect, the editor takes out all the non-essential "middle parts" in order to keep the story moving along. The majority of the shots in this four-minute scene will most likely be "straight cuts," but there could be one or more dissolves. Let's learn when to use the cut or the dissolve, and why.

An editor usually uses a cut to give the audience a new perspective. A cut shows the same subjects and action as those in the shot before, but from a different position, angle and/or framing. It usually does not try to communicate a change in time. An example might be a wide shot of our four people around a table playing five-card stud. The dealer is passing out the cards, while the person to his left is telling a story of what happened to him at work that day. The editor decides to "cut on action," as the dealer tosses the second card to the talking man to his left. The initial framing is a medium shot of the dealer pulling a card from the deck and beginning to throw it down onto the table. When the dealer's arm is halfway through the motion of dealing the card, the editor cuts to a close-up of the same action, now just the dealer's hand and card. This does not interrupt the dialog, and the action is seamless. If the editor does it well, the audience does not consciously notice the transition.

An exception to this would be a "jump cut," like those that were used by the French New Wave directors of the late fifties or early sixties, such as François Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard, who wished to draw attention to their filmmaking process. But let's stick to the typical Hollywood style of narrative storytelling, where cuts generally go unnoticed.

Now let's say the film cuts to the man to the left excitedly talking about his work, as he sits tall in his seat. He has towering stacks of poker chips in front of him, a full soft-drink or beer bottle in his hand and an overflowing bowl of chips at his side. The editor then uses a three-second cross dissolve to a shot of the same man framed in the same way, but now he is slouching in his seat, a look of exhaustion on his face, the top two buttons of his dress shirt unbuttoned, four empty beer bottles in front of him; the chip bowl has a few broken crumbs at the bottom, and his towers of chips have transformed into tiny stacks. We don't need a lesson in filmmaking grammar to know that a fair amount of time has passed, and this man has lost most of his money. So editors often use the dissolve, a gradual merging of the end of one shot with the beginning of the next, to show a passing of time. Though this transition is more obvious than the cut, we are so used to seeing it that we accept that it indicates the passing of time, and we move right along with the story.