NLE systems - and indeed most camcorders - give us a range of transitions. The bulk of them seem to to have been devised "just because they could" rather than for any immediately obvious purpose. A common comment is "Steer clear of them and stick to a simple cut or dissolve."

For many movies this is good advice. Simply by being a distortion of normal vision transitions draw attention to themselves and thus detract from the audience's involvement in the movie.

They can be useful for titles - the turning page is an obvious option for opening credits.

As a sidenote - have you realised how many professional cinema movies actually end with a crane-shot and a slow fade?  It sounds too corny for words but once you start watching out for it there are thousands of them.

Unless your club has bought a crane, or you are skilled with Meccano and scaffold poles you need to find another solution

I have been known to use them for the end of the closing credits: a page folding into quarters and then vanishing to black acts as a pretty obvious clue that the movie has wrapped up!

Where Do Transitions Really Work?

They can be helpful for a portmanteau film, where there is no smooth natural continuity between sequences. A local newsreel might benefit from the occasional zip-pan effect or derive humour from an appropriate fade: the cook's ladle stirring masked by a circular black spot spinning out of centre-screen.

Not long ago my kit was used by some sixth-formers editing a recording of their Christmas Review. Two cameras had caught the action: one sticking to long shots and the other giving close and medium ones from a different angle.

The young people learned to use the kit in next to no time. (It took me ages to reach the level of competence they achieved in one evening. Grrr!)

Like many such shows the performance needed a lot of tightening if it was to be an acceptable video. The lack of angles and options meant there would have to be some crash cuts if we were using film … but we were on tape. This was a rare opportunity to use Transitions joyously and without too much restraint.

Barn Doors

After the titles (they demanded that we leave the Adobe countdown in the copies - voting it "cool") their first one used the opening doors effect. Backstage in the dressing room a cast member was making a speech to camera, then turned and walked off screen left. They dropped in the doors so that he was caught on one swinging leaf of it and whisked even faster out of the way and the scene in the auditorium was revealed just before curtain-up. It makes me gasp every time I watch it. It is just so right!

Funnel

Another popular transition with teenagers is the dotty fade - I loathe it, but they think it great.

Another friend assembled shots of his wedding taken by his father-in-law. He found the perfect use for the sideways funnel transition. That's one I thought no one could use. A shot of guests in their finer heading for a waiting coach was neatly abbreviated as the funnel sucked them up and apparently into the coach. Brilliant, funny and fast.

So you can sometimes find a use for all those gimmicks!

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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