As a way of introduction there is a Video School/Lesson web page that explains and shows Natural Transitions for Story Telling. The five examples that are covered in this tutorial are:
- Whip pan
- Body wipe
- Close up of object
- Cutting on motion
- Crossing audio - Sometimes referred to as an L-Cut or J-Cut see http://blogs.nppa.org/editfoundry/tag/j-cuts/
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Rather than to use the fire examples used in this tutorial, I have found five transition different to these and shown below:
Example 1: Audio Transition:
The closing sequence of The Matrix (Wachowski A., Wachowski L., 1999)
What I like best about this sequence is the audio transition that changes from a narrow bandwidth phone conversation, to a high reverb pipe echo to an open outdoor environment. This transition also has an accompanying visual transition where the camera zooms through the computer screen, between three dimensional text into blackness and coming to rest on the telephone mouth piece as it fades into view. This transition takes you on a journey where sound and image transports you from the Nebuchadnezzar hovercraft, through a dark tunnel and onto a street inside the Matrix. This transition is about sound filtering and effects rather than the L-Cut or J-Cut seen in the introduction.
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Example 2: Physical Framing - Onze helden zijn terug!
The transition that is of interested in this video is at the closing. This transition is unusual in that it is not created in editing but rather in production. This transition was created by a large physical picture frame that was lowered from the ceiling, such that when it was moved into position, the actors who were previously standing in the shopping mall, appeared to be frozen in a life size picture created by this frame. This transitions is important to this drama since it was performed before a live audience, who unlike the later video audience would not have had a frame that could be used for a picture still. As a video production this physical frame might seem unnecessary since these kinds of frames can be created in post production, however the fact that is there does make it unusual. What makes this transition difficult from the persecutive of a film director is that physical transitions have to be planned and created in production rather than in post production where transitions are normally made.
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Example 3: Match Cut or Graphic Match Cut
In this example the shape from the eye is matched to the shape of the sun. There is also a match in colour between the two sequences where the eye and surrounding skin have been tinted orange to match the colour of the sunset. In this kind of transition it would also be expected that there is a connection of meaning between the two sequences. For example, since the eye can be thought of as the window to the soul it symbolically expresses inward thought, therefore this particular transition could suggest to the viewer that this person is either thinking about a literal sunset or else thinking about something that relates to a sunset like romance, or completion. Although this example has aspects of the 'Close up of object' transition identified in the introduction, it is different in that the elements matched in the two sequences are not the same.
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Example 4: The uncanny - Fresh Guacamole by PES
This video is full of transitions all intended to create a senese of the uncanny. The uncanny is a Freudian concept where things appear both stange and familiar at the same time. According to a Wikipedia page this film was made using pixilation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Guacamole. One could argue that the pixilation techniques used in this video should not be classified as transitions, but instead be seen only as a contiguous pixilation sequence, however I suggest that such an opinion is ignoring the fact that these illusions have been created through the use of very cleverly crafted transitions. As a film maker this video shows examples of what is possible for transitions through the use of pixilation and other animation techniques.
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Example 5: Still intermediates and zoom out transitions
This music video clip uses two basic video transitions. The first is the use of stills intermediates. These stills are often blurred and change quickly which gives them the illusion of movement. These transition are disorientating and maybe collaborate with the repeating lyric "God's gonna cut you down". The second video transition is the zoom out which starts with an extreme close up of a dark object (mainly peoples eyes) and then quickly zooms out to reveal the full frame. These transitions have a lot of energy and also create a tunnel effect. This style of transition being quite startling and so would want to be used sparingly the movie genre but does suit music videos.
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