Technical Research

Editing techniques for my film Self love:

J-cut Transition:

A J cut is a variant of a split edit film editing technique in which the audio from a following scene overlaps the picture from the preceding scene, so that the audio portion of the later scene starts playing before its picture as a lead-in to the visual cut. Also called an audio lead or audio advance (paul,2016).
The J-cut is the opposite of the L-cut. With this technique, the viewer hears the dialogue of Character A — but only sees Character B on screen. From this shot of Character B (which provides emotional information and context for the scene), the editor cuts back to Character A (Zac, 2018).

Fig.1. J-cut and L-cut. Accessed on the 10th July.2019
https://filmstro.com/blog/improve-your-editing-what-is-a-j-cut-and-l-cut

Dissolve:

The dissolve transition can carry many meanings and affect your story in many vastly different ways.

The dissolve is defined as a gradual change from the ending pictures of one shot into the beginning pictures of the next shot.
shots with a simultaneous downward and upward ramping of opacity (visibility) over a particular period of time. As the end of the first shot “dissolves” away, the beginning of the next shot emerges onto the screen underneath it at the same time. You get to see the images overlapping. A dissolve may also be referred to as a “lap dissolve,” a “lap,” and sometimes a video “mix.” The standard default duration of dissolves in editing software is one second, but this can be easily changed to the length required by the given variables at that particular dissolving point in the story.

The dissolve is most often used where:

-There is a change in time
-There is a change in location
-Time needs to be slowed down or sped up
-There is an emotional component to the subject in the story
-There is a strong visual relationship between the outgoing and the incoming images

Jump Cut:

A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly if at all. This type of edit gives the effect of jumping forwards in time. It is a manipulation of temporal space using the duration of a single shot, and fracturing the duration to move the audience ahead.

A jump cut is a transition between two shots which appears to “jump” due to the way the shots are framed in relation to each other. Jump cuts are usually caused by framing which is quite similar, such as these two:

Fig.2.Jump cut transition. Accessed at 11th July, 2019.
https://www.mediacollege.com/video/editing/transition/jump-cut.html

I used jump cut in my film Self love in order to focus the audience’s attention on the message of the film rather than the drama or emotion of the narrative.

Cut away:

Use cutaways to solve continuity problems such as jump cuts. For example is fig.3.