Task 12 - Transitions And Effects

Transitions and special effects can be used to manipulate a sequence in a film. They can be used to distort or change how time or space looks and works and can make the viewer think that the film is going or looks a certain way, when really the way the film is really going is being manipulated by how these transitions and effects are being used.

Transitions are visual effects that are used to switch between scenes. All film makers use a lot of transitions in their films and they all alternate between wipes (where the new scene slowly takes over the screen by covering the previous scene), jump cuts (where one scene suddenly jumps to another one without much warning, this is the most common type of transition), dissolves (where two scenes overlap momentarily and then the old one becomes invisible as the new scene replaces the old one), irises (where a dot becomes a larger and larger circle which shows the scene inside the circle) and fade ins and fade outs (where there is a single colour which fades to a scene and reversed respectively, this transition is mostly used at the start and end of a movie, respectively).

A graphic match/match/raccord (the French term) is when one scene has a shot of an object or space or composition of sorts and cuts to another scene which has a very similar object, space or composition. This helps establish the continuity of action and may sometimes be used to link the two scenes together metaphorically.

The follow shot or following the action technique is where a dolly (a cart on a track which has a mounted camera, sometimes may have a crane to allow for vertical and horizontal camera movement) is used to film moving action, such as a car chase or where characters are moving over long distances such as in medieval war films where two sides are filmed running towards each other. This technique is used to make it easy for the viewer to easily observe the character being followed.

Multiple points of view are used when there are several characters. We tend to see what is going on from their perspective when there is either some intense action going on such as a fist fight or when two characters are conversing during some drama. There is a deleted scene from the first Iron Man film where Robert Downey jr. has just defeated Jeff Bridges and they are on the roof of one of Tony Stark's buildings and they are talking as the camera switches from Tony's side to Jeff's as they talk and struggle to save Jeff from his Iron Monger suit.