JUMP CUTS AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT THEM

What you’ll learn:

Jump cuts editing explained

• What is a jump cut?
• Creative ways to deal with jump cut
• Editing tools to smooth over jump cuts
  • The warp flow transition
  • Smart split

Let’s explore a few time-honored ways to edit around jump cuts, or even put them to work for you.

Perhaps the best and most-used method of dealing with a jump cut is to cut away to a different shot and then return, so there’s nothing seemingly amiss by objects having moved places.  In a dialog scene, you could cut to the other actor and then back to the original shot.  Or you could cut to what’s called a “cat in the window” shot, some other point of interest you insert specifically to cut away from the original shot so you can cover the jump.  If the dialog from the first shot still runs under the insert, then the effect is totally natural.

Or, in an interview, cut to whatever the person interviewed talks about, or to a shot of the interviewer.  Not only do you cover the jump shot, you provide your viewers with visuals and detail instead of just a boring talking head, making everything more interesting while you solve the problem of the jump cut.

While jump cuts are usually problems, you can still put them to creative use.  That they’re jarring to the audience can work to your advantage if that’s the kind of mood you’re looking for in a particular scene.  Hard jump cuts can heighten tension, or they can create planned confusion in your audience which might serve your storytelling needs.  Every project is different; perhaps yours can benefit from the inventive inclusion of jump cuts.

Jump cuts, as we said, cause moving objects in an image to jump from one place to another, because the frames in which the objects moved from place to place are missing.

The Warp Flow transition alleviates the problem by analyzing the clips on both sides of the jump cut, interpolating the difference between them, creating whole new frames based on that interpolation and inserting those frames into the sequence between the reference frames.  The new frames give you a natural, seamless motion between the positions of the moving objects, making it appear as though it’s a continuous shot.

The effect works best when there’s only a little change in the jump, such as in an interview setting where the person interviewed moves a little, but most or all of the background remains the same.  Or, it could work well in a similar, stationary dialog scene.

(Large changes will create unpredictable morphing effects, which won’t look like a seamless transition, but could be used creatively – let your imagination loose!)

To use the Warp Flow transition on a jump cut, drag the ends of the clips involved in the jump cut to create a crossfade of about five to seven frames between them, and then drop the Warp Flow transition into the crossfade.  The Warp Flow transition analyzes the cut and interpolates the necessary frames for a smooth transition.

Move the ends of the clips to adjust the duration of the transition as desired.  Depending on the footage, the transition can benefit from being longer or shorter.