I showed a video to my girlfriend recently after we had just watched a dvd. She said that she thought it looked very good, but there was a problem in that the cuts didn't look seemless like they did on the dvd. I hadn't really thought about it, but when she said it I started to notice it as well. Even shot-reverse shot situations looked sort of choppy. I've heard that real films use a 1 frame cross-dissolve for the cuts. Is this true? Does anyone have any hints for making it appear more seemless? Thanks.

Matt

Without seeing the video it's hard to make specific suggestions.

In general, making successful cuts such as you reference is a matter of remaining on the plane of action, making sure that the action and dialog are continuous and making sure that the cuts make sense with the scene's action. "Choppiness" in cuts is usually a matter of obtrusiveness which, in turn, is usually a matter breaks in one of the above rules.

It is not true that feature films use 1-frame dissolves for cuts.

It might even look worse, maybe like a flash frame.

How do they create a cross disolve with film?

<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Forman : How do they create a cross disolve with film? -->>>

Optically. In the past, the overlapping pieces of source film were sent out, and a new piece of film was exposed, using varying amounts of the original film (100% to 0 for the "out" shot, and 0 to 100% for the "in" shot). This section was then edited into the final film. In some older films, you can these edits before and after a cross dissolve. I'm leaving out the part about interpositives and such.

///d@

Keith, of course, with todays shot 35mm films, the film is telecined to a digital medium and a NLE is used to edit, and then it's put back on film...

<<<-- Originally posted by Alex Knappenberger : Keith, of course, with todays shot 35mm films, the film is telecined to a digital medium and a NLE is used to edit, and then it's put back on film... -->>>

Only for scenes with CGI. Otherwise, the edited shot list is used to cut together the negatives. Film making is still a very analog medium.

///d@

I understood MOST of the concepts and practices behind film editing, just didn't understand the principles behind transitions. Thanks Dennis :)

Dennis, today a common practice is a full intermediate digital tranfer, hence no EDL's, no nada.

They transfer everything they think they will need into an insane rez like 4kx4k then edit the thing and have that printed to film.

Zac