Nevertheless, you must clearly show the element that signifies the time change, whether visual or auditory, as it will leave them confused. This is not a rule you must follow however, it allows us to omit a few useless shots and saves production time. After all, time is money. Joe then says, ‘Goodbye Danny’ for clarification. Believe it or not, our brains are smart enough to piece these bits of information together and work out that Joe has fixed the car. The morning light and the now-working car. Right here, we have a visual and auditory link to Danny’s dialogue. The car’s engine echoes throughout the garage.We then cut to Joe lighting a cigarette with the morning light entering the garage.Let’s break this down into bullet points to illustrate the point further. We didn’t need to see him fixing the car, we didn’t need to see Danny leaving, but we knew all this took place because of an element included in the scene, in this case, the sound of the car. We know he finished working on the car, and Danny was gone at first light. Using the notion that content-based cuts are better than normal cuts, let’s look at what we can do. Quite often, filmmakers would dissolve multiple cuts to show a long period of passing.īut we can do better. In the 50s & 60s, a common way of visually showing that time was passing was with a montage of shots dissolving into each other.Ī dissolve cut (a transition that screenplay software supports) is often used to display a change of time or location. When else is the CUT TO transition an excellent to use? Well, quite often, in screenplays, we need to convey that a passage of time has passed. We know that John became a cop like he said he would, and we also know that the thug served a lengthy jail sentence. We can make assumptions based on the intervening activity. The best transitions are the content-based ones. Why is that? It is because the transition can tell us a story without showing us another 5 minutes of expositional content. Good transitions should convey information, and if they are put to good use, the screenplay will read smoother. But let’s look at when this transition is put to best use. In fact, most writers use it sparingly, if not at all. However, you shouldn’t constantly use the Cut To transition for the end of each scene. The most common transition to use is CUT TO: The majority of screenwriting applications (such as Final Draft) will give you the option to add a transition to the end of a scene.
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