Editing: Transitions

 

For my media studies editing assignment, we were asked to pick 3 transitions to piece together 6 individual scenes. I chose to use the transitions Dissolve, Match Cut, and Fade.

For the shots I wanted to use a dissolve transition with, I filmed a mango tree in my backyard and zoomed in a little towards the end of the shot and then I filmed my side gate closing. I actually chose dissolve because when I see it used in movies/television shows, it is typically used to create a creepy, somewhat disorienting effect, even sometimes used for flashbacks. I think transitioning from the calm tree to the squeaky gate (I didn't even know that my gate was so loud before I filmed it) closing helped add to the cryptic atmosphere I was trying to create, along with the actual transition. 

My next transition was a match cut, so I actually had to do some work in setting up my camera, in this case, my phone. I wanted this scene to look like I had only moved location, but not stance, so I had to make sure that in both shots, my phone's camera was at the exact same angle. Since when I shot the first scene in my garage, I had to prop my phone on a cup that was sitting on top of a low stool, and I couldn't bring that stool in the house, for the second scene I had to get my swivel office chair and place it in from of the high stool I was going to be sitting on, and prop my phone on a coin jar. So as you can see, that took a bit of rigging, but it definitely came out the way I wanted it to.

The last transition I did was a fade (fade to black specifically) and I used it to transition from a scene of my backyard view to the front of my house. At first I wanted the second scene to be of the same view from my backyard, except in the morning time, but when I went outside to film the "morning" part, it didn't create the dramatic look I was looking for, so I went to my front yard and got a shot of my house instead. After editing the scenes together, I added a doorbell sound effect to the second scene to show that I was supposed to be in a new setting, someone else's house, and I was visiting them. The fade acted as a transition to another location, rather than a transition to show two different times.