Chapter 7

Joining Scenes Together

In this chapter, I look at ways of joining scene to scene as we proceed further on our journey to producing a complete programme or film. Our polymer chain of individual edits gets longer and longer.

A change of scene usually accompanies a change of timescale. By how much time has jumped is generally made clear straight away to the viewer, whether it has been a few minutes or a few years.

 Quartermaine’s Terms (1987)—Disguised Time Jumps

A favourite play of mine, dramatised by the BBC, that breaks this rule magnificently is Quartermaine’s Terms (1987) by Simon Gray. It was directed by Bill Hays and starred Sir John Gielgud, Edward Fox, and Eleanor Bron. Here, cuts between scenes which were made to look like the next day turn out to be several weeks later, and only the forthcoming dialogue slowly reveals what has happened in the interim. As a viewer you keep saying to yourself, ‘Oh, she’s died’, or ‘Ah, they’ve split up’, or ‘He’s in charge now’, and so on. It’s such good writing and well worth a watch. ‘See you Monday’.

 Scene—Joining Scenes Offers You So Many Possibilities

A change of scene will offer you the widest range of possibilities as to the timing of such a join, much more so than anything we have looked at so far. The camera, when it filmed your incoming picture, will have been turning over for several seconds before the director’s call for ‘action’. Similarly, the last shot of the outgoing may hang on a few moments before the shout of ‘cut’ stopped the filming. Thus, highly charged moments that end a scene can be made to hang in the air before the bubble is burst by the arrival of the next scene.

This chapter is divided as follows:

• 7.1 Scene Transitions—A Look at the Range of Possibilities
• 7.2 Repeated Transitions—Cross-Cutting (or Parallel Action)
• 7.3 Key Points—Joining Scenes Together

7.1 Scene Transitions—A Look at the Range of Possibilities

 Place to Place—The Simplest Scene Transition Is a Cut

By far the best way to join scene to scene is a cut. For the most part, a scene is a self-contained time bubble. Any tightens you make to increase pace within a scene are microscopic compared with time jumps that occur between complete scenes. Modern audiences are totally used to time jumps on cuts. Gone are the days of wobbling the picture to imply we are going back in time to see a childhood experience from a character’s life. A well-timed cut is the neatest, cleanest, and quickest way to jump from scene to scene.

 Lawrence of Arabia (1962)—One of the Best Ever Scene Transitions Using a Simple Cut

One of the most famous cuts in all the movies comes from David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), starring Peter O’Toole. His Arabian adventure starts with the simple blowing out of a burning match. With the sound of the breath extinguishing the match, Lean cuts to a desert sun rising over a flat landscape over which that great tune, written by Maurice Jarre, also emerges out of the shadows of night. There follows a mix to a fantastic shot of rolling desert sands, and T.E. Lawrence and his guide appear as black dots over the crest of the dunes.

 In the Frame—Good Cutting Techniques

Here are some good techniques to consider when you are cutting from one scene to another.

The eye is drawn to movement as we have discovered, so movement on a cut will help break the spell of the outgoing scene and introduce the new. Once again, it is better to leave the pause on the outgoing and let the first shot from the new scene move us on.

Look for something that wipes the frame on the cut. A passing car, a passer-by, or a hand gesture all act as marvellous screen wipes and can perfectly bring the outgoing scene to a close, just as a conductor of an orchestra brings the players to the end of a phrase with a swish of the hand.

The incoming shot can also be the source of movement for a screen wipe, such as a passer-by walking in front of the action, or a car moving in the shot, or maybe one of your main characters is revealed as he emerges from behind a pillar or lamp post. All of these snippets of movement act as screen wipes, or reveals, that neatly take you to the next part of the story.

Some such screen wipes are planned by the director (so use them, obviously), and the director will beam with pride as he or she says ‘see what I do for you’, but at least you have spotted them and included such superbly directed photography in your cut.

This technique applies equally well to documentaries, scripted drama, or comedy.

 The Early Music Show—A Sound Cut

Very often, a sound can also shut a scene down perfectly—a door closes, a handbrake is applied, a telephone receiver is replaced on its hook (if they have those anymore). We hear the noise, see a head turn, and off we go to the next scene. The noise used to close a scene can alternately come from the incoming scene, like a doorbell, an alarm clock, or the explosion of fireworks. This technique is known as a sound cut.

Here, split edits come into their own as they generate very good scene transitions. These usually work best if the sound of the incoming scene is started over the outgoing vision. You’d almost certainly do this when music is involved and start the music before any associated picture change. Thus, the happiness of an outgoing scene can be easily undercut by sinister music before it ends, in order to prepare the audience for a new and more disturbing aspect of the story.

Over to you now! The first of three exercises in joining scenes is rather unimaginatively titled Exercise 41: Scene Join 1.

 The 39 Steps (1935)—An Example of a Sound Cut

There is a great example of the technique of using sound on a cut in The 39 Steps (1935), directed by Alfred Hitchcock (his name will keep cropping up, and rightly so!) and edited by Derek N. Twist.

A murder has happened in Richard Hannay’s flat (Robert Donat). Realising he would be a prime suspect, he grabs a map held in the victim’s hand, decides to run, and sets off for Scotland by train. While the train is heading north, the body of the woman is discovered by Hannay’s housekeeper. She recoils and screams at the horror of her discovery, but instead of hearing her scream, we hear a train’s whistle, followed by a shot of the train carrying the fleeing Hannay steaming north at top speed. Here, the early use of the incoming sound creates a great transition and heightens the tension, as the chase is on.

 From Darkness to Light—Scene Transitions Using Fades and Dissolves

There is no doubt a dissolve, or a fade down and up, implies passage of time. If time is constantly changing in your piece, then continuously mixing back and forth can become tediously repetitive, and sometimes inadvertently give the impression of a slow pace. I would say dissolves used to join scenes is a technique that should be used sparingly. We are back to personal judgement again; however, remember the mid-point of the mix, where both pictures are superimposed on one another, must look attractive and intentional. The busier each of the individual shots is, the harder this is to achieve. You can cope with one of the shots being busy, but generally not both. A close-up of a face dissolving into a busy landscape may look good, but two busy landscapes mixing together will just look like an environmental mess.

 Apocalypse Now (1979)—Some Good Looking Movie Mixes

No environmental mess here, other than the landscape which is being blown out of existence during the course of the Vietnam War. Just look at how well-crafted the mixes are in the opening scene from Apocalypse Now (1979), directed by Francis Ford Coppola and edited by Lisa Fruchtman, Gerald B. Greenberg, and Walter Murch.

All the halfway points of the mixes in this opening scene look like photographic images in their own right.

Usually, it is very difficult to hold two (or more) images on the screen for any length of time unless they have been designed to complement each other by the director.

The mixes here are used to convey many aspects of the complex, hallucinating, and hard-drinking Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), where memories of the war are mixed with his own tense, drunk, and sleepless state. Captain Willard’s shot is shown upside down, mixed over the wartime footage, which further confirms his troubled state of mind. Here, his memories of a wartime jungle terrain, helicopter blades, and napalm bombs are whirring around in his mind as he stares at a rotating ceiling fan.

The absence of the original sound informs us further that these are disturbing images of the past. The soundscape starts with slow single swishes of a synthesised helicopter rotor blade before we hear Jim Morrison and The Doors start performing ‘The End’.

 Missing—Scenes Have to Be Removed Sometimes

Problems can arise when a scene, or part of a scene, has to be removed for editorial reasons, leaving you with an unplanned and uncomfortable join where perhaps some of the same characters are involved in the identical location, but at a later time. Obviously, an exterior from your GV collection might get you out of trouble, but there could be a good reason why even this can’t be used, so a dissolve, or a fade up and down, might be the only solution here.

I’m being a bit hard on dissolves, but don’t be frightened of the long, slow dissolve. It can look great and help create a poignant, life-changing moment. A good director will have usually planned such shots in advance so that they can literally melt into one another with a nice slow mix.

Now have a go at Exercise 42: Scene Join 2.

 Tales of the Riverbank—More on Scene Transitions

Here is another chance for you to show off your skills and join two scenes together from Chocolates and Champagne.

The scenario is that the brothers have realised, mainly from seeing their dad’s films, that their parents had a hand in setting them up to compete all the time by dressing them alike when they were growing up, as though they were twins. They now understand how this has served only to push them apart in later life. The reconciliation is interrupted by a call from Mark’s work.

Here is Exercise 43: Scene Join 3.

 Light Fantastic—Quick Transitions Such as a Dip to Colour

Another dissolve-based transition that works well, although it is a little overused, is a quick up and down to a colour field (usually white). The software you are using will refer to this as a dip to colour, or something similar. This technique is often used as a flashback device, when a sudden thought of recent events strikes home on the face of a character.

A variation of this technique would be to use a video effect and briefly overexpose the outgoing and incoming shots over the join, producing a soft glow as the pictures burn and melt into one another.

Transitions of this kind can also be enhanced with some kind of sound effect. A whoosh, or something like it, can further increase the impact of this kind of transition.

Software improvements are constantly modifying what an editor can do with the pictures here, but the basic concept remains the same.

 The Weakest Link—Weak Transitions

It is considered bad practice to cut from empty frame to empty frame. Usually, if your subject leaves frame in the outgoing shot, it is better to have something or someone already in vision in the incoming shot, and vice versa. This goes hand in hand with looking for ways of keeping the action going. There is no point seeing a moving car completely leave shot and then cutting to another empty frame with the same car eventually entering the incoming frame. It will look better to cut to the car already in the incoming shot, or alternately, pop in a shot of the driver for a moment. In this way, the action continues more neatly, and the dramatic flow is maintained.

For the same reason, an outgoing wide shot cutting to an incoming wide shot is often a very limp way of joining scene to scene. A better alternative is to bang in a close-up from the new scene as the first shot, then out wide to act as a reveal of where we are now.

As an example, you could imagine a tranquil summer scene of a sun-drenched river bank, but suddenly the mood is shattered as a shovel stabs at a mound of freshly driven snow before you cut to see a new landscape covered in ice and snow. Your audience will certainly understand the time jump which you have just illustrated.

 A Shot in the Dark—Smash Cut Transitions

Sometimes the very opposite of a mix works well—a smash cut. Here, one scene abruptly cuts to another, usually with the intention of startling the audience. To this end, the smash cut often occurs at a crucial moment in a scene where a cut would not be expected. To heighten the impact of a smash cut, there should be a considerable disparity in the content of the joining shots and their associated sounds.

An example of a clichéd smash cut is where a knife is raised, tightly held in a fist-like grip, and thrust down into the victim, but instead of seeing the impact and all the blood and guts, a smash cut is made to a more peaceful countryside location with birdsong or perhaps a boat slowly gliding down a river. Smash cuts can also be effective when a character wakes up from a nightmare, to simulate the jarring nature of that event.

An exercise, Exercise 44: Action Seq, follows.

 Comedy Connections—Smash Cut Transitions in Comedy

Smash cutting can also be used to great comedic effect. Reggie Perrin, as he thinks of his mother-in-law as a hippopotamus, comes to mind in The Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin, as do many of those intercut nonsequiturs from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Another common kind of smash cut technique in comedy is as a type of false censoring, allowing a character only to emit the first syllable of a swear word, for example.

I did a great one of these in ‘Beer’ from Blackadder II, the one where Miriam Margolyes plays Edmund’s aunt, a puritanical and highly religious lady covered in wooden crucifixes. At the end, where Edmund begs to be allowed to continue his speech, he says ‘and perhaps, finish with any luck.’ Suddenly, from under the Queen’s dress, his aunt emerges and says, ‘Luck? Way-hey! Get it?’ To which everyone says ‘No?’ The aunt then replies, ‘Oh, come on, “Luck”…sounds almost exactly like F…!’ We smash cut to the titles.

 Double Vision—Partial Dissolve Transitions

I’ve recently seen a dissolve technique that works well in certain circumstances, and that’s where you selectively dissolve away the least important portion of the outgoing shot to the incoming shot first, and only then allow the rest of the shot to follow. Photographed well, this can look very effective.

An example of this might be a shot of a person in a taxi having just completed a mobile phone conversation. The person ends the call, but continues to look at the phone. Photographed so that the character is on the left of frame, you can dissolve away the right-hand side of the screen (the taxi interior) and replace it with the incoming picture (with its primary content framed right), thus enabling you to have both pictures on the screen for longer than a conventional mix would allow. There is of course a soft-edged wipe between the two pictures while they are both on the screen.

It’s sort of like pausing the mix halfway through, but, as I say, the pictures would have to be planned in advance for this technique to look good.

 Clockwise—Wipes and Other Video Effect Transitions

Scene transitions can be produced in a huge range of styles and techniques. If you want to screw up the image of the outgoing picture like a piece of paper, force it into a wine bottle, and have the characters in the following scene pour it into their glasses, I can’t stop you. Well, I can, when I grab the remote and see if Newsnight has started yet. Seriously, with modern software you can do just about anything you like; it’s purely a matter of taste, time, and money.

All I would say is that if I see any of you putting a clock-wipe into a programme just to inform your audience that time has passed, I would regard this book to have failed utterly in what I’ve been trying to show you.

 Vive la Difference—More on Smash Cut Transitions

Disparity in sound can also help create a good transition—loud to quiet, knife swish to birdsong, a nightmare soundscape to an alarm clock—there are many examples.

 Pennies from Heaven (1979)—A Great Smash Cut

One of the best smash cuts I can remember is in the BBC version of Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven (1978) starring the late Bob Hoskins, directed by Piers Haggard and edited by David Martin and Howard Dell, a colleague of mine from whom I learnt so much. May I warn you, this next bit does contain ‘spoilers’. The moment I refer to comes as Arthur (Bob Hoskins), our anti-hero, is about to be hanged for a murder he didn’t commit. With the rope around his neck and with Arthur still protesting his innocence, he asks for his nose to be scratched. There is no reply from the execution party. Quickly follow shots of the noose, a hood being placed over his head, and his feet shuffling forward. Suddenly, the trap is released. There follows a fantastic cut to black and silence. We wait. Then some music is heard, in the form of the 1930s dance band hit ‘In the Dark’ by Roy Fox and His Band. A dot appears on the screen which starts to hop above the text of the lyrics of the song as the coda of the series starts. Brilliant! Give it a watch!

Actually, the whole series is well worth watching for its use of many clever transitions, which were mostly done on equipment where even a simple mix took three large two-inch videotape machines, each worth over £100,000 (the price of a substantial house then), and considerable skill to accomplish.

 Changing Faces—Simple Wipe Transitions

Simple wipes and slides can work well, but they should be used with caution. The reason I say that is because they define a style that, with too frequent use, can become repetitive and predictable. The trouble is, they bring attention to themselves, probably unnecessarily, and therefore they can take away attention from the pictures you intend to join.

Apart from their use in sport coverage (which I examine more closely in a moment), another good use is when events have to be condensed into a very short timescale and the shots are somewhat repetitive, such as a fashion catwalk. Here, a variety of wipes or video effect moves, such as slides or squashes, can work better than conventional cuts. After all, you are creating a montage (see Chapter 11).

 Batman (1966)—Holy Scene Joins, Batman!

Sometimes, you want to bring attention to this sort of transition, as the original Batman ABC TV series from the 1960s ably demonstrates. Here, a spinning colourful picture with a zooming bat symbol was used over and over again as the scene join bumper. This brought the comic book originated nature of the story closer to the TV adaptation. Thwak, Kepow! Zowie!

 Picture Page—Multiple Image Transitions

Wipes, picture in picture effects, and graphics can all be used to produce a modern Windows-like display that looks more like a computer desktop than a TV picture. All you need to do is watch the box and look at recent news or sport coverage from the major broadcasters to see how different editorial teams multilayer their output to make it look as contemporary as possible…your palate is laid before you.

 We Are the Champions—Sporting Transitions

Wipe-based transitions in sporting events can look great, especially if a graphic image is involved. Where would sport editors be if they didn’t use a graphic and a wipe to get to the replay of a goal?

You’ve all seen the type of transitions I mean. The claret jug passes through frame and we are on a slow motion replay of the winning putt on the 18th at the Old Course at St. Andrew’s; a cricket test side’s team badge wipes through frame and we see how the last batsman was dismissed with a ‘Yorker’ at the Oval; a swish of a graphic-based tennis racket and we see the chalk dust fly as the ball just catches the line on the Centre Court at Wimbledon.

This is not as complicated as it sounds, as you will (more often than not) be provided with a kit of parts of these effects, elements of which will just simply drop onto your timeline.

7.2 Repeated Transitions—Cross-Cutting (or Parallel Action)

Cross-cutting, or intercutting, also sometimes called parallel action, is a technique that emphasises spatial discontinuity—one of those ‘yuck’ phrases from more worthy tomes on the subject of filmmaking. In English, what that means is that if you constantly switch from one location to another, you are emphasising the fact that simultaneous actions are happening in different locations and, at least to start with, are unconnected.

 Up the Junction—Scene Connection by Intercutting

An example of scene connection by intercutting might be a shot of a train hurtling down a track intercut with a car that has broken down on a level-crossing. To start with, the shots (or scenes) are totally unrelated—the train, the car, the train, the car, and so on. By cross-cutting the shots, the viewer will understand these events are happening at the same time but in two different locations. Eventually, a linking shot is seen which transforms the separate scenes into a single scene as the train approaches the stricken car. I won’t spoil the end for you, in case you see the film one day, but you see what I mean.

 Strangers on a Train (1951)—A Movie Example of Cross-Cutting

If you want an example of cross-cutting from the movies, Alfred Hitchcock provides us with one in Strangers on a Train (1951), which was edited by William H. Ziegler.

Even before we meet the two protagonists in this murder plot, and crucially before they themselves meet, we only see two sets of feet, apparently walking toward each other, and, at least to start with, in different locations. They both get out of different taxis and start walking in what turns out to be the busy location of a railway station. No facial shots are used, and, despite the fact that these two sets of feet board a train, Hitchcock continues to imply approach by intercutting the two sets of walking feet, now in the same carriage of a moving train. They sit, still unidentified and still strangers to each other, until one of the characters accidentally kicks the other as he sits down, and at last the parallel action stops and a conversation ensues. To quote Louis Armstrong from High Society (1956), ‘End of song, beginning of story’.

 The Godfather (1972)—Cross-Cutting Baptism and Murder

For another example of cross-cutting or parallel action, take a look at the baptism scene from The Godfather (1972), directed by Francis Ford Coppola and edited by William Reynolds and Peter Zinner.

Here, a church baptism service serves as the background to parallel scenes of murder, as Michael Corleone’s men (Al Pacino) kill his enemies to establish Michael as the new head of the family. The continuous and calm eulogy from the priest and the faint cries of the baby hold this marvellous sequence together. The preparation for baptism matches and is played in parallel with the preparation for murder. The killing of Michael’s enemies dramatically starts when Michael is asked about renouncing Satan, and ends in sync with the baptism as it draws to a close. You can’t get more parallel than that.

To create such a sequence, an editor has to temporally come out of the shadows and reveal to the movie audience that he or she actually exists. But even here, some attempt is made to camouflage the editors’ existence, and thus the assembled nature of the scenes, by at least having the sound of the baptism service in the background throughout the parallel action of the assassination scenes.

 False Witness—Laying False Trails with Cross-Cutting

Cross-cutting can also be used to create false trails in a murder mystery. For example, an innocent person can be brought into the viewer’s list of suspects simply by cross-cutting his scenes with those around the time of the murder.

 Cracker—Splitting Long Scenes

Cross-cutting can also be used to split long scenes and give a sense of pace without removing any actual running time. In these days of short attention spans, cross-cutting is used more and more in TV dramas (especially in soaps), where several storylines are running concurrently, and we happily dance between all of them at will. You might think the reason that directors and editors use this technique is to make the final product look more interesting than it actually is. Well, in the words of Francis Urquhart from the UK version of House of Cards, ‘You might very well think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment’.

 Pop Idol—Music Video Secrets

Another form of cross-cutting that is very common is cutting between different takes of a music performance, such as in a music video. Here, the same song is performed in different locations and intercut to produce a visually interesting result. Thus, a public performance, a studio recording, and a rehearsal session of the same song can all be intercut together to produce the final video. Add in a few general shots of the band at play, and you have the basis for the production of many pop videos.

7.3 Key Points—Joining Scenes Together

• A change of scene usually accompanies a change of timescale. This should be made clear to your audience.
• Cuts rule, okay! Modern audiences are completely used to transitional time jumps on cuts.
• Look for something to wipe the frame at the scene join. A car, a passer-by, or a reveal on the incoming. It makes for a great transition.
• A sound can either help end a scene (a door closes, a car moves off) or introduce a new scene (a telephone or doorbell), especially if you overlap the cut with this new sound. This is known as a sound cut.
• Music starting just before the end of the outgoing scene will also help introduce the new.
• Straightforward dissolves are a conventional way to imply time has passed.
• Dips to white and a whoosh on the sound, even if a little overused, can imply flashback.
• Smash cuts can really be effective to jump you out from one scene to another.
• Smash cuts can also be made to have great comedic effect.
• Cutting a wide shot to another wide shot can produce a weak scene join.
• For the same reason, an empty frame cutting to an empty frame is a weak transition.
• Wipes and other forms of picture manipulation are more common in sport and magazine programmes, producing a more ‘computery’ or ‘graphicy’ look.
• Cross-cutting scenes implies they are happening at the same time. This is also referred to as parallel action.
• Cross-cutting scenes can heighten tension and stop a long scene from dragging.
• Cross-cutting scenes can keep several storylines running simultaneously, as is very often the case in soap dramas.
• Music videos often use the technique of cross-cutting several performances of a song to produce a coherent, final sequence.
• Don’t ever use a clock wipe to imply time has passed, not even for a joke.