Transitions

End of summer. Back to school. Back to work.

Transitions are tough.

In the edit suite, we’re always talking about transitions. How to get from one idea or feeling to something completely different.

Before our vacation break, Khanhthuan and I were tackling a section of our Dive Emergency video where a diver says he loves diving, but in the very next section he narrates the story of a fatal dive accident from 1988 that we re-created for the camera. How do we get from “I love diving” to “shit happens”? Khanhthuan has taken that transition through about 10 versions. It’s a tough one to nail. A “star-wipe” won’t cut it.

In editing, as in life, transitions are hard to do effectively and seamlessly. They can be jarring. They can be beautiful. As humans we need change, but the key to change is transition.

Transition in architecture can be a break in patterns, or a change in materials, and it’s something for the eyes to explore. In classical English gardens you find paths and resting places, and thresholds linking the two. Take a walk through the Halifax Public Gardens and see how many thresholds, or transitions, you can find. Does it work?

In music — chord progressions, blue notes, instrumental solos, bridges, key changes, or having the bass and drums kick in at the right moment – these transitions can jar or please the ear. Check out the repetitive grooves broken by almost awkward rhythm changes in this piece by jazz trio The Bad Plus, and see how cool the transition moment can be. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb-bJlxXDbs

Or walk down Spring Garden Road and take a moment out of your day to study the next woman wearing a skirt and knee-high boots. It’s that little bit of transition leg showing between boot and skirt that is so pleasing to the eye. Or the trendy guy in his t-shirt and jeans. The transition needs a belt, better still if it has a Union Jack belt buckle like my buddy Kharim.

In editing, montages and sequences can be fun to work with, but transitions feel like work. Montages are collections of images that are unrelated in time and space, but they work together to convey a feeling or an idea. Sequences usually show some narrative and are related in time and space, for example: guy waxes his board, looks up, sees the waves coming in, cut to him running into the surf, then he’s paddling out. You can jump in space and time of course in a sequence, and building sequences is usually fun. The fun stops when you have to figure out how to transition from the surfer dude on the board to, for example, the story of his grandfather growing up on a farm in Romania. But it can be done. I always say to the editors I’m working with “in editing there’s always a solution” – it’s a grey platitude but it’s true.

The transition might be a dip to black, or a dissolve (can be a little dated), or a star-wipe (if you’re being ironic), or a dramatic music change, or subtle music change, or the transition might be a montage. In dramatic films, a wide exterior shot of your next location/sequence is a natural choice. Or it could simply be a hard cut to your next idea, and that can work too. I love hard cuts with dynamic music shifts. Whatever it is, the key to a transition for me is always breathing space. Timing. Is there enough weight given to the last thought before the next lands on us?

After two weeks of vacation — canoeing and hiking and biking and swimming and star-gazing around the back country roads of Nova Scotia — I’m finding it hard to transition back to the city. Perhaps now, a star-wipe would come in handy, not-so-ironically.

More of the same is easy. Transitions are hard, but without them, you die.

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