MoviePlus provides a wide selection of transition effects, ranging from simple fades to more complex geometric designs. As a beginner, you may be tempted to use them liberally throughout your project. However, if your aim is to create a professional looking video, avoid temptation and stick to the basics.
Do some research—you’ll find that you hardly ever see fancy transitions in movies or television shows.
The following list describes the simplest and most common transition methods used.
The cut isn’t really a transition at all, but simply involves replacing one shot with another. Cuts are fast and efficient. They maintain continuity because they mimic the way we look at things in real life—our line of vision quickly jumps from one thing to the next. For this reason, cuts are the best way to keep the action rolling at a good pace (so timing is key). Fancier transitions can be distracting and slow down the pace. Cuts are used 90% of the time in every professional production!
Don't be afraid to mix live footage with photos! They can make great cut scenes and add to the video.
This is when a shot gradually fades to (or from) a single color, usually black or white. It’s a useful (and often used) transition, and in movies typically occurs when the story changes locations.
The speed of the fades indicates the importance of the change in time and/or location between scenes.
A slower fade with more time spent on black indicates a more significant end/beginning. A quick fade to/from black might indicate a time lapse of a few minutes or hours, whereas a long fade indicates a much bigger change.
This effect is more obvious than the fade and the viewer is supposed to notice it. The wipe denotes a major change in location or time. It might also be used to show a main character changing over time, wiping between clips of him or her at various points in time.
For details on working with transitions and effects in MoviePlus, see MoviePlus Help or the How To pane (for Storyboard mode only).
A transition is the process of changing from one shot to the next.
Professional productions generally stick to the more standard transition types and don’t jump from one type to another.
Unless you’re really comfortable with the editing process, it’s best to stick with the smooth and simple cut, dissolve, and fade to black or from black.
As you play your video and audio footage, you’ll notice some obvious ‘natural’ cutting points. For example, a person getting up from a chair during a close up shot, a drink being put down on a table, or even a simple head turn. In audio footage, a cut may occur when an sound is heard off-camera—a doorbell ringing, a person laughing, a car engine starting up, and so on.
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