In the last section, I said I'd go into more ways to make your movie better. Well, here we go... and I want to thank Peter John Ross of Sonnyboo for the inspriation. (Even though he didn't know he did it...)
I told you about basic "straight cuts" last time; one scene ends, and the new one begins. There are many effects in most editing software now that have "transitions" (a two-dollar word for a four-bit concept: cuts) like you've seen in Star Wars, or some European films, or things like that.
You don't need to play with those transitions. [I don't need to play with those transitions.]
Those aren't the effects you're looking for. [Those aren't the effects I'm looking for.]
Sorry... I couldn't resist the Obi-Wan Kenobi schtick.
What you need are a few simple things: Cut On Motion, Matching Action, and Ell-Cut Audio.
No need to look so puzzled... I shall explain.
Cutting on motion is simply cutting the scene when something is still moving... Say, in our hypothetical film, you want to cut between the geekyhero running out to search for the dog, and the less-than-savory sort sitting somewhere else with a dog. As the geekyhero runs, you CUT in the middle of a run; when you bring in the next shot, of the LTS sort with a dog, start the shot on LTS doing an action.
Here's a (very poorly drawn) sample storyboard to try and show you what I mean:
Now, my drawing skills on the computer are something less than breathtaking, but I hope I'm getting the point across, at least.
Matching Action is showing people in one shot performing what looks like a continuation of the same action in two separate shots. Say the crying girl had received a mysterious note; she crumples it up after reading it, and throws it down onto the sidewalk. Next we see a crumpled note on the sidewalk, picked up by a hand... which is not hers, but the geek's, and he deposits the paper into a trash receptacle. This changes scene on the audience, but they don't notice as much as they might.
Ell-Cut Audio has the picture from one scene, say the one ending, overlap with the audio of the scene coming in. Say, as an example, the girl puts her head in her hands and begins to cry inconsolably. On the soundtrack you hear "I swear, you cry like a girl!" The picture changes to the geek and say, his father. The father's voice, which was over the previous shot, continues: "I never saw any real man who could cry like you do!"
There are other techniques, of course... like using something blocking the camera to switch scenes... say, a cab pulls in front of the girl on the bench, and when the cab pulls away, it's at another house, with a new character in view.
Or, perhaps, using a letter, or a newspaper, or some other thing of that sort to be the intermediate focus point in the scene shift. Say Hero writes a letter to Girl, with whom he's had a fight. He's trying desperately to make things right, and he pulls a copy of the letter off the printer, and reads it. When we pull away from the letter now, Girl is reading it.
These techniques aren't good to use indiscriminately. Just because a pinch of salt makes your soup taste better, you don't put a cup of salt in to make it even better still. Use these techniques in moderation - a pinch, or a dash, here and there, once in a while - and it'll make your film better to watch.
Okay, in our next section, we'll talk about distribution - for the sake of this article, we'll limit it to DVD, and YouTube/Google Video/FaceBook/MySpace. (Festivals are a topic we'll talk about at a future date... I promise.)
