Section 6.4. Transitions: The iMovie Catalog


6.4. Transitions: The iMovie Catalog

Here, for your reference, is a visual representation of each transition, and what editing circumstances might call for it.

6.4.1. Billow

Billow might also be called "Polka-Dot," "Acid Drops," or "Expanding Swiss Cheese." As the clip progresses, a fleet of, well, flying holes descends on the first clip; you can see the second clip through the holes. The holes gradually grow until they occupy the entire frameand presto, you're now in a new scene. You can use the directional arrows to specify a general direction for the flurry of UFH's (unidentified flying holes).

It's kind of hard to imagine when this transition would feel natural, except perhaps in documentaries about cellular reproduction.

6.4.2. Circle Closing, Circle Opening

This effect, called iris close (iris open ) or iris in (iris out) in professional editing programs, is a holdover from the silent film days, when, in the days before zoom lenses, directors used the effect to highlight a detail in a scene.

It creates an ever-shrinking (or growing) circle with the first clip inside and the second clip outside. It's useful at the beginning or end of the movie, when the second clip is solid black and the subject of the first clip is centered in the frame. In that setup, the movie begins or ends with a picture that grows or shrinks away to a little dot. (If the subject in the center waves goodbye just before being blinked out of view, this trick is especially effective.)

6.4.3. Cross Dissolve

The crossfade , or dissolve, is the world's most popular and effective transition. The first clip gradually disappears, superimposed on the beginning of the second clip, which fades in. If you must use a transition at all, you can't go wrong with this one.


Tip: You can use a very short cross dissolve to create what editors call a "soft cut." When the footage would jump too abruptly if you made a regular cut, put in a ten-frame cross dissolve, which makes the junction of clips slightly smoother than just cutting. Soft cuts are very common in interviews where the editors have deleted sections from a continuous shot of a person talking.

6.4.4. Disintegrate

Ever see a film projector get stuck? One frame of film gets stuck in front of the hot projection bulband, after a few seconds of heating up, literally melts away to a blank white movie screen?

Imagine your first clip melting away in several spots at once, revealing the second clip beneath , and you've got the idea behind Disintegrate. It looks very, very cool, and is sure to become an everyday effectamong monster-movie makers .

6.4.5. Fade In

Use this effect at the beginning of your movie, or the beginning of a scene that begins in a new place or time. Unlike most transition effects, this one makes no attempt to smooth the transition between two clips. The fade-in overlaps only the clip to its right , creating a fade-in from complete blackness.

This transition affects only the clip that follows it, so it doesn't shorten your movie or throw subsequent clips out of alignment, like genuine crossfade-style transitions.


Tip: In general, iMovie doesn't let you place one transition next to another. The exceptions are the Fade (In and Out) and Wash (In and Out) transitions. Each of these affects only one clip, not two. By placing an In immediately after an Out, you create an elegant fade out, then in to the next shota very popular effect in movies and commercials.Placing an Out just after an In isn't quite as useful, because it reveals only a fleeting glance of the footage in between. But when you're trying to represent somebody's life flashing before his eyes, this trick may be just the ticket.

6.4.6. Fade Out

This effect, conversely, is best used at the end of a movie, or the end of a scene that requires a feeling of finality. Like its sister, the Fade In, this one doesn't involve two clips at all; it affects only the end of the clip to its left. As a result, it doesn't affect the length or synchronization of your movie.

It's worth noting, by the way, that a fade-out is almost always followed by a fade- in , or by the closing credits. You'll blast your audience's eyeballs if you fade out, sweetly and gracefullyand then cut directly into a bright new clip.

Both Fade In and Fade Out are very useful, and frequently used, effects.


Tip: If you'd rather fade to black and then hold on the black screen for a moment, add a few seconds of blackness after the fade. To do so, switch to the Timeline Viewer and create a pure black clip, as described in Section 5.8.1. Switch to the Clip Viewer, cut the black clip to the Clipboard, and paste it at the end of the movie. Now iMovie will fade out to blackand hold on to that blackness.

6.4.7. Overlap

Overlap is almost exactly the same as the Cross Dissolve, described earlier. The sole difference: The outgoing clip freezes on its last frame as the new clip fades in. (In a Cross Dissolve, the action continues during the simultaneous fades.) Use it in situations where you might normally use a Cross Dissolve, but want to draw the eye to the second clip right away.


Tip: Unlike the Cross Dissolve, the Overlap transition doesn't change the duration of your movie, which makes it a good choice for movies where you've spent a lot of time synchronizing audio and video. In those cases, a Cross Dissolve might knock things out of sync.

6.4.8. Push

In this transition, the first clip is shoved off the frame by the aggressive first frame of the second clip. This offbeat transition effect draws a lot of attention to itself, so use it extremely sparingly. For example, you could use it to simulate an old-style projector changing slides, or when filming a clever, self-aware documentary in which the host (who first appears in the second clip) "pushes" his way onto the screen.

When you select this transition in the list, the four directional arrowswhich are dimmed for most transition typesbecome available. Click one to indicate how you want the incoming clip to push onscreen: up, down, to the left, or to the right.

6.4.9. Radial

You probably saw this one in a few movies of the seventies. What looks like the sweep-second hand on a watch rotates around the screen, wiping away the first clip and revealing the second clip underneath. This transition suggests the passage of time even more than most transitions, clueing the audience in that the scene about to begin takes place in a new location or on a different day.

6.4.10. Ripple

This effect is gorgeous, poetic, beautifuland hard to justify.

Ripple invokes the "drop of water on the surface of the pond" metaphor. As the ripple expands across the screen, it pushes the first clip (the pond surface) off the screen to make way for the incoming new clip (the expanding circular ripple). It's a soothing, beautiful effectbut unless you're making mascara commercials, it calls a little too much attention to itself for everyday home movies.

6.4.11. Scale Down

Scale Down, known to pro editors as the picture zoom effect, is a peculiar effect, whereby the end of the first clip simply shrinks away. Its rectangle gets smaller and smaller until it disappears, falling endlessly away into the beginning of the second clip, which lies beneath it. The rectangle seems to fly away into the upper-left corner of the second clip, not into dead center.

This kind of effect occasionally shows up on TV news, in documentaries, and so on, after you've been watching a closeup of some important document or photograph. By showing the closeup flying away from the camera, the film editor seems to say, "Enough of that. Meanwhile, back in real life "

6.4.12. Twirl

Here's your basic Batman TV-show transition: The first clip spins away, receding into the black abyss, and then the next clip spins in from the same vanishing point.


Tip: If you transition out of a black clip, you're left with the spinning-in appearance of the second clip without the spinning-away of the first one. In other words, you've just created the spinning-newspaper-headline effect of many an old movie.

6.4.13. Warp In

This effect is very similar to Scale Down, except that as the first clip flies away, it seems to fold in on itself instead of remaining rectangular. That characteristic, combined with the fact that it flies away into dead center of the second clip's frame, makes it look as though the first clip is getting sucked out of the center of the picture by a giant video vacuum cleaner.

It's hard to think of any circumstance where this effect would feel natural, except when you're deliberately trying to be weird.

6.4.14. Warp Out

You might think that this effect would be the flip side of the Warp In effect, but it's quite different. This time, the second clip intrudes on the first by pushing its way, as an ever-growing sphere, into the frame. What's left of the first clip gets smashed outward, bizarrely distorting, until it's shoved off the outer edges of the picture.

6.4.15. Wash In, Wash Out

These two effects work exactly like Fade In and Fade Out, described earlier, with one big difference: They fade in from, and out to, white instead of black.

Fading in and out to white, an effect first popularized by Infiniti car commercials in the early eighties, lends a very specific feeling to the movie. It's something ethereal, ghostly, nostalgic. In today's Hollywood movies (including The Sixth Sense ), a fade to white is often an indication that the character you've been watching has just died.

Fading out to white and then in from whitethat is, putting two of these transitions side by side in your Movie Trackis an extremely popular technique in today's TV commercials, when the advertiser wants to show you a series of charming, brightly colored images. By fading out to white between shots, the editor inserts the video equivalent of an ellipsis ( like this ), and keeps the mood happy and bright. (Similar fade-outs to black seem to stop the flow with more finality.)




iMovie 6 & iDVD
iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual
ISBN: B003R4ZK42
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 203
Authors: David Pogue

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