I'm working on a few different articles so I'll probably be starting up similar topics, but I wanted to get different input and opinions on crossfades/dissolves for transitions (we can also talk a little about its static counterpart the overlay). Next to a hard cut its the most basic transition and pretty much available to all editors. While I find that crossfades are good for softening a transition between scenes I also think they are often too overused, misused, run too long, or a weak transition.
When I was a complete newbie editor I used it as my go to transition and would have some crossfades last upwards of two-three seconds or more. While it may have been approriate in some places looking back at them its hard for me to determine where and when my focus should shift from one scene to the other, and other times it would just become a distorted cloud of colors and shapes. One major problem I notice that can happen with crossfades is while the lighter colors fade out quickly the darker ones are a lot slower to leave and if its transitioning into another scene with alot of light colors, it starts to look strange and as if afterimages are being left behind. While its easy to get most cross fades to flow with most music, often times it feels like in most videos where a crossfade was used, a few shifts and changes with speed to one or both of the clips could allow for either a hard cut or a softer crossfade resulting in less blending/blurring across the two scenes and in my opinion look cleaner/smoother.
Overlays have to work twice as hard as crossfades, since they usually sit on the screen longer and they usually lack the purpose of going from one scene to another. In otherwords, if there is an overlay of two+ scenes whats the meaning behind it? Are they similar to each other and enhancing some kind of emotion or concept or are they trying to highlight something contrasting? Also, for overlays what should I be watching? Oftentimes in overlaid scenes I can't tell what I'm supposed to be focused on since so much is going on that I can't keep up, while that is ok in some instances it ends up losing me where I can't readily identify whats going on or the purpose.
What are your thoughts on crossfades/dissolves/overlays? If anyone has some awesome examples of where its done right please share. Also examples of where it seems poorly done is also helpful.
A recent example that came to my mind is from Radical Sequence where they seem to be used well for the most part. The only issue I have is the crossfade around 0:41-0:42 leaves kind of that afterimagey impression with the darker colors.























