What transitions 'add to the story'?

[Pyle]

I know peopel everywhere say 'Don't use them unless they add to the story', but all they do is just add a quick flashy spot to a scene change. How can you add story with that?

(pardon the newbishness)

[bum]

meh, use them for what ya feel feels right. i usualy use transitions based on the music itself. for example when moving to a different scene in a slow part of the song

[Zarxrax]

Stuff like that is hard to explain... it all comes from experience.
The basic idea is... there are certain rules of "what you shouldn't do". One such rule is don't use transitions. These types of rules are designed to help protect people from making their videos look like crap when they are first starting out. Once you get more and more experience, you begin to understand why the rules are there, and also why they no longer apply to you.

[Castor Troy]

Starwipe.

[Otohiko]

Out of Premiere's set, in actual editing I use about 92% cross dissolve, 4% additive dissolve, 3% cross zoom, and 1% everything else, and even then, I think some things I do come out too fancy

[godix]

I know peopel everywhere say 'Don't use them unless they add to the story', but all they do is just add a quick flashy spot to a scene change. How can you add story with that?

It's not as impossible as it sounds. To pick an example I know offhand, one of my recent videos uses a particular transition to indicate that Shinji is in his own mental world rather than 'reality'. Usually transitions rarely add to the story though. Now that I've gotten over my 'check out what I can make premiere do!' special effects phase I've started following a simple rule for transititions/effects. If my sole reason for wanting to use them is 'Hey cool, look what I can do' then they don't belong in the video.

[SSJVegita0609]

It's not transitions so much as scene selection, what transforms and changes into what. How it does so comes with experience, there is no one correct answer.

Sorry if that's too vague, but it's all that I feel can really be said.

[Corran]

Fades to black and cross dissolves do wonders for slow drama videos.

[TobinHood]

Fades to black and cross dissolves do wonders for slow drama videos.

Amen to that since most of my videos are dramatic. I used to tell Beef (my former studio partner) all the time to try not to use cross fades if you don't have to (not because I don't like cross fades, in actuality using a simple cross fade properly can enhance a video tenfold) but Beef needed to stop using them. He made an action video using nothing but cross fades.

I overused them when I made my Where Are You Christmas video and when I eventually remaster that video I may take out alot of crossfades. Do remember that my Where Are You Xmas video was made in one evening ^_^.

[Arigatomina]

Flashy, blatant transitions can add to a story. For instance, the diagonal slash type transition (found in wmm 2 and showbiz, I assume Premiere would have something similar). If you do action videos you might notice that many anime use their own version of this type of transition, especially if it's a scene involving some sort of blade. A 'wipe' in the middle of that sort of action can make an excellent shift from someone swinging a blade, to a splash of blood or a distant shot of the person on the receiving end. That sort of use adds drama and/or a 'spark' if you will - it makes the scene not so much 'cool' to look at, but sharp and blatant. A misuse of this sort of effect would be to have a slower video where you do a diagonal wipe between two shots of a person walking forward and then gong through a doorway - there's no drama or action being added to, the transition is sharp and distracting from the flow of the slow unimportant clips, and just looks gaudy. Now, if you're showing some important scene (say he's going to see a loved one slaughtered once he enters that doorway), then sure - that flashy transition will have a reason for being there that adds to the video - making the scene of the person entering the doorway more important and visible (since flashy transitions draw attention to the scenes they separate).

Others, like the star shaped or trangle shaped transitions remind me of 'kids' - I see them and think 'cookie cutters' and something you might find in Pokemon (if they bothered to add transitions). The only good use of this (think of the heart transition found in Showbiz) would be if it played into the theme of the video. Something about stars or something glittery (a shoujo anime perhaps) could fit this sort of transition in without it looking stupid. If you added it into a dramatic video for Berserk you're going to *really* have to find some good way to keep it from looking childish - maybe a comedic parody of the anime or something.

One blatant childish transition I've used more than once would be the 'shatter' effect (found in wmm 2.0 and showbiz) - I placed it at the end of a scene showing a blow (like a fist landing) so it would serve as a transition to another battle (for a video featuring more than one fight, or moving from character to character). In this case, it's gaudy, but it works well for the idea of the clips, and the shift from one scene to the next (as well as accentuating the in-clip action sync of the blow landing in the first place).

Transitions like these are attention getters. If you want to know what they add, just think what a distracting background adds in a frame-by-frame edited video. In the right context, it adds plenty. In a meaningless usage, it's just glitter, and at best it will add mood or spice to otherwise dull footage. Rather like having sparkles or flashing lights during the dramatic parts of some anime - it depends on how it's used.