What is called in a movie when the camera goes close up on something and then pulls back and it’s something else?
For Example; A kid in a bath tub, the camera will go close up on the water and in the next scene it’s pulling away from a raging ocean.
Does anyone at least know what I mean? All I got today was blank stares.
A transition?
Transition sounds like what START’s talking about.
I think that it may be a transition.
It is a transition, but I think there’s a name for the specific type of transition START is talking about. Can’t think what it is, though…
It sounds kind of like a jump cut mixed with a transition.
Match cut?
I’m sure I’ve heard this called a segue… a lot, but I’m not at all sure that’s the correct term.
That’s what I’d call it, too. Definition.
Personally, I’d like to know the name of a scene where a character looks in a bathroom mirror, bends down to get a toothbrush, straightens up and sees the reflection of the axe-wielding maniac standing behind him!
Well, aside from “ridiculously over-used cliché”, of course.
I’d say match cut too, given that the images are linked: probably the most famous example is in 2001, where the slowly rotating bone tossed by the ape cuts to the revolving space station, neatly summarising two million odd years of progress.
Arhat got it right. Except I also learned it as “graphic match cut”. Either way, it’s when the transition is a cut matching linked graphic images.
A famous example is the shot in David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” when O’Toole is holding a match and lets it burn down to his fingers, when he blows it out. CUT from an extreme close-up of the match going out to the fiery Arabian sun…
An alternative is to a graphic match were one expected sound is abruptly cut away to a similar sounding noise in another scene. A terrified woman poised top scream, and the cult cuts away toa a factory whistle blowing, a tea kettle whisting or a police siren blaring
There were a series of these graphic and sound cuts, mostly overlapping dialogue, in one of the Austin powers movies.
Yay me!
The graphic match cut vs. sound match cut is an interesting distinction. I suppose if the bone to space station from 2001 is the quintessential graphic match cut, the scream to train whistle from Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps would be the quintessential sound match cut.
That one is doubly clever because of the inherent pun: it really is a match cut.
Ooh! I have another one!
What’s it called in a movie when the camera appears steady, focused on a character mid-frame, and suddenly all the background stuff appears to be moving further away or (sometimes) moving closer to the camera? It’s generally used in “sudden realization” sequences, but of course I can’t think of an example right now.
Furthermore, how do they do it? I assume all the trees and whatnot in the background aren’t actually moving…
My all-time favorite match cut, though, is a combination sound-graphic one. David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”: Kyle MacLachlan (yes, I had to look it up) has brought a severed ear he found to the police. The detective says, [paraphrasing] “Yes, it’s a human ear, all right. And it looks like it was cut with scissors.” CUT – to a giant pair of shears cutting through the yellow “CRIME SCENE” tape around the site of the grisly discovery…
From here:
“Uncredited second-unit cameraman Irmin Roberts invented the famous ‘forward zoom and reverse tracking’ shot (now sometimes called ‘contra-zoom’ or ‘trombone shot’) to convey the sense of vertigo to the audience.”
First seen in Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
Ooh, I know this too! It’s a combination forwards zoom/backwards tracking shot. You set up the tracks, affix camera and operator, and have crew pull him backwards as he zooms in with the lens. It produces an odd, vertiginous, disorienting effect allright, as the backround kind of falls away.
It’s become quite the trendy director’s trick of late. And right now I can’t think of a single bleeping example of it. Aaargh!
…although “/reverse tracking” sounds so much more, oh, professional. Do I at least get partial credit for using the word vertiginous, albeit without nailing the Vertigo reference? :wally