Secrets of Writing: Scene Transitions

(This mainly concerns comics and visual storytelling, such as film)

When a scene ends, you need to move on to the next one in a smooth fashion so the Audience isn’t jarred out of the spell you’ve hopefully laid on them. Scene Transitions are the technique for doing this.

There are three basic ways to make a scene transition. One is visual, one is textual, the other is random (also known as the “Jump cut” ). Visual transitions involve linking images through thematic or symbolic parallels. Textual transitions bridge the two scenes with copy. Random transitions just throw you into another situation with no apparent linkage.

Let’s look at some examples:

Visual

Imagine four comic panels: A man drinking tea is shot, the next panel shows his tea cup shattered on the floor with the tea creating a puddle. Below are the next two panels, the first shows the man’s dead body, lying in a puddle of blood. The next shot shows a forensics technician drawing a chalk outline while another is dusting for prints in the background. Dialog: “Looks like he was killed about three hours ago.”

In the above sequence we’ve witnessed a man get murdered. This is followed by a new scene sometime later when the body is found. The forensics man’s dialog tells us the estimated time jump. The thematic linking device is spilled fluid. We see the shattered cup symbolizing destruction, the spilled tea symbolizing blood. We cut to a shot of real blood and a dead man, then pull back to establish the context and the jump in time. Here’s another example of a visual transition.

IMAGINE: Two panel scene showing a man and a woman in a country field kissing. There is a tree behind them. Next panel shows a close up of the tree with a heart and initials carved in the bark. Next is a three panel sequence showing first a heart shape, then pulling back to show a different man than we saw before pasting up a billboard which is covering the old one. The old one was a heart. It was an add for a dating service. The new billboard is an add for Pagers. The man putting up the billboard is thinking: “Why wasn’t Mary home when I called her?”

Here we again use symbolism, in this case the icon of a heart to make the jump. But we can also do it with poses. In my graphic novel LEX LUTHOR: THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY, I employed transitions involving people in similar poses when we jumped from one scene to the next to make the visual jump in a manner that was smooth. It can seem a little flashy, so you have to be careful using this technique. The effect should be subliminal. In the case of the Lex Luthor book, I often used it as a metaphor. In one scene we see the photo of a murdered man. The first shot of the next scene showed him in the same position, only lying in bed, waking up from a nasty drunk. You can play with visual transitions in many different ways

The trouble with visual transitions is you have to get your artist to agree to do them. Not that they’re such a big thing to ask for, but you’d be surprised how some artists feel about the writer making visual demands. And sometimes the artist will just plain forget to do them. More on that later.

Textual

IMAGINE: Two panel scene showing a super hero flying over a city, looking for something. Captions read: “I spend three hours on patrol over the city. No sign of the Fish. But something tells me, he’s down there...” Below this a two panel scene. A man in a three piece suit with a Fishhead, instead of a human head, is having a meeting with his henchman in a shabby looking loft. Caption in the first panel: “...somewhere.” Dialog: “All right, youse guys. Let’s talk about our next job.”

In the above example we see the broken caption that begins in the last panel and ends in the first panel of the next scene. This technique has been used heavily since it was popularized by Alan Moore in the mid-eighties.

IMAGINE: Three panel scene showing two men arguing. Man 1, Panel 1: I’m telling you, she stole the rock! Man 2, panel 2: You’re out of your mind! Sheila would never do something like that! Man 1, Panel 3: “Well, get ready for a shock, buddy. ‘Cause she’s been caught on video.” Below this a two panel sequence. A woman has a small black box in her hand. A jewelry box. She’s standing in an expensive looking office before a desk. We can’t see the man on the other side because he’s off panel. She holds out the box to him, smiling. Dialog: “I’ve brought you the rock, Dino.” The next panel shows the man on the other side of the desk, taking the box from her hand, smiling: Dialog: “Nice work, baby.”

The above example linked the two scenes with dialog that was about the same subject. It was a logical flow of the story from a scene discussing the theft, to a shot of the thief passing on the loot to her employer. This transition used subject as a linking device. You can also use symbolic transfers by using symbolic dialog in place of visual symbolism as in this example:

IMAGINE: Two panel scene. A man is standing over the body of a cat that has been killed. The man’s really upset. Panel 1 dialog: “Kilroy!” Panel 2: “They killed you....didn’t they. I know it was them.” Below that a two panel sequence showing a woman sitting on a couch with an empty bottle of tequila sitting on the coffee table before her and a shot glass in her hand. She looks drunk and depressed. Panel 1: “My career’s dead. It’s over...” Panel two, she bends forward and cries, putting her face in her hands.

Random

Random transitions involve jumps to new scenes without any apparent linking device. However, this is misleading. The linking device is the logical progression of events. As we see in the following example, there is a reason we made the jump. It makes perfect sense.

Insert Art: Three panels of two people fighting in a desert. In the Background are the smoking ruins of an airplane.  Below that a two panel scene showing a group of military men in a command tent, looking at maps. Dialog: “They’ve got to be somewhere in sector seven. Send out some recon patrols.”

The transition made no sense visually, nor were there any linking words. But there was a sense of sequential storytelling at work. We made the assumption that the man in the tent was talking about the two people fighting in the first scene. The sequence seems logical and our mind puts together the story. Two men crashed in the desert and end up fighting over something. Meanwhile, a rescue party is out looking for them.

Random jumps must involve some kind of logical progression in the story. The progression need not be apparent in the first panel of the following scene, but it should be apparent in the following panel. If you confuse the Audience too much, they will be forced to go back and reread the previous page again and that will interrupt the story flow.

REMEMBER: Transitions must be clear. They keep the story moving smoothly.

1. I always wonder what means scene transition… Interesting!

   Posted by Tom  on  02/11  at  11:21 AM
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