Of all the shot types available to directors and editors, the cutaway shot may be the most useful for revealing a lot of information in very little time. Learn how cutaway film shots can make your life easy behind the camera and in the editing bay.
Of all the shot types available to directors and editors, the cutaway shot may be the most useful for revealing a lot of information in very little time. Learn how cutaway film shots can make your life easy behind the camera and in the editing bay.
In filmmaking terms, a cutaway shot is a brief release to another scene that then toggles back to the same film shot it interrupted. To picture an example, imagine a film scene where a crafty smuggler tells a confidante where he hid a box of jewels. While the smuggler talks, the film’s visual image cuts to a shot of him hiding the jewels days earlier. The film then cuts back to the smuggler as he finishes his tale. That interlude to a past event is a cutaway shot.
Cutaways are also called cut-in shots because, in the days of celluloid film, editors would cut the tape of a single shot and splice in some inserted footage. They’d then do a bit more cutting and splicing to go back to the original shot. Today’s digital editing technology works a lot differently, but we still use the term “cutaway” to describe interruptions of an otherwise continuous shot.
Some directors use the terms “cutaway shot” and “insert shot” interchangeably. Technically, though, these shot types are slightly different.
Creating a cutaway shot is one of the easier maneuvers in the domain of film editing. Here’s how to do it.
It’s easy to spot cutaway shots in film and TV productions. Here are five great examples of how cutaways function as an interruption of a continuously filmed scene.
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