Does this cut look strange to you?

[harmonica44]

I showed a cut to my friends of my shortfilm and asked their opinion on my cuts and if anything can be improved. They said it was all good and the only thing they noticed that looked strange was this. Fast forward 30 seconds in:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYI8GnHKupk

So basically it starts out with an over the shoulder shot, then cuts to more a bit more of a closer up, then cuts back to the original shot, a third of a second later about. Does it look okay?

 

[Lucky Hardwood]

Yes, that series of cuts is jarring. The effect is that the edit was messed up and the insert cut was unintentional. Either hold on the OTS longer or eliminate it.

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. I wanted to do a quick closer up cut, for emotional effect. I can either eliminate it, or extend it. It was suppose to be a jarring cut though. A lot of movies have quicker more jarring cuts, so does it work in that way intentionally?

 

[Caidh Mor]

The quick cuts in movies are motivated though. That cut seems like there was just a slip-up in the timeline. The scene doesn't seem to need it anyway, just drop the cut.

 

[hER]

ahh yeah. cuts are motivated - that's a big insight....... i like it. it's hard to know what motivation is behind it with no sound. but if you're looking for any cut it's always going to be worse. go with your gut, fuck the world.

 

[Will Vincent]

All of those cuts felt jarring to me. Not just the one in question.

The problem for me, was that while on close examination it seems you didn't cross the line, it actually reads as though you did. Eyelines are wrong, and framing isn't ideal. I would have framed the older (boss?) character on the left, and the younger (employee being fired?) character on the right to aid with screen direction a bit.

Perhaps also a master shot at some point that establishes the layout of the room and where these characters are in relation to each other. However I think the bigger problem is the eyelines.

Character 1 (older guy) is looking much further to his left (the right edge of screen) than the other character is looking back the other way.

 

[Caidh Mor]

The other thing to take into account is that sound plays a pretty big part in subconsciously smoothing out your cuts. Since you uploaded the scene in complete silence, everything's going to feel more jarring than if it had a polished sound mix.

 

[harmonica44]

Sorry when I uploaded to youtube, the sound didn't go on for some reason. A lot of other movies will have the camera at a different angle for a different character though. That's what I based my shoot on, since it's mostly about the young guy, I wanted the camera to be more dead on him, to create more emotion for him. Kind of like how in the bank scene in For a Few Dollars More for example, the camera is more on Lee Van Cleef, than the bank manager. I was trying to base the shoot on that, if that was an okay idea.

Perhaps it feels jarring cause of the silence. That's not the whole scene though, there is a master shot, that comes when the scene opens. I was just inquiring about that specific section. The scene you see before, are flashbacks, within the office scene. I didn't mean to export part of the flashback, it just got exported with it.