Jump cut
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Template:Cleanup-date A jump cut is a cut in film editing where the middle section of a continuous shot is removed, and the beginning and ends of the shot are then joined together. They usually occur within static shots. The technique breaks continuity in time and produces a startling effect. Any moving objects in the shot will appear to jump to a new position. A generic example of a jump cut is a shot in which two actors are talking to each other, with one having his or her hands at her sides. Then, suddenly, although the camera does not move, the actor's hands are on his or her hips. Another example, which is frequently used in old silent films, is when a magician is making a lady disappear. He makes a gesture with hands and the director yells cut. The magician then holds his position and the lady moves out of frame. The camera is kept in the same place and the director yells action again, the magician continuing with his act. The editor will then cut out all of the frames depicting the lady walking out of frame. When the final cut is played back, it looks as if the lady has disappeared.
Jump cuts are generally either a technical flaw, or done for an artistic special effect — most normal cuts in film editing occur between dissimilar scenes or significantly different views of the same scene to avoid the appearance of a jump. Classical continuity editing would view a jump cut as an error.
After Sergei Eisenstein, the jump cut has sometimes served a political use in film. It is one of the cuts used in intellectual montage. It is used as an alienating Brechtian technique (the verfremdungseffekt) that made the audience aware of the unreality of the film experience. This could be used to focus their attention on the political message of a film rather than the drama or emotion of the narrative. Eisenstein used the jump cut in some segments of Battleship Potemkin.
Godard and other filmmakers of the Nouvelle vague also made use of the jump cut, although the extent is typically overstated in critical literature. Most did not use it in an explicitly political manner.
The term jump cut is frequently used to describe any abrupt and noticeable edit cut in a film, however technically this is incorrect. A famous example of this is found at the end of the "Dawn of Man" sequence in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. A primitive ape discovers the use of bones as tools and throws the bone into the air. When the bone reaches its highest point, the shot cuts to that of a similarly-shaped space craft floating through space. This edit has been described as a jump cut, including on the box of the DVD release of the film, however, it is more correctly a match cut.
Recently, jump cuts were used frequently in the 2005 film The New World.
It was an uncommon technique for television until shows like Homicide: Life on the Street popularized it on the small screen in the 1990s.