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Film & Television vocabulary · Editing and Post-Production

Jump cut

Meaning in film & television, with examples

/ˈdʒʌmp kʌt/nounCommon term

In film & television, jump cut means: A cut between two shots of the same subject from almost the same position, so that the image seems to jump forward in time.

In Turkish: atlamalı kesme, sıçramalı kurgu, jump cut

How it is used

Classical editing avoids jump cuts, but French New Wave films, especially Godard's Breathless (1960), used them on purpose. Today they are everywhere in vlogs and YouTube videos to remove pauses and keep energy high.

Example sentences

  1. The jump cuts in the interview make her nervousness almost physical.

  2. Hide the jump cut with a cutaway to the audience.

Common collocations

  • use jump cuts
  • deliberate jump cut
  • hide a jump cut
  • jump-cut editing
  • cutAn instant change from one shot to the next in editing. It also means a version of an edited film, such as the director's cut.
  • transitionThe way one shot or scene changes into the next in editing, such as a straight cut, a fade or a dissolve.
  • montageA sequence of short shots edited together, often with music, to show a lot of time or many events quickly, such as a character training or a couple falling in love.
  • editingThe work of choosing, ordering and joining shots so that they tell the story with the right rhythm, emotion and meaning.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Editing and Post-Production

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