Crash Cut

The cut arrives with nothing on either side to prepare for it. No held beat at the end of the outgoing shot, no settling at the start of the incoming one, so the film seems to have started mid sentence.

It is the shape of an opening that begins inside the event. Dropping the audience into the middle of something and explaining later buys attention that a slow start has to earn.

Trim both shots hard. The outgoing shot ends on movement rather than on a pause, and the incoming shot begins with the action already running.

One generation gives one shot, so render both halves and join them. The trimming is where the effect lives, and it happens in the edit rather than in the prompt.

Avoid any easing. A dissolve, a fade, a frame of black or a matched movement across the join all soften the arrival, which is the one thing this cut cannot afford.

Use it to open a film or a scene inside the event, and to break out of a sequence that has run its course. It suits a cold open that flashes forward and then doubles back.

Skip it when the audience needs time to read the new frame. A crash cut into a complicated wide shot wastes the shot, because nobody has found the subject before the moment passes.

A smash cut needs the two shots to contradict each other. A crash cut only needs the join to be abrupt, and the two shots can be closely related.

A flash cut is measured in frames and passes before it is consciously read. A crash cut lands on a shot that then stays on screen and plays.

Martin Scorsese opens Goodfellas (1990) inside a killing on a roadside and then drops back years, so the film begins at its ugliest point with no setup. David Fincher does the same in Fight Club (1999), starting with a gun already in a mouth and rewinding from there.

A single run returns one continuous shot with a camera move standing in for the cut. Render the two shots separately and join them with no transition in the timeline.

The second failure is a lead-in. If your incoming shot starts on an empty frame and then the action begins, trim those frames off. The action has to be running on the first frame.