i'm sorry, i'm sorry
i know many people hate it
but the jump cut, is here to stay
and this is why
so i'm personally a bit happy about doing this video
because it gives me a a textual excuse
to go back to jump cuts for a video
this video is part of a follow up to two other videos
the first being an outline
of the basic language of film editing
basic cuts where jump cuts were mentioned
and demonstrated, and many people in the comments
suggested a deeper dive into the specific uses
and aesthetic of the jump cut.
Then as well, this is a follow up to last week's video
on the dialect of vlogging
and specifically points made in that video
about how the use of jump cuts has spread to youtube
as a whole
has become ingrained in the basic visual language
of the medium
in that video i asked people what they think
youtube will look like in ten years
and people, including crown prince of logarithm, hank
green, generally agreed that the jump cut
would remain eternal, and i agree
now i have made use of the jump cut before
and not just in the way that i will
occasionally let one slide because it's going to be too
much of a hassle to cut around
when i first moved to the current channel
following the shutdown of blip.tv
i chose to adopt a fairly conventional youtube tone
both to feel it out for myself
as i've always been of a mind to tinker with
how i structure the channel and to
blend in with the locals as it were
so i have some experience with jump cuts as both
an aesthetic and as a workflow
and that's how we're going to break this up
two broad categories, speaking to why the jump cut
is here to stay
the first being the semantic and aesthetic reasons
the second being the pragmatic
and i'm going to start this off by outright praising
what i see is the unique semantic strength
of the jump cut and that is its high degree
of semiotic flexibility
i'm actually a big fan of the teleporting jump cut
and for a while, i explicitly used
a right-to-left teleport to indicate parenthetic statements
this was something i more or less lifted
directly from say, frank, hank green and nice peter
because it is a very effective form of visual punctuation
with different areas of the set and the frame used
to indicate different types of statements
it also really helps to break up long complex ideas
into smaller more manageable bites
this can serve to properly differentiate a joke
from a serious statement by moving either, very far from
or very close to the camera or, going back
to my own example, it can create an aside
by literally moving aside
this all has a direct narrative value in helping
better communicate meaning
which is great when you're trying to get across
a complex idea or unambiguously indicate
that something is a joke
now, many of these techniques like
dramatically changing framing for emphasis can be
replicated with conventional cutting
this gag with brock mansley where i keep zooming
closer and closer for comedic effect, has the same
root idea which is replicating a sense of unease
and invasion of personal space that would come along
with physically moving myself closer to the camera
however there's a specific device
that can only be achieved by using jump cuts
and that is the use of the set, as a stage
when a performer opts to set their camera and
eave the framing unchanged, the resulting video
takes on more of the characteristics of theatre
where specific locations within the stage
take on meanings that aren't properly
replicated purely by position within the frame
while a close-up works to create a psychological sense
of closeness that effect is amplified
if it's cast against a fixed canvas
that more directly communicates the speaker
moving physically closer to the camera
and by proxy, the viewer
all of the meanings of depths are made more potent
by giving more meaning to near and far
likewise moving to the left to indicate an aside
is more potent the more meaning left has
if left is a physical characteristic of the space
rather than simply an implication created
by the movement of the camera
to put another way stage left is more meaningful
than frame left
what this translates into is the jump-cut style
allows for a degree of intimacy that other editing styles
can't quite replicate by virtue of how it creates a stage
rather than just a frame, this ability to set a stage
and in that stage create a replica
of the intimacy of theater
is i think a unique strength of the style
i wanted to emphasize this first
because i do think it's important to defend
the aesthetic value of the jump-cut
rather than just saying, well it solves a bunch
of pragmatic problems
speaking of that
jump-cut solves so many pragmatic problems
it's not even funny
for the current iteration of the channel i use close-ups
to cover edits and to create emphasis
i am almost always on screen because
lip-reading is a fundamental pedagogical tool
many people can absorb information better or faster
when they are watching a face say it
rather than just hearing it and it minimizes my conflicts
with copyright robots by minimizing how much
copyright content i need to use on screen
however this in turn means that
everything needs to be recorded on camera
and because i have a personal desire to make
my image quality as good as i can
as a small way of standing out from the crowd
i don't want to make close-ups by just zooming in
like look at this, look at the drop in clarity
that's better
this all means that every video is recorded twice
at minimum all the way through
in order to get all the footage that's going to be needed
to weave everything together
which straight up doubles my record time
now that's me. that's my process
is it worth it?
maybe?
there is however no question
that using jump cuts instead
dramatically simplifies the process
and that's for me, in an environment where i have
the control, where i can record things multiple times
and i can change the camera configuration
the jump cut simply gets more valuable
the less control the creator has
or the more chaotic their environment
for people who use real environments again, that's real
with capital R as opposed to a poised environment
like a studio or set
there simply isn't another practical solution
for the vast majority of creators
the number of youtubers
running around with a small crew
who could even afford to have two cameras running
as they run around to make their stuff
is at most a few dozen
and even then it wouldn't necessarily serve
their aesthetic needs
at the end of the day
single camera confessional style is cheap and fast
and that's not a bad thing
because it still takes skill and thought
to do cheap and fast well
it's easier to use the space as a stage
or to use your environment as a canvas
than it is to fuss around with multiple camera setups
and all of the extra gear and hassle
that goes along with it
but it still takes forethought and creativity
to use those mechanisms well
to find a good canvas to know how and when
to use your stage to punctuate your points
but that skill and forethought is all something
that you can learn as someone running around
on their own with a camera
you don't need eight other people on your team
to figure out how to do it and how to do it well
so with all that i think that no matter
how many people post in the comments
about the youtube style and the jump cut
and how much they hate it
the jump cut is here to stay