What are transitions in screen and TV writing and why are they important? A transition is a bridge meant to take you from one scene smoothly into the next. Usually, connecting scenes are not about the same thing, and so a nice transition will get you from one place to the next. Obviously, scenes that are back-to-back that are about the same thing are the easiest ones to bridge, but especially in television, you often have scenes that don't connect plot-wise at all. Therefore you can utilize a number of different techniques to make the movie or television episode feel like one unified entity.

 

The reason this is important is because you want to keep the audience focused and on the roller coaster ride of your choosing. We are puppet masters, and must properly keep the audience manipulated in order to ensure that they are feeling the emotional context that, again, we choose. Transitions keep the audience in the pocket, so to speak, and that gives the writing the opportunity to create a nice, smooth, unified, flowing movie or episode.

 

What are the techniques for doing this properly? There are many, and you are not limited. It is much better to mix up your game and do many of these transitions throughout your script. Like a mixed martial artist who can strike or take the opponent to the ground for a submission, you don't want to be predictable by doing the same exact transition over and over. That will not only get redundant, but also, intrusive. So mix it up.

 

Techniques:

 

1) Character - You can end a scene with a dialogue reference to a particular character, and then go directly to that character in the next scene. It is very important to do this correctly. Do not mention a character as the last thing in a scene and then go to someone else, especially early in the script where you are introducing characters for the first time.

 

2) Color/Shape - You can end a scene with a visual of a particular color or shape, then start the next scene in the new location with an object of the same color or shape. So if I end a scene with a square object in view, I start the next scene with a different but similarly shaped and sized square object, and the scene happens. That square object doesn't have to stay in view past the first two seconds, either. Its a transition.

 

3) Sound - You can start a sound at the end of one scene, then continue that sound in the next scene. Let's say someone has a television on in the background in your scene, and a lion growls on it at the end of that scene. Then I am in the jungle, and a real lion growls.

Or perhaps the audience hears a police siren outside the building, muffled, at the end of your current scene, and now you take us down to the street, and the police car whizzes by, sirens still blaring.

 

4) Action - Characters can perform similar actions as well as a transition. A character can be running down the street at the end of one scene, then you transition into another character jogging on a field track. The first character can be a main character and the second can just be an extra, doing that as your transition and then the main character(s) of that scene come into view. Or, you can have an action start in one scene, and something similar can happen in the next scene. An interrogator has had enough of your character's big mouth, and rears back his hand. He starts the strike, and now you go to another scene where a boxer punches a nice combination into a bag in a gym.

 

5) Story Context - Characters ending one scene could discuss the same subject matter or engage in different parts of the same plan, and it will feel smooth to the audience. Similarly, the same characters can move from one location to the next while having a longer conversation about something. Breaking the dialogue up between two or more locations in this way will make time feel like it is moving and also make it feel much more exciting then if your characters just sat around having an extended discussion. The context of the story is the transition, the bridge, between the characters and those new locations. This always works very well and is a great technique if you have a lot to say.

 

6) Symbolism - This can work well if you have a strong theme that you are looking to focus on in conjunction with your plot line. Be wary of overdoing this, as too much symbolism will confuse the audience. Instead, you want to use this technique just enough so that you create a deeper, more intriguing manuscript. Let's say you are writing a suspense or horror film, and you have decided that a particular owl represents a character or some other element of your plot or theme. If you have the owl appear at the end or beginning of a scene in some context related to your plot or your theme, and then in the next moment what it is symbolizing appears on-screen, it will make for a nice transition.

 

There are other techniques, but these are the main ones that are most common and which you can employ without worry or fear that you will overly disrupt your film by adding them to your script. How you decide to use your transitions is a creative decision and is part of the higher level of art and craft in our business.