Transitions/Effects

Transitions

A transition is any change from one video clip or section of a movie to another. They can be as simple as a cut or fade to a complex wipe or morph. Often transitions are animations themselves (at which point the definition of transition becomes extremely muddled - you get transitions to transitions, and other such nonsense).

Most transitions are simple cuts from one clip to another or fades, either directly from one clip to another or to and from a black screen. These simple transitions can be done very easily in Adobe Premiere. In the video, "Learning to Fly", that I did for Professor Sean Carroll, there were many of these simple fades.

Premiere can also do relatively complex animated wipes and fades and can use alpha channels to produce transparencies. The video "Living in the Past", also done for Professor Sean Carroll, incorporated some of these wipes and fades.

Title screen to image transition (QuickTime 572K)
This transition is a section from "Learning to Fly". It is a very simple transition from black to a title screen and then to an image which begins the next video sequence.

Butterfly wing transition (QuickTime 1387K)
This is an example of an animation used as a transition. It is also from "Learning to Fly".

Effects

Effect is a very general term that basically refers anything that looks cool and serves no practical purpose. Therefore, they are not often found in works of science. However, I have had the priviledge to work on a couple of cool effects. They are both from the "Living in the Past" video that I worked on for Professor Sean Carroll. They are both morphs done in Elastic Reality and were used as transitions between two video sequences.

Trilobyte to Fossil Morph (QuickTime 450K)

Fossil to Worm Morph (QuickTime 576K)

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