Jump cut

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A jump cut is a cut in film editing that breaks a single continuous sequential shot of a subject into two parts, with a piece of footage removed to create the effect of jumping forward in time. Camera positioning on the subject across the sequence should vary only slightly to achieve the effect. The technique manipulates temporal space using the duration of a single shot—fracturing the duration to move the audience ahead. This kind of cut abruptly communicates the passing of time, as opposed to the more seamless dissolve heavily used in films predating Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, which extensively used jump cuts and popularized the technique in the 1960s. For this reason, jump cuts are considered a violation of classical continuity editing, which aims to give the appearance of continuous time and space in the story-world by de-emphasizing editing, but are sometimes nonetheless used for creative purposes. Jump cuts tend to draw attention to the constructed nature of the film.^[1] More than one jump cut is sometimes used in a single sequence.

Continuity editing uses a guideline called the "30-degree rule" to avoid the appearance of jump cuts. The 30-degree rule advises that for consecutive shots to appear seamless and continuous in time, the camera position must vary at least 30 degrees from its previous position. Some schools would call for a change in framing as well (e.g., from a medium shot to a close up). The idea is to convey to the viewer a different point of view on the action but with the timeline of the action being continuous. Generally, if the camera position changes less than 30 degrees, the difference between the two shots is not substantial enough, and the viewer experiences the edit as a jump in the position of the subject rather than a change of point of view, which is jarring.

Jump cuts, on the other hand, keep the camera's relationship to the subject the same but jump forward in time in the action. Jump cuts can be created by editing together two shots filmed non-continuously (a spatial jump cut)—but can also be made by removing a middle section of one continuously filmed shot (a temporal jump cut). Jump cuts can add a sense of speed to the sequence of events.