Definition and Purpose
A graphic match cut, often referred to simply as a match cut, is a film editing technique where two different shots are matched by their visual elements such as shape, color, or composition. This creates a seamless transition that can link scenes together in a visually compelling way. The purpose of a match cut is to draw a connection between two different scenes or objects, enhancing the storytelling by creating a visual metaphor or continuity [3:1].
Famous Examples
One of the most famous examples of a match cut is from Stanley Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey," where a bone thrown into the air transitions into a spaceship, symbolizing the leap in human evolution [3:1]. Another classic example is the transition in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," which matches the shape and motion of an eyeball with the drain of a bathtub
[3:3],
[3:4].
Technical Considerations
Creating a successful match cut requires meticulous planning during production. It involves finding or creating a pair of shots that align in terms of composition, movement, or other visual elements. Using tools like onion skin overlays can help filmmakers line up shots accurately, ensuring a smooth transition [2:1],
[2:2]. Additionally, shooting in higher resolutions like 4K can provide more flexibility in post-production to adjust framing and alignment
[2:2].
Challenges and Tips
Match cuts are considered one of the more challenging video editing techniques because they require a keen eye for detail and creativity to find matching visual elements across different scenes [1:1]. For those working on match cut-intensive projects, using external monitors and experimenting with tools like CapCut for content-aware transitions can be beneficial
[2:1]. It's also helpful to stagger animations or cut frames at peak velocity to enhance the dynamic feel of the transition
[4:4],
[4:5].
Conclusion
Graphic match cuts are a powerful tool in a filmmaker's arsenal, allowing for creative storytelling through visual continuity. While they require careful planning and execution, the result can be a memorable and impactful cinematic moment that resonates with audiences.
This is a great youtube channel that's full of practical information.
Match cuts have to be thought out in the production, Achieving seamless matches requires meticulous planning during shooting. Sound transitions also matter a lot while maintaining narrative flow. The best one is Jurassic Park match cut.
Match cutting is considered one of the most difficult video editing techniques, because finding a pair of shots that match can take days, if not weeks. Then executing it seamlessly without the audience noticing it is real skillful mastery of the craft.
A fact, Netflix has a MatchCutting tool. They are always finding collaboration opportunities and hiring great machine learning engineers for building out the tools in editing. Their trailers and Stranger things series has extensive use of this.
https://i.redd.it/srdsn6kzkldf1.gif
A promo was made using a series of action mat cuts from Extraction, Red Notice, Sandman, Glow, Arcane, Sea Beast, and Royalteen.
Yes, contrast cut seems much easier to plan, both logistically & creatively.
For more Editing Basics:
Hi guys, hope everyone is doing well?
Peeps, do any of you have tips, tools, or advice for doing match cuts?
We have a production coming up that mimics a the below Tic Toc trend and is going to be match cut intensive. The idea is that this guys phone orders a bunch of clothing from an online store and we'll need to match cut the clothes instantly appearing on him and adding new clothes to him while he's standing at the mirror.
https://www.tiktok.com/@asherglean/video/7169651582823353605?q=wate
https://www.tiktok.com/@jayhousecars/video/7206914137664884011?q=water%20on%20phone&t=1688633243791
We primarily edit in Premiere Pro and After Effects and was wondering if anyone has advice or tools, plugins that makes the process easier?
I've checked out some TikToks and the people have such seamless match cuts. How do they achieve that? Are there any interesting methods or tricks that help smooth out match cuts?
Any advice, tips, tricks, or tools you can share with me would be so awesome, thanks in Advance!
Happy Thursday!
EDIT: We'll be filmming in 4k if that impacts any options available to us.
EDIT 2: Furthermore, does anyone know of any AI tools/ Content awareness plugins that can assist with this? Something that can do the rotoscoping for us instead of having to do this manually?
Would be keen to know too. From what I have read online, you'll want an external monitor with an onion skin overlays. Big is ideal to give you a better idea of framing. That and maybe some light morph cut? Although morph cut always looks funky whenever i've used it.
Onion skin overlay meaning basically taking a screen grab of last frame, lowering opacity and using as overlay to line up before rolling on next scene? That's not a bad idea.
From the little i've seen online in the last couple of minutes, I think 4k will help and allow us to get the clips positioned right in the project as we'll have some breathing room.
I've seen tools like CapCut which uses AI (maybe not AI but content awareness) to manipulate the image for better trasitions but that seems to mainly be on mobile so am unsure if there's anything like that availabe for AE or PP.
I’ve been trying to find more videos like this where a sequence of completely unrelated images is cut together so that each frame matches the one before it, by shape, color, or texture and it ends up flowing almost like animation.
Is there a proper name for this kind of editing? I’ve been thinking of it as a “match-cut timelapse,” but I’m not sure if that’s an actual term or just a rough description.
Match cut
I've always called this a form cut or form edit. In my editing classes we used form cuts to match shape color or composition of the previous scene or frame. Think the eyeball and drain transition in psycho. Someone else may correct me but that's what I have always called it.
EDIT: the word you may be looking for is montage instead of timelapse.
The transition in Psycho is a great example of this editing technique. I think the correct term for it is a match cut.
Thank you I will look into those terms!!
wherein the composition of a frame is pretext for the next; famous example being , Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, with bone in air transforming into spaceship.
edit: is that what it’s supposed to be? I think that’s what it’s supposed to be
I'd never heard of Brackhage but his work is exactly what I am after! Thank you!
Check out the formalists / structural filmmakers. A lot of their work played with the 'grammar' of movies, focusing on things that are often otherwise invisible. Michael Snow made a whole movie on the function of "zoom." Frampton on frame rate. &c &c. Gotta of course start with "Man with a Movie Camera."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_film
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralist_film_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalist_film_theory
I think the clip you used focuses more on the function of montage / collage.
It’s called a flicker film. It’s a common style of experimental short film.
I made one in college where I walked around San Francisco for hours using a super 8 camera to take single frame exposures of various building and house facades. It looked really cool when played back. I made a soundscape of construction noises to go with it inspired by the weeks long cacophony coming from the property next to my apartment at the time.
I also did a similar one with the wheels on cars that turned out really cool.
Thanks for your reply! I'd love to see them if you felt like sharing?
I would, but I don’t have it on my phone. It’s been a few years and digging up a link to wherever it might be online is a little more trouble than I am willing to go to at the moment.
Stan breakage was quite the visionary
seizure core
Anything straightforward I can do to make this look more interesting visually? Any tips are much appreciated!
cut out some frames when velocity is at peak
That's a really great tip, looks pretty dynamic now cheers!
show me
I searchd, but i don't undestand what is this exatacly, someane can explica what is this.
It's a fan edit that combines Fire Walk With Me and The Missing Pieces which is a collection of deleted scenes from Fire Walk With Me. It's about twice as long as Fire Walk With Me.
If you've never watched Fire Walk With Me, you should definitely watch it instead of the Blue Rose Cut at least once.
Thanks, i will, but here can i find, and watch this movie?
Web Archive. Here you go.
It's like the first result on Google when you look up blue rose cut. Do you really need that much help? How did you manage to post on reddit?
So there’s a fan edit called the Q2 version. What that editor did was take all of the material from FWWM as-is, all of the material from The Missing Pieces, and then use the original shooting script as a guide to reassemble the entire project into one long mega film as it was originally conceived before David edited FWWM down into the film as he wanted it to be.
Blue Rose takes the Q2 approach, but then makes a few judicious cuts to align the focus of the film on Laura Palmer, to try to strike a better thematic balance between David’s FWWM and the ‘complete experience’ of Q2.
Hmmmmmmm, i think i urdestand, thanks.
Where might one find it?
I don't know too, i just have listen to people talk about this.
it’s a fan made edit of the missing pieces cut into fire walk with me! cool idea but definitely not essential
Thanks, but why is not essential?
Yeah, i love phili jeff, sad that he become kettle.
Feel free to criticise guys! Im new into this motion graphics. This was a first try of making a matchcut!! Hope to get some good advices to make it better next time
Nice! I wouldn’t reverse it though
Just extended the duration by reversing it. Nothing else!
I recently watched Lawrence of Arabia, and was surprised to see that the shot of Lawrence blowing the matchstick fire out, which transitions into the shot of the sunrise, is considered an iconic cinematic moment and a defining moment for film editing. Perhaps I’m a huge idiot, but I genuinely don’t get why this shot is special. To me, it’s just a regular (if well timed) cut between two unrelated shots. A character blows out a match, and then we get a timeskip. Why is this cut so special?
Going to disagree on the technical side- it was not difficult to make an edit like this on film at the time. In fact it was super easy, barely an inconvenience. Hell, Murch edited The Conversation literally to the actors' eye blinks.
I’m not technical enough to defend in depth, but Lawrence was 12 years before The Conversation, and I’ve been told (perhaps incorrectly) that the blend from match/interior to sun/landscape was a challenge because it’s a cut, not a dissolve. So the two scenes lighting had to be matched on film, shot in very different locations and times. I’d welcome correction if that’s not true.
Lots of reasons why it's good.
It's a kind of delayed match cut: the flame is blown out, then there's moments of suspense, then finally the sun rises.
There's also the way Lawrence seems to control the cut, which speaks to his attitude about going to the desert.
The line is an early indication that he is not like other Englishmen, and when he refuses to drink until his guide does, he progresses along his personal journey. The quenching of the match foretells his foreshortened life, which the film has already shown, and drops us into the action of the cruel yet purifying sun.
Lawrence of Arabia was shot in Superpanavision 70 in 1962. The first film shot in that format was in 1959. Scope or ultra wide formats had only really been in use since 1953, so having such a vast aspect ratio was massively impactful to audiences who were still getting used to so much screen real estate taking up their peripheral vision. It’s the era when movie-films became cinema. When you add to that the sound design, the thematic significance in the story, the masterful cinematography, then you might come to realise it’s one of those watershed moments in cinema history where the material justifies the format and made the format more than a gimmick, right up there with Dorothy leaving Kansas and stepping out into a world of colour. We take huge formats for granted now, but back then cinemas were pokey little family run joints filled with cigarette smoke, and the spectacle must’ve been revelatory.
tl;dr: it was a different time
It was not technically difficult. It was artistically almost unheard of though.
Up until that Lawrence cut, filmmakers gave audiences way too little credit in making the leap from a matchstick to the sunrise in a different location.
This was so innovative, it practically became the foundation of Lawrence second unit cinematographer Nicolas Roeg’s cut-up style when he became a director.
Tons of inventive editing too including cuts during whip pans (in the 60s!) and having fake cuts by panning from that character to that character in the distance (just a different actor).
I didn't realize Roeg was the second unit cinematographer in that film. Incredible!
When would that have been, roughly?
for me it's just evocative, it says a lot purely in the language of film. the lines he speaks before blowing out the match are setting up his character, his point of view. it's also an extreme transition that immediately conveys the brutality of the sun and the qualities of the desert where the action will take place. first we see the fire of a lit match: it's hot, it hurts to touch, but Lawrence cavalierly suggests you simply accept the pain and conquer it. cut immediately to the empty desert sunrise. we still might be taking in what Lawrence just said and did, but the abruptness of the cut immediately undermines his confidence and suggests arrogance, hubris. the sun is the same thing in quality as the lit match - fire - but on a scale that is overwhelmingly massive. is this a pain Lawrence can "not mind"? we go from the controlled, rather comfortable domesticity of a British garrison, with its abundant creature comforts, to the stark, harsh reality of the desert, a place with nowhere to hide - we the audience cannot run or hide from the sun as it rises into view. we are introduced to some of the stakes involved: man vs nature, which is a classic setting for storytelling. i could go on!
Indoor scene cuts directly to a majestic and very large screen sunrise. It's one cut that explains a lot emotionally to the audience instantly
Well said… And there’s an aspect here that he only does those things, from match to Turks, to prove that he can; to show off.
The R is missing from Moerse. It's a Moerse stuk vleis. Roughly translates to It's an extremely large peice of meat. But you wouldn't use that in formal situations, someone with the printer was having a laugh
Think that's the kaapse Afrikaans spin on the word
Thanks captain
I understood that reference!
Omw is this a Tube reference?? How cool!
Aah, yes, I agree. If it's a WP steak, it can very well be just that. Well spotted!
It's Qheberha so unfortunately not
Why wouldn't it be in EC?
Ag, no man. You are havings it all a wrongness. This are being a lump of meats am belong to Moe.
"Moe se stuk vleis."
Lol
tells it like it is.
Mase cut
Easy to build in Motion as a transition plugin for FCP.
In fact, I may do that right now.
Yes, I'd like this too - if you make it!
Share a link if you do pls!
Yeah yeah what he said!
Brilliant.
You can keyframe the motion using scale and XY parameters in transfrom or using Ken Burns effect in Crop - both in Inspector. Make both clips the same exact length. Once you get the motion right on one clip, copy it and then PASTE ATTRIBUTES onto the second clip. This will paste the motion. Then make each clip a compound clip. Then shorten them so the second clip starts just before the peak of the movement. Bing-bing-bang- you're done
What part do you need help with? The video shows you how to do it. Add an extreme ease in on the first clip, and hard cut to a clip with an extreme ease out. Motion and FCP don’t really support parenting the effects the way AE does, but that just means you need to manually match the keyframe curve.
FCP also doesn't really do easing... this is much easier to do in Motion though.
I was wondering about this too, I sometimes need motion graphics for my projects, but they never look as polished as in the examples just shown in the video.
Check my video, same concept 😁 https://youtu.be/Mf1mSvJki58?si=zqKsYUOau1pqdrDt
So I watched this YouTube video that explained they did it in Severance by using double exposure with film but I’m wondering how I can recreate this match cut dissolve sort of effect digitally. Would an additive blend do it? What do I need to keep in mind when shooting to pull this off how they did it? Anything different than standard match cut procedure? Thanks
Just a simple fade? 2 videos, overlap to fade on the transition?
Looks like motion control to me. Camera on a rig that can have programmed, repeatable moves. Film different scenes with same move and then fade/cut between. VFX where needed to blend.
To me it just looks like a zoom in post
Definitely a zoom in post. No perspective changes on anything even a little bit. That camera is stationary.
Film on tripod, one in day lightning, one in night lighting, same place for camera and tripod, cross dissolve in post with matching slight zoom in added in post as well.
Will a standard dissolve give that effect of the brightest parts of the image staying longer than the darker?
Fiddle with blend modes if not
Yes as they're both gradually moving into darkness, it looks like there's a few daytime lights that stayed out were added into the night time transition as well though.
Not only in the same place, but locked off and bagged, with warning tape all around. Been there, done that.
Not entirely the same but I did a similar thing on this short..
Skip to .30 seconds in the trailer
https://youtu.be/t98DHrZSDVo?si=Q3nMNZvUh1decDRz
It was a carefully planned lighting coordination between 2 dimmer switches
And the reverse shot in the full short was shot in the day looking out the windows. I just had to match the color temp of the lights
What is a graphic match cut
Key Considerations about Graphic Match Cuts:
Definition: A graphic match cut is a film editing technique where two shots are joined together based on their visual similarities, often through shapes, colors, or patterns. This creates a seamless transition that can enhance storytelling.
Purpose: The main goal is to create a visual connection between two scenes, emphasizing thematic elements or emotional resonance. It can also serve to juxtapose different ideas or settings.
Examples:
Impact on Audience: Graphic match cuts can engage viewers by prompting them to make connections between disparate scenes, enhancing their understanding of the narrative or character development.
Takeaway: When used effectively, graphic match cuts can elevate a film's visual storytelling, making it more memorable and impactful. If you're studying film or working on editing, consider experimenting with this technique to see how it can enhance your work.
Get more comprehensive results summarized by our most cutting edge AI model. Plus deep Youtube search.