Cutaway (film)

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For other uses, see cutaway.

In film, a cutaway is the interruption of a continuously-filmed action by inserting a view of something else. It is usually, though not always, followed by a cutback to the first shot.

Cross cutting is a series of cutaways and cutbacks.

1 Method
2 Usage
3 Examples
4 References

[edit] Method

Cutaways usually don't contribute any dramatic content of their own, but help the editor assemble a longer sequence. For this reason, editors choose cutaways related to the main action, such as another action or object in the same location.^[1] For example, if the main shot is of a man walking down an alley, possible cutaways may include a shot of a cat on a nearby dumpster or a shot of a woman watching from a window overhead.

[edit] Usage

Probably its most common uses in dramatic films are to adjust the pace of the main action, to conceal the deletion of some unwanted part of the main shot, or to allow the joining of parts of two versions of that shot. For example, a scene may be improved by cutting a few frames out of an actor's pause; a brief view of some listener can help conceal the break. Or the actor may fumble some of his lines in a group shot; rather than discarding a good version of the shot, the director may just have the actor repeat the lines "in one" and cut to that solitary view when necessary.

In news and documentary work, the cutaway is used much as it would be in fiction. On location, there is usually just one camera to film an interview, and it's usually trained on the interviewee. Often there is only one microphone. After the interview, the interviewer will usually repeat his questions while he himself is being filmed, with pauses as he pretends to listen to the answers. These shots can be used as cutaways. They may be necessary just to ensure that the audience can hear the questions correctly.

[edit] Examples

One example of a cutaway being used deliberately to break continuity, for comic effect, appears in Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste), by François Truffaut: the pianist and his female companion are being followed; she opens her compact and uses it to show him the two gangsters behind them, impossibly large in the reflection.

The popular comedy film Airplane has a large number of cutaway scenes, most of them showing what's happening at ground control. Such as showing a man saying "I picked a bad week to stop smoking".

In television, That '70s Show and Scrubs frequently use cutaways widely to introduce brief gags before returning to the episode's main storyline.

The American animated-sitcom Family Guy is known to use this method quite frequently.