Jump cuts is when a director records one shot and moves to another shot – the scenes transitions immediately. The movie I chose I actually googled to find a scene with a jump cut that doesn’t have to do with people communicating, like Breathless. This movie was directed by Stanley Kubrick in 2001, A Space Odyssey. In the scene below he uses the technique jump cut to demonstrate the transition of a bone that was thrown. It does a huge jump cut when it goes from the bone to actually becoming a space object – it even changes the setting from a light sky to outer space. You get more jump cuts as the space object goes down to earth – you see it getting closer to the planet. In the very first cut scene you see the bone getting thrown up, and then you automatically get another cut scene to what seems to appear the bone heading downward (which confuses me because it goes all the way into space). In the next cut scene the director chooses to have an amazing time gap where million years have passed. From my understanding this whole scene indicates evolution. It started with a man-made object, a bone, and within time and technology advancing the bone turned into a space object.
I agree with your statement that the jump cut represented evolution. there was also the jump cut from the desert like environment, to the blue ocean earth. Indicating that life has grown in that million years. Great Movie!
2001 A Space Odyssey is in my opinion Stanley Kubrick’s best film. Its amazing how much he does with this film, while at the same time do so little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn’t include a single shot simply to keep our attention. The bone jump cut is one of the best scenes in the entire movie. I believe the match cut helps draw a connection between the two objects as examples of primitive and advanced tools, and serves as a neat summary of humanity’s technological advancement.