Juno is a film that amazing uses jump cuts in its story telling. Jump cut is an editing technique that takes out certain frames to help shorten the film or to make a certain point. In the film, Juno, Reitman tells the story of a young teenager going through a pregnancy and giving up her child at the end of the movie. Reitman not only uses jump cuts to express the passing of time, but to express the changes in Juno’s life. The first jump we see is to the season of winter, Juno is just entering her pregnancy and we see that she does not really care about anything, just wants to give her baby away. Then we enter spring and summer, each jump cut we see Juno expressing a bit more emotions. Like checking out the adoptive parents or going to the doctors for checkups. Each jump cut can be seen as one of the five stages of grief. As we jump to the final chapter labeled as “summer” Juno understands what she is giving away and how it’ll affect her life and everyone else’s. I believe that the jump cuts did an amazing job in expressing that.
Using jump cuts is basically showing a transition within two different time periods. In my opinion, this was a perfect film to choose for jump cuts (although I’m yet to watch it). From your summary I understand that a girl is going through a nine month pregnancy, and what better way to show her blooming through the whole entire maternal process than to use jump cuts?! It will last forever filming nine months, so seeing the character’s stomach grow within time lets the audience have a sense of reality. Not only that, but the director also chooses to use seasons for transitioning which makes it even a more believable and stronger sense of reality. The director definitely chose a great way to film the movie as the director uses seasons to define the growth of the character’s belly, as well as the school year as we transition forward. I will definitely be watching this with an open eye to jump cuts during this spring break!
Great choice for this homework I saw this movie in high school for my Health class. I also enjoyed the way the film was following Juno story as she goes though her pregnancy and the way the director decide to go though the seasons to show different stages.