If a cover shot shows two people facing each other, every camera angle must keep the same person on the same side of the screen. Crossing the eyeline with the camera between shots will result in an image where the subjects are reversed. Similarly, a series of shots of a moving vehicle must be shot with the vehicle always moving the same way. In print, punctuation and paragraphing indicate the pacing of the word structure. In video, the type of transition used between shots indicates temporal and spatial relationships between one shot and the next.
Cuts are obviously the most instantaneous.
Because they usually do least to call attention to a change, they indicate the least change in the world of the program. Dissolves tend to make the audience feel there has been a change in time or lo cation. The relatively slow replacement of one scene with the next one acts like a change in paragraph, indicating to the viewer the end of one series of thoughts and the beginning of another. Wipes and effect wipes work similarly, although they give an added strength to the feeling that the new scene is replacing, rather than simply following, the previous one. Because of this strength, they tend to call a great deal of attention to the transition, making their continued use somewhat overpowering.