Wipes used to be very popular in some film genres, and the original Star Wars films are a great example. I actually love the wipes in those films as they are very well considered and action-motivated (for example, I seem to recall a wipe that directly followed a speeder across the desert). Wipes and pushes are all but forgotten now unless they're intentionally cheesy or retro, and in my opinion that's unfortunate. Of course you want to use them sparingly and probably 99% of your edits should just be straight cuts, but a well-placed wipe or push can really liven things up.

Similarly, back in the early days of film up through the late 50s, the slow dissolve was a very popular transition (some of my favorite examples of this are in A Place in the Sun). Again, slow dissolves are difficult to pull off effectively and you really have to think about them while you're shooting. Again, slow dissolves are hardly ever used anymore. Kind of a shame, because they can really be used effectively to advance the story.

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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com

A nice trick is if you have one of those scene with a fixed camera and one person showing cuts over a period of time a quick wipe can be very effective as it simply erases the character leaving the background the same.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I've seen modern editors use the cube effect and blink wipes. Transitions don't always have to be totally invisible, as long as they are done with subtly and purpose and not just arbitrarily, you can use whatever transition you want.

Some of the best transitions are in the movie highlander where they go up through the roof and the camera rises up into medieval Scotland. Simple planning ahead of time and it was a really nice move.

Another nice one is from Bill & Ted's Bogus journey where Death tosses a robe onto the camera which is the same as a fade to black but done 'in camera' so to speak.

In defense of George Lukas and his use of amateurish and basic transitions, he's trying to capture an old serials type feel. I think it's far more noticable in the newer ones because they are otherwise so glitzy and advanced that the retro feel of the transitions doesn't work as well.

In defense of slow dissolves I think it was Space Balls that really killed them when they made a joke "nice dissolve" and drew attention to them. Now I can't see a dissolve without mentally saying "nice dissolve".

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Yes i realise that he was tying to do that but it didnt really work because it didnt fit with the style of the rest of the movie.

I like the transitions in scrubs where they go up through the ceiling to the next floor and when it fades throught the doctors white coats to another doctor. I guess these sort of transitions look best when in a comedy rather than a feature film.

Thanks
Rob - UK