Term: Hidden Cut

This is a cut that is intended to be imperceptible. At the end of the first shot, the camera moves closer or zooms in on a plain, typically dark-coloured object that fills the whole frame, thus providing the chance to implement an unobtrusive cut. The following shot shows the camera zooming out or moving away from the previous or another similarly-coloured object. Instead of using camera movement or a zoom, this kind of cut can also be affected by a moving subject or object that temporarily covers the whole frame. In a sense, the hidden cut is a special form of a fade-out, fade-in transition, in which the fading is simply part of the shot (rather than being achieved through editing).