Wipe

Variants run from a hard line crossing the frame to clock wipes, iris wipes and the star wipe that long ago became a joke. Star Wars made the device famous and, along with it, the feeling that a wipe belongs to a particular era. Because it draws attention to itself, a wipe announces a deliberate change of place or time. Dropped in between every shot it makes a video look like a school project, which is why most editors default to a straight cut and save wipes for chapter breaks or a comic beat. Whip pans are the modern equivalent, hiding the same idea inside camera movement.