Cut from one shot directly to the next without transition — pure juxtaposition. Core rhythm tool; forces viewer to make visual connections.
Two shots follow one another immediately—no fade, no dissolve, no optical transition. The cut asserts itself because the information of the first shot is complete, and the second immediately tells something new or advances the action. This is the foundation of all modern editing. On set, you can already tell that such cuts work: you film a reaction, cut directly to the next action—and suddenly your rhythm has energy.
The power lies in immediacy. While a dissolve suggests time or creates an emotional connection, the hard cut says, Now. This is why action films thrive on it, but also why a dialogue cut between two speakers works—you see the first person finish speaking, and immediately the answer appears. No distraction, no pause. In the 1920s, Eisenstein and his contemporaries made this into a whole theory: montage as a collision of images that creates meaning. Today, we implement this unconsciously—every cut in a dialogue edit, every rhythmic cut in a chase scene is plan sur plan.
Practically, this means at the editing table: you need a clear beginning and end to each shot. If the first shot runs too long or the second starts too early, the viewer notices the arbitrariness. The best application is where the cuts follow the natural rhythm of the scene—a hand movement, a change of gaze, a word boundary. This sharpens perception instead of tiring it. Conversely, too many hard cuts in a row without spatial or narrative logic appear rushed or amateurish.
Related to this are concepts like match cut and rhythmic montage—but with plan sur plan, it's purely about the form of the transition: no transition effects, just the raw sequence. A classic French term that shows that editing itself is the medium, not the effects around it.