Example: the sound bridge.
Wow - are they great! They are so useful! And prevalent!
This is is when you have a shot of, say for example, Bill and Marissa, and Bill has just said what a great "dream analyzer" Marissa is, and then Amy, sitting across the room with Larry (not in this shot) says, "Larry's pretty amazing at dream analysis, too!" ("I don't know about 'amazing' says Larry, embarrassed). If one wants to cut from the shot of Bill and Marissa to the shot of Amy and Larry -- and one does -- one will want to start Amy's line before the viewer actually sees her, while the viewer is still seeing Bill and Marissa. The sound of Amy's voice acts as a "bridge," leading the viewer over the visual cut. It aids continuity, or "flow," and can hide some visual sloppiness.
So, yeah, I knew that already. I've explained it to my students a thousand times.
But MAN - it's true!
When I first cut a scene together, I just cut most of the lines cleanly, without overlapping, and then I go back onto the timeline and cut and shift and do some overlapping (bridging). This takes me FOREVER because - as I may have mentioned once or twice - I am Not Really an Editor. OMG is it a pain in the, er, neck. But I do it because the difference between the staccato jumpiness of the first way and the relatively flowy smoothness (I say "relatively" because I'm not all that great at it, since, as possibly mentioned, I'm not actually an editor) of the second way is the difference between me thinking, Oh Hell This Movie Is SO Bad, I Can't Stand It I'm Going to Have to Kill Myself, and me thinking, Wow What a Cute Little Moment, We Had Such a Good Group and Maybe This Movie Is Decent After All and Everyone Will Just Love It!
BIG DIFFERENCE.
All thanks to the sound bridge. Thank you, sound bridge. Much obliged.
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