Cross-fades are a stylistic device for moving from one chapter to the next. However, you can also use it as a trick effect. Let´s take the example film. At the beginning you see an empty table and shortly afterwards a box appears as if conjured up. This is a relatively simple trick that is done using a so-called soft aperture. To do this, you take up the table for two seconds in two variations: first the empty table and then the scene with the box on it. In the editing program, you place the two films on two separate tracks and let them overlap slightly. In the overlap area, the clip above is slowly faded in. Since the background does not change, the box appears as if by magic. The same trick was used when the qigong balls disappeared.

The rest of the transitions in the example film are usually used as a transition from one chapter to the next and their nature depends on the possibilities of the editing program. With Star Wars e.g. As a transition to the chapters, the old scene was simply wiped away by the new picture. A standard blend is the soft aperture mentioned above. It is the most commonly used blend. If you want a scene to appear particularly soft and gentle, you can let the scenes flow smoothly into each other instead of hard cuts. In combination with slow motion, this results in an interesting stylistic device.