Cut

The join between two shots, and the most powerful word in film grammar. Everything a director chooses not to show lives in the cut.

Every cut is a small assertion: these two moments belong together, and what lay between them did not matter. The audience accepts the assertion without noticing, which is the whole trick of film grammar, and the reason editing shapes meaning more than any single image can.

What is not shown lives in the cut, and it is the medium's greatest economy: the door closes, the glass is already empty, and the audience builds the missing scene better than any camera could. Cutting well is deciding what the viewer can be trusted to construct. Show everything and you have surveillance; cut well and you have story.