10 Most Shocking Jump Cuts In Film History

2. The Jump Cut As A Special Effect - The Haunted Castle

Not a single one of these jump cuts would exist without the pioneering work of early filmmaker Georges Méliès, often dubbed the father of the jump cut after accidentally discovering it when his camera got jammed and skipped through a segment of footage.

Méliès put the jump cut to more intentional use in his 1896 short film The Haunted Castle, which provides a fascinatingly creative example of how even "basic" editing can startle the audience.

In the film, Méliès utilises extensive jump cuts during a seemingly continuous camera shot to create "illusions," with characters appearing, disappearing, and transforming into other objects to shockingly seamless effect.

Considering it's over 120 years old, it holds up relatively well accepting the technical limitations of the day, and it's easy to appreciate how utterly mind-melting this must've been to audiences of the era.

After all, the Lumiere brothers' famous short Train Pulling into a Station, released the year prior, terrified audiences who believed a train was literally about to careen through the cinema screen. As such, Méliès' film must've seemed like literal magic at the time.