Transitions as Exposition in LEGION
Using crossfades to give clever visuals and tell character's history
CW: the video contains portrayals of self harm
This transition shot in Legion’s pilot does several things at once; it shows off with tricky transition visuals, it gives quite a bit of David’s backstory in a very short amount of time, and it establishes the show’s dark, irreverent tone.
The crossfade from 0:03-0:06 with both actors shaking a pill bottle in the same hand demonstrates this is teen / adult David, and tells us he’s been misusing substances for a long time.
At 0:12 the shot crossfades to a looped electrical cord — David walks to it, puts it around his neck, and drops out of shot.
At 0:32-037 there’s a third crossfade which makes it look as though the taut red electrical cord is burning, before fully revealing a sparkler stuck in a cupcake.
The sparkler light spreads across the shot to illuminate a woman singing Happy Birthday, then further to show the whole room, which is now a containment cell.
Though the first shot is cold and blue and the second has a sickly yellow-green tinge, both keeping focus on the center sparkler with two symmetrical background, out-of-focus pools of light 'bracketing’ it is a great touch.
When the woman proffers the cupcake we see an incredulous David; we immediately ‘fill in’ the details and connect his story as the crossfaded images connected, and presume David ended up in this institution as a result of everything we just saw.
In just a few shots and no direct dialogue, we’ve been given a brief history of David’s life and mental state, all wrapped up in clever visuals and transitions which serve as a sort of “X led to Y and here we are!” expositional shorthand.