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What does a fade-out or dissolve suggest about the relationship between two scenes?

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Director Steven Spielberg and camera operator Michael Chapman film next to a large mechanical shark on the set of the 1975 movie Jaws. — motion-picture technology Director Steven Spielberg holding the movie camera, assisted by camera operator Michael Chapman, during the filming of *Jaws* (1975).

In motion-picture editing, transitions serve as a system of punctuation that signals the relationship between scenes. While a straight cut typically suggests that two scenes are close in space or time, more visible transitions like a fade-out or a dissolve indicate that the scenes have a more distant relationship.1

A fade-out—where the screen goes dark before fading into the next image—and a dissolve—where one image is superimposed over another—are used by filmmakers to signal these shifts in narrative context, time, or location.12