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[nganok]

Your feelings group. I really like it at one point in my screenplay so its not over used or anything. Am I stepping on the directors toes or are they okay.

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[Optimus]

Yeah, you're stepping on the director's toes.

And, honestly, when you're READING a story, what's the difference between "CUT," "QUICK CUT," "SMASH CUT," "IN YOUR FACE CUT," "BRYAN ADAMS CUT," etc.?

I don't like it. I've never seen a need for it in any screenplay, ever.

[scripter1]

is a transition, is a transition.

You can't break away from one scene to the next any faster then just releasing the record button on the camera. There simply isn't anyway to speed up the time between where one scene ceases to play and the next begins.
A transition in a film is a real time thing.
(Bill addressed this issue and said it much better then I did.)

Any one have any idea where Smash cut came from?

Now, using those weird, wanky dissolves that Lucas favors is a different thing. BUT that is still the director's place not the writer's.

[nganok]

I wanted to use it to bring a character out of a trance-like state into the horrid reality of what was really happening to him in the scene. Suggestions???

[clockwork]

I've seen Aaron Sorkin use it in scripts for The West Wing, in particular the episode 17 People. The teaser is a sort of back-and-forth montage of a character figuring something out over a period of a few days and then confronting his boss about it. The last few lines of the teaser read something like;

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TOBY'S staring straight at Leo...

TOBY - (pause) Why does Hoynes think the President isn't going to run again?

And we HEAR the bouncing ball.

TOBY has him in check...

TOBY - (pause) What's going on Leo?

The two of them keep staring at each other...

and staring...

and staring...

...and we

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Of course this is Aaron Sorkin we're talking about who clearly has an informal writing style and could get away with any kind of cut he wanted to considering his resume.

The only definition I can come up with for smash cut is that it's a particularly sharp or even abrupt transition that is signalled through a build up of tension/sound/action etc leading to a heightened, dramatic crescendo where the smash cut takes effect.

But I'd leave it alone until you're sure it's not going to jump off the page for the wrong reasons. Try to convey the same ideas through the descriptions which are your territory, rather than the transitions and the editing which are not.