Definitions for "Cross-cutting"
Swiftly cutting backwards and forwards between more than one scene.
the alternating of shots between two or more scenes usually in different locations, thereby suggesting that they are taking place at the same time. Cross-cutting is a key to building tension in chase scenes by switching back and forth between the pursuer and the pursued. Cross-cutting was employed in film-making as early as Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903) and D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916).
A method of editing in which the point of view (p.o.v.) switches alternately from events at one location to those of another related action. The action is ususlly simultaneous and used to create a dynamic tension as in the chase scene in D.W. Griffith's A Girl and Her Trust. (See Intercutting for the distinction between cuts.)