Jean-Luc Godard pioneered the 'jump cut' in the 60s which is now used excessively in MTV vids, television in general, and in Hollywood movies, but this (I think) refers more specifically to cuts made to a single scene to sped it up.. so a man walks slowly along the street towards his house ... they cut, usually increasingly more rapidly .. so that the man disappears into the house in a flash of jerky pictures. It has become a means battling impatience in the viewer - especially when the content is trite, I think. There are a handful of directors out there who use the technique very well though, like Michel Gondry.

Aside: Interestingly, a lot of the musics videos on MTV by the likes of 50 cent feature fairly slow beats and sparse music, with little instrumentation or tune. Yet the videos are usually just the opposite: a deluge of sweeping camera shots of dancers busting a groove and outrageously dressed MCs with sparkling jewellery standing in front of brightly-lit casinos. Well odd.