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In a sense, it's going from one emotion or thematic element to a
very different, but equally strong one, either as bookends or through
intercutting. Going from the high of the victory, to the sudden shot of
the dead troops, is thematic counterpoint.

Here's another...in "Cabaret" you've got a scene where the
performers in the Cabaret are doing the sort of German dance where you
slap your knees and thighs and chest...and they take it a bit further,
slapping one another, it's all for comic effect...but during this,
you're intercutting the owner of the cabaret being beaten to within an
inch of his life by some Brownshirts outside. You go from comic to
brutal and back, with the result that the happy little dance suddenly
takes on ugly characteristics, and the beating takes on the sense that
the participants are having a sick kind of fun, that it's all just
another kind of dance, a ritual.

That's what you have to look at as a writer...how this scene
works, and how it interacts with the scenes in front, behind and
"beside" it (for things happening simultaneously). Sometimes, with the
proper counterpoint, you can add whole new levels of meaning to a
scene, or make the scene much stronger than it would've been on its
own.

jms