Oh, I ended up deciding to join a team rather than work on my own. But I guess if it's possible to answer my question for next time, that would be helpful [:
I assume that the default transitions of things like fade, wipe, dissolve are permitted. But what if I wanted to do like a star cutout to show a new scene? Would that be allowed?
Things like the ones found in this thread: https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=37628