This seems like it could possibly bring up something interesting, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but maybe some more experienced glitchers would have some ideas.
I messed around with this a bunch tonight, and discovered at least the mechanics of it. You have to interrupt the cutscene on the frame it triggers by entering a menu of some sort; I'd first done it with a bird statue menu, but it's easier and more flexible to do by calling Fi; you can sort of buffer the frame that way (I was triggering a cutscene with a bomb).
What this does is prevent the cutscene from playing until you look back at the area the cutscene was supposed to trigger in, or you get too close to that area. It seems similar to how the shell enemies in the desert won't do anything unless they're on screen or close to it; the cutscene won't play until it's on-screen. Out of sight, out of mind, as it were.
As an example, I interrupted the cutscene that plays when you bomb the rocks around the timeshift stone at the entrance to Lanayru Desert, then without looking at that area, ran all the way to the entrance to the Temple of Time area, looked back, and the cutscene triggered from the other side of the desert.
Some other points of data:
- Sinking into sinksand does not cancel the cutscene; it will still play if you look at the right area.
- Triggering a different cutscene will have that cutscene play as normal, but not cancel the stored cutscene.
- Zoning out of the area does cancel the cutscene; if you go back to that area and look at it, it won't play.
- Flying to the sky cancels the cutscene as well.
- You can store multiple (well, at least two) cutscenes at once in this way; they will play if you look at them individually. If you look at them simultaneously, they will trigger sequentially.
I haven't begun to think about possible applications of this really, and I'm not even sure you could store different kinds of cutscenes in this way; for instance, cutscenes that trigger when you enter an area might be difficult to interrupt this way and continue to prevent them from triggering. My instinct says this probably won't end up helping, but it seems interesting nonetheless.
Also, I'm pretty sure this was already known, but if you talk to Fi on the frame an attack would hit you, you can cancel that damage.
If anyone has any ideas for this, I'd love to hear about them, particularly places this might be useful for a speedrun.