Principles of Continuity

The directors will use many different types of shots for variety, to give the desired effect and for continuity. The main shot used for continuity would be a Long/Wide Shot, generally used to establish a scene. This shot allows the directors, editors and the continuity department to make sure there is nothing changing between shots that shouldn't change.

Continuity Editing


The process that comes from 'Continuity Editing' is calling suture. This is where there audience is metaphorically sewn to the narrative, they begin to believe what is happening in the film to be reality, and forget about real life. This is achieved by the almost 'invisible' editing process as it causes the viewer to forget that they are watching fiction and to enter the parallel world. 


Continuity Editing Techniques


This is just a few of the, in my opinion, best continuity editing techniques.

• 180 degree rule - When filming a two-person-facing shot, the camera must always stay on the same side of the people speaking, so the camera must not cross an imaginary straight line passing through the two characters. It is perfectly fine to film from either side, but once filmed from one side, you must not change as it will give the impression of jumpiness.
• 30 degree rule - Make sure to change the camera angle by more than 30 degrees if using the same composition and framing so as to make give the audience the ability to notice a visible 'jump' in the film. This is known as a jump cut.
• Cross cutting - This is where shots are placed next to either other on the timeline but do not belong together in the narrative sequence. This is useful for showing that two different scenes are happening at once, like a car chase.
• Shot-reverse-shot - This is the cutting between two people having a conversation. A good way to make this sort of sequence not boring is to film it once with a master shot showing both characters, a CU of each character and a BCU of each character. This way, when it comes to editing, it can be mixed up and varied so that the sequence isn't boring and plain for the viewer. 

Accidents Task 

In our lesson today, we were set the task of portraying an accident scene (lowscale e.g. nothing too impressive like car crash or being shot) in 6 shots without the use of editing material. We had to do this by shooting one shot after the other as they would appear in the sequence (if we were to make it properly). This meant that the sequence we filmed wasn't of extremely high standards but it allowed us to, when we watched them back, see some of the errors we made.

• Although we followed the 180 degree rule, the location of our filming was a wide alley, meaning that the walls on both sides is very similar therefore, when we watched it back, the people who hadn't been on our production team thought we had switched the side from which we were filming, and had not followed the 180 degree rule. In future, we would make it alot clearer that we had stuck to the same side.
• We tried to incorperate the 'shot-reverse-shot' technique when filming by including a master shot, a close up and a big close up, however, as we only had 6 shots, and didn't have access to editing materials, we had to do it by hand, so when watching back, it didn't give the right appearance. Saying this, the master shot still did establish the scene. In the future, we would film more takes of each shot, and get more angles in so that we could make our scene a little more interesting.