Maintaining Continuity by Jamie Sykes

Technical Continuity

Continuity is a vital part of film making. You can maintain continuity by; having props in the same location each shot and characters making the same movements during a shot change. There is a second type of continuity called technical continuity, technical continuity varies as it places a primary focus on how the camera is set up, what the shot is looking at and where the camera is placed. Breaks in continuity are infrequent in high-end productions, but they do still occur and are sometimes highlighted for humour in the blooper roll of a film.

180° Line Rule

The 180° line rule is an invisible line that you should not pass when film making. The line is formed when you have a conversation between two people, or two parties. Once you establish that the camera is on one side of the line, you should not bring the camera to the other line suddenly. It is important you understand the 180° line as a filmmaker as it directly correlates to many other filming techniques.

It is possible to go to the other side, if you have a panning shot that moves over the line, this is allowed as you are actively establishing that the camera is moving thus you would expect the background to change with it.

 It might be disorienting for the audience if the background was to change, it would also give the idea that they have moved to a different location during shots, and it might also come to a surprise that an entire room is behind them. You may have given them the unintended/intended impression that the room was/is small. So to avoid breaking technical continuity, you must actively follow the 180° line rule.

Match on Action

In order to maintain technical continuity, specifically during scene changes, a match on action is used. It creates a seamless transition when a character is making a movement such as sitting down or walking through a door. A match on action is effectively used in our preliminary exercise.

Shot-Reverse Shot

A shot-reverse shot is used to exhibit emotions or reactions in characters during dialogue exchange. The camera is moved to either end of the 180° line and pointed at the speaking subjects face, it is then moved to the opposite end to show the characters reaction.

Audio Continuity

Audio in a shot might suddenly change, for example, a vehicle may be driving by as the shot changes so the audio might get cut off, or the audio might suddenly appear in the background. A change in background noise should be avoided if possible. Large budget productions close roads in some circumstances to avoid issues with audio continuity.

Colour Balance

A change in colour balance is also something that should be avoided, an example of a change in colour balance is light. If you were to film outdoors you must be wary of changing light as the sun moves which can lead to over exposure and under exposure between scenes. Similarly, colour corrections used in scenes must be consistent as drastic differences in saturation, brightness and contrast will make the production look poor and badly edited.