Research and Reading
In Chapter 03 of The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video, Tom Schroeppel explains how audiences tend to be able to pay better attention to a sequence of shots rather than a continuous, unbroken shot.
Scenes can be broken down into a combination of wide or establishing shots, medium shots, close ups, and extreme close ups. There are many techniques that can be used to edit a sequence, one of the most important things to keep in mind while editing is to maintain continuity. The shots you select should play out in a way that makes sense to the actions happening on screen. Each cut should be consistent and seamless. Jarring jump cuts and continuity errors can distract the audience from the story being told.
While shooting, it is important to keep the edit in mind. Having a clean entrance and a clear exit gives the editor more freedom when assembling the sequence. This means footage of a subject should be taken before there is movement and after the movement has been completed.
Chapter 04 introduces the concept of the 180-degree rule. Also known as crossing the line, the 180-degree rule refers to an imaginary line which determines the direction people and things face when viewed through the camera. When you cross the line, you reverse the screen direction of everything in the scene even though nothing has moved but the camera. This inadvertently makes the audience aware of the camera.
There are a few exceptions to the rule; a subject can cross the line as long as it is captured on camera, or the camera can move along with the subject or by itself, again, as long as this action is captured on camera. This rule can also be broken in moments of cutting on action or in a directional context such as a street or a hallway.
Inform
note: the dish in this example is very easy to make and very tasty
Strictly speaking continuity, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s youtube cooking channel is a great example. He uses a combination of a GOPRO head cam, an overhead camera, and close ups to walk the audience through the steps of preparing a dish. He cooks everything in real time, only employing cross fades and jump cuts when doing something like boiling a pot of water or reducing a sauce for 45 minutes.
In the opening scene of Inglorious Bastards, Tarantino breaks the 180-degree rule a couple times throughout the conversation. Each change of direction correlates to a change in the conversation, each time getting worse. As the conversation goes downhill, the changing direction ramps up the tension and severity of the scene.
One of the first ever continuity errors I can ever remember catching was actually Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction when she is talking to Michael Douglas in bed and the sheet was in a different place between each cut. I couldn’t find a clip of this anywhere online so the next example I could think of was a less distracting one, but an error all the same. In The Shining, in the span of a single cut, Danny Torrance apparently eats an entire sandwich.
Scenes where people are eating or drinking are always hard, and I feel I always tend to keep track of drink levels on tables when I’m editing work and watching TV casually. Fluctuating drink levels on reality shows always drive home how overproduced they are to me. (Note: I recently started watching The Ultimatum on Netflix and production exclusively uses these aluminum tumblers at all their shooting locations and I feel it’s probably to avoid that exact problem).
Create
This week, I created a how-to video where I got to dust off my bartending knowledge and put together a fun, super simple cocktail. Even with how simple my set up was, I caught myself making a couple continuity errors. Even with a few things that don’t make up, I’m happy with the overall product.
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