Continuity editing in Film Editing

Continuity editing
Continuity Editing is the predominant style of film editing practiced by most Hollywood editors. The purpose of continuity editing is the establishment of logical coherence between shots. In most films, logical coherence is achieved by cutting to continuity, which emphasizes smooth transition of time and space. However, some films incorporate cutting to continuity into a more complex classical cutting technique, one which also tries to show psychological continuity of shots. The radical montage technique relies on symbolic association of ideas between shots rather than association of simple physical action for its continuity. For the purposes of this explanation, montage will be considered a technique of temporal and spatial discontinuity rather than a continuous form in its own right, based on symbolic relationships between images.
Continuity editing can be divided into two categories: temporal continuity and spatial continuity. Within each category, specific techniques can either promote or work against a sense of continuity. In other words, techniques can cause a passage to be continuous, giving the viewer a concrete physical narration to follow, or discontinuous, causing viewer disorientation, pondering, or even subliminal interpretation or reaction, as in the montage style.The important ways to preserve temporal continuity are avoiding the ellipsis, using continuous diegetic sound, and utilizing the match on action technique. An ellipsis is an apparent break in natural time continuity as it is implied in the film's story. The simplest way to maintain temporal continuity is to shoot and use all action involved in the story's supposed duration whether it be pertinent or not. It would also be necessary to shoot the whole film in one take in order to keep from having to edit together different shots, causing the viewer's temporal disorientation. However in a story which is to occupy many hours, days, or years, a viewer would have to spend too long watching the film. So although in many cases the ellipsis would prove necessary, elimination of it altogether would best preserve any film's temporal continuity.
Diegetic sound is that which is to have actually occurred within the story during the action being viewed. It is sound that comes from within the narrative world of a film(including off-screen sound). Continuous diegetic sound helps to smooth temporally questionable cuts by overlapping the shots. Here the logic is that if a sonic occurrence within the action of the scene has no breaks in time, then it would be impossible for the scene and its corresponding visuals to be anything but temporally continuous.
The match on action technique can preserve temporal continuity where there is a uniform, unrepeated physical motion or change within a passage. A match on action is when some action occurring before the temporally questionable cut is picked up where the cut left it by the shot immediately following. For example, a shot of someone tossing a ball can be edited to show two different views, while maintaining temporal continuity by being sure that the second shot shows the arm of the subject in the same stage of its motion as it was left when cutting from the first shot.
Temporal discontinuity can be expressed by the deliberate use of ellipses. Cutting techniques useful in showing the nature of the specific ellipses are the dissolve and the fade. Other editing styles can show a reversal of time or even an abandonment of it altogether. These are the flashback and the montage techniques, respectively.
By use of the dissolve and the fade, one can show the relative duration of ellipses. A fade-out is a gradual transformation of an image to black; whereas a fade-in is the opposite. A dissolve is a simultaneous fade-out of the shot being cut from, and fade-in of the shot being cut to. The dissolve can be said to show a short ellipsis; whereas a fade-out means a long one.The flashback is a reversal of time within a story, or more accurately, a window through which the viewer can see what happened at a time before the time considered to be the story present. A flashback makes its time-frame evident only through the scene's action. For example, if after viewing a grown man in the story present, a cut to a young boy being addressed by the man's name occurs, the viewer can assume that the young boy scene depicts a time previous to the story present. The young boy scene would be a flashback.The montage technique is one that implies no real temporal continuity whatsoever. Montage is achieved with a collection of symbolically related images, cut together in a way that suggests psychological relationships rather a temporal continuum.
Just as important as temporal continuity to overall continuity of a film is spatial continuity. And like temporal continuity, it can be achieved a number of ways: the establishing shot, the 180 degree rule, the eyeline match, and match on action.
The establishing shot is one that provides a view of all the space in which the action is occurring. Its theory is that it is difficult for a viewer to become disoriented when all the story space is presented before him. The establishing shot can be used at any time as a reestablishing shot. This might be necessary when a complex sequence of cuts may have served to disorient the viewer.
One way of preventing viewer disorientation in editing is to adhere to the 180 degree rule. The rule prevents the camera from crossing the imaginary line connecting the subjects of the shot. Another method is the eye1ine match. When shooting a human subject, he can look towards the next subject to be cut to, thereby using the former's self as a reference for the viewer to use while locating the new subject within the set.
With the establishing shot, 180 degree rule, eye1ine match, and the previously discussed match on action, spatial continuity is attainable; however, if wishing to convey a disjointed space, or spatia1 discontinuity, aside from purposefully contradicting the continuity tools, one can take advantage of the crosscut and the jump-cut.
The crosscut is a technique which conveys an undeniable spatial discontinuity. It can be achieved by cutting back and forth between shots of spatially unrelated places. In these cases, the viewer will understand clearly that the places are supposed to be separate and parallel. So in that sense, the viewer may not become particularly disoriented, but under the principle of spatial continuity editing, crosscutting is considered a technique of spatial discontinuity.The jump-cut is undoubtedly a device of disorientation. The jump-cut is a cut between two shots that are so similar that a noticeable jump in the image occurs. The 30 degree rule was formulated for the purpose of eliminating jump-cuts. The 30 degree rule requires that no edit should join two shots whose camera viewpoints are less than 30 degrees from one another.
Common conventions of continuity editing
Establishing shot
In film and television, an establishing shot sets up, or "establishes", a scene's setting and/or its participants. Typically it is a shot at the beginning (or, occasionally, end) of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place.
For example, an exterior shot of a building at night, followed by an interior shot of a couple talking, implies that the conversation is taking place inside that building. (Of course the conversation may in fact have been filmed on a studio set far from the apparent location, because of budget, permits, time limitations, etc.) Establishing shots may also focus on famous landmarks to reveal the city or country where a scene is set.
For example, the TV show Seinfeld often uses a "Restaurant" establishing shot — an exterior shot of a restaurant that is followed by interior shots of the characters inside.
Or an establishing shot might just be a long shot of a room that shows all the characters from a particular scene. For example, a scene about a murder in a college lecture hall might begin with a shot that shows the entire room — including the lecturing professor and the students taking notes. Establishing shots were more common during the classical era of filmmaking than they are now. Today's filmmakers tend to skip the establishing shot in order to move the scene along more quickly. In addition, scenes in mysteries and the like often wish to obscure the setting and its participants and thus avoid clarifying them with an establishing shot.An establishing shot may also establish a concept, rather than a location. For example, opening with a martial arts drill visually establishes the theme of martial arts.
Shot reverse shot
Shot reverse shot (or shot/countershot) is a film technique wherein one character is shown looking (often off-screen) at another character, and then the other character is shown looking "back" at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer unconsciously assumes that they are looking at each other (the 180 degree rule). However, shot reverse shot is also often combined with creative geography to create the sense that two characters are facing each other, when in fact they may be being filmed in completely different locations or at completely different times. These techniques are all features of the "classical" Hollywood style of continuity editing, which deemphasizes transitions between shots such that the audience perceives one continuous action that develops linearly, chronologically, and logically.
By comparison, an alternating sequence shows the systematic intertwining of actions or motifs occurring in a single diegetic space, and therefore involves cutting back and forth from one action or character to another, but does not necessarily imply that the subjects of the shots are interacting directly with one another.
Eyeline match
An eyeline match is a popular editing technique associated with the continuity editing system. It is based on the premise that the audience will want to see what the character on-screen is seeing. The eyeline match begins with a character looking at something off-screen, then there will then be a cut to the object or person that he is looking at. For example, a man is looking off-screen to his left, and then the film cuts to a television that he is watching.
Cutting on action
Cutting on action or matching on action refers to a film editing technique where the editor cuts from one shot to another view that "matches" the first shot's action and energy. Although the two shots may have actually been shot hours apart from each other, cutting on action gives the impression of continuous time when watching the edited film. By having a subject begin an action in one shot and carry it through to completion in the next, the editor creates a visual bridge which distracts the viewer from noticing the cut or noticing any slight continuity error between the two shots. A variant of cutting on action is a cut in which the subject exits the frame in the first shot and then enters the frame in the subsequent shot. The entrance in the second shot must match the screen direction and motive rhythm of the exit in the first shot.
Some films, like Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad play with this technique to connect scenes playing in different places together. For example, there is a shot of a large hall in which somebody turns her head, then the film cuts to the same person finishing the head turn, but standing in a completely different room. In this case, the edit creates an atmosphere where the spatial and temporal relationship between scenes become blurred.
30 degree rule
The 30° rule is a basic film editing guideline that states the camera must make at least 30° movements around the axis of movement while still respecting the 180° rule. These 30° of movement avoid the creation of a jump cut, or cutting at the same angle, making the subject appear to "jump" in the frame. Moving the camera at least 30° between shots seems to soften the effect of changing distance such as changing from a medium shot to a close-up.
Some consider this rule to be outdated. Arguably, the "jump cut" was popularised by filmmakers of the French New Wave, or Nouvelle Vague, in particular, A Bout de Souffle.
Jump cut
A jump cut is a cut in film editing where the middle section of a continuous shot is removed, and the beginning and end of the shot are then joined together. The technique breaks continuity in time and produces a startling effect. Any moving objects in the shot will appear to jump to a new position. In classical continuity editing, jump cuts are considered a technical flaw. Most cuts in that editing style occur between dissimilar scenes or significantly different views of the same scene to avoid the appearance of a jump. Every effort is made to make cuts invisible, unobtrusive.
Contemporary use of the jump cut stems from its appearance in the work of Jean-Luc Godard and other filmmakers of the French New Wave of the late 1950s and 1960s. In Godard's ground-breaking Breathless (1960), for example, he cut together shots of Jean Seberg riding in a convertible (see right) in such a way that the discontinuity between shots is emphasized. In the screen shots above, the first image comes from the very end of one shot and the second is the very beginning of the next shot — thus emphasizing the gap in action between the two (when Seberg picked up the mirror).
The jump cut has sometimes served a political use in film. It has been used as an alienating Brechtian technique (the Verfremdungseffekt) that makes the audience aware of the unreality of the film experience. This could be used to focus their attention on the political message of a film rather than the drama or emotion of the narrative — as may be observed in some segments of Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin.
In informal contexts the term jump cut is sometimes used to describe any abrupt and noticeable edit cut in a film. However, technically this is an incorrect usage of the term. A famous example of this is found at the end of the "Dawn of Man" sequence in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. A primitive ape discovers the use of bones as a weapon and throws the bone into the air. When the bone reaches its highest point, the shot cuts to that of a similarly-shaped space station in orbit above the earth. This edit has been described as a jump cut, including on the box of the DVD release of the film, but it is more correctly a match cut because the viewer is meant to see the similarity between the bone and the space craft and not the discontinuity between the two shots.
The jump cut was an uncommon technique for television until shows like Homicide: Life on the Street popularized it on the small screen in the 1990s. It was also famously used in a campaign commercial for US President Ronald Reagan's successful 1984 reelection bid.The jump cut is also sometimes utilised, particularly on children's television shows, as a very cheap special effects device to give the impression than a character or item can suddenly 'appear' in a scene, usually accompanied by an appropriate sound effect to help soften the visual discontinuity. A truly convincing visual effect of this nature would need to involve some variation of chroma key visual effects or some form of digital or optical compositing, and so the jump-cut is often used as a 'passable' quick-and-easy and moderately effective technique.
180 degree rule
The 180° rule is a basic film editing guideline that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.
Examples
In the example of a dialogue, if Ted is on the left and Bob is on the right, then Ted should be facing right at all times, even when Bob is off the edge of the frame, and Bob should always be facing left. Shifting to the other side of the characters on a cut, so that Bob is now on the left side and Ted is on the right, will disorient the viewer, and break the flow of the scene.
In the example of an action scene, such as a car chase, if a vehicle leaves the right side of the frame in one shot, it should enter from the left side of the frame in the next shot. Leaving from the right and entering from the right will create a similar sense of disorientation as in the dialogue example.
An excellent example of sustained use of the 180 degree rule occurs throughout much of The Big Parade, a drama about World War One directed by King Vidor. In the sequences leading up to the battle scenes, the American forces (arriving from the west) are always shown marching from left to right across the screen, while the German troops (arriving from the east) are always shown marching from right to left. After the battle scenes, when the weary troops are staggering homeward, the Americans are always shown crossing the screen from right to left (moving west) and the Germans from left to right (moving east). The audience's viewpoint is therefore always from a consistent position, in this case southward of the action. Some directors do cross the line for dramatic effect.
Problems caused and solutions
Avoiding crossing the line is a problem that those learning filmcraft can struggle with. In the above example with the car chase, a possible solution is to begin the second cut with the car driving into frame from the "wrong" side. Although this may be wrong in the geographic sense on set, it looks more natural to the viewer. Another possibility is to insert a "buffer shot" of the subject head-on (or from behind) to help the viewer understand the camera movement .
Style
In professional productions, the 180° rule is an essential element of a style of film editing called continuity editing. The rule is not always obeyed. Sometimes a filmmaker will purposely break the line of action in order to create disorientation. Stanley Kubrick was known to do this. The Wachowski Brothers and directors Tinto Brass, Yasujiro Ozu, Wong Kar-Wai and Jacques Tati sometimes ignored this rule also. The British TV presenters Ant & Dec extend this continuity to almost all their appearances, with Ant almost always on the left and Dec on the right.
Some filmmakers state that the fictional axis created by this rule can be used to plan the emotional strength of a scene. The closer you place the camera to the axis, the more emotionally involved the audience will be.
In the Japanese animated picture Paprika, two of the main characters discuss crossing the line and demonstrate the disorienting effect of actually performing the action.
Use in TV Sports
Sporting events that are covered with several cameras often use cameras on the other side of the line in order to obtain an optimal view of an incident that is blocked by the main shots. In order to prevent confusion, reverse angle shots are used sparingly and with some kind of graphic (e.g. "REVERSE ANGLE" on screen) to explain the change of viewpoint.