Preliminary task on Continuity editing

• What is continuity? 

Continuity editing is the process, in film and video creation, of combining more-or-less related shots, or different components cut from a single shot, into a sequence to direct the viewer's attention to a pre-existing consistency of story across both time and physical location.

• Why is it important? What effect does it have?

It is crucially important as it creates a fluid image of the story and enhances the building up of tension effectively. Transitions are short, precise, and are intended to be unnoticeable but able to portray various shots from different points of view. 

• What are the 3 techniques used in order to create smooth continuity?

Match on action: An editing technique for continuity editing in which one shot cuts to another shot portraying the action of the subject in the first shot.

Shot reverse shot: A film technique where one character is shown looking 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 assumes that they are looking at each other.

180-degree rule: A cinematography guideline that states that two characters in a scene should maintain the same left/right relationship to one another. When the camera passes over the invisible axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line and the shot becomes what is called a reverse angle.

• What happens if they are not used properly?

If continuity editing isn’t used properly, it is difficult for the audience to assume what happens in between each shot or sequence and therefore the plot doesn’t unfold in a very successful and engaging way for the audience.

My preliminary task and its evaluation:

In this preliminary task, I worked with some of my media studies colleagues; Delfina Aragones and Emma Lozano, in order to produce this piece. We hadn't yet chosen the genre we wanted to do for our final piece of coursework so we just went for a slightly basic genre of teenage drama as we didn't have many characters and had a very short period of time to produce this piece.

I  worked with them easily as we each chose to each take a role and we managed to produce this piece effectively. Delfina and Emma acted out the characters and I was assigned the filming role. We filmed this two times because the first time we only filmed each sequence once, instead of twice, which was a huge error as Emma (the main character) came towards different sides of the camera at the end which would really confuse the audience. Besides, we were given the chance to start using Adobe Premiere Pro for the first time, which was very challenging as there were some problems with the sequences, which were repeating themselves over and over again. Although we overcame that obstacle, we noticed that we had spent too much time in the filming process compared to the editing process which was an improvement we had to make in future projects.