Online Film School Free » Film Editing Course » Continuity Editing Techniques
There are many theories about the part of the video editing in the filmmaking art. Basically, we can agree that the video editor’s main job is to attach together a number of shots in order to create continuity in the story that does not draw attention to the video editing itself and Continuity in film is an excellent tool for that. In this article, I will introduce you to some impressive continuity editing techniques.
You never shoot the film in the order of the script. Even inside the scene, the order of the shooting is determined by location limitations, the actor’s schedule, etc. Continuity editing is a technique that video editor use to keep things consistent between two shots that will be edited together. For example, Lighting – Continuity in lighting means that the colors in the frames are the same in every shot of the scene. The element that can break our Continuity here is most likely to be exposure and lighting of the shots – They should be the same. The editor’s job is to do whatever it takes to fix the discontinuity elements. In this case, the editor might need to do some color correction to fix the problem.
Make it a ritual before starting to edit a scene to look for discontinuity possibilities and the way to fix them, and when you finish editing the scene, look for it again. For example, if a character is facing right and on the next shot it is facing left, you can fix it with a flop effect (an effect that changes the direction of the frame). If there is a discontinuity in the actor’s action or an object in the scene, the right solution can also be putting the third shot in between the problematic two if it’s possible.
Other problems that can cause discontinuity can be in backgrounds, sound, and the most “popular” mistake – a discontinuity in object placement. For example, when one of the characters is smoking a cigar and the size of the cigar changes on the different take (first it’s long, then it’s short and then long again).
Or let’s say an actor is holding a glass on the right hand and on the next take he is holding it on the left. In this online film editing course, we cover many editing techniques and in this lesson we’ll learn techniques that can help you cover the discontinuity and we’ll go over them in this lesson.
The important thing to remember from this lesson is that your main goal as a video editor is not to get an edited film that is continuous, but that is dramatically effective. continuity editing is just a tool that will help you get there.
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