Task Five – Continuity Editing

Task Five – Continuity Editing

This provides evidence for: Unit 16:P1, M1, D1

• Match on Action - this is when for example someone is walking through a door and you follow the action all the way through without cutting when looks best to cut incase it does not look natural. This enables the filmmaker to have the full natural action so it doesn't look forced or ajar, especially if extra shots are needed. If they wasn't filmed all the way through you could lose part of the action or it could look forced. Below is an example of this, from Friends where Chandler is talking on one side of the door with all the people outside and shows him closing the door. The next shot is a match on action, continuing the last shot on, you see him closing the door on the other side, this shows fluidity in the shot.

• Eye-line  Match - this is when you see an actor looking at something and then a shot of  what they are looking at. This enables a film maker to show the audience first hand of what the character is looking at, without having to explain.  An example of this is shown below where you see Obi Wan is seen looking up and then you see the shot of the light saber so you know what he is looking at. This links the two in the audiences mind, so they know what Obi Wan is thinking about without him having to say it. It also makes what he does more understandable. 

• Shot, Reverse Shot - This is when you see a conversation going on between two people and you show one person talking in for example an over-the-shoulder shot and then the reverse, so a shot of the other person in the conversation talking and this will go backward and forward. A film maker would use this to highlight who is saying what part of the speech, it helps the audience recognise which character is talking. If they did not do this shot, and just used a wide shot of the conversation instead, it is a lot less personal and you may get confused by who is saying what. This is shown in the picture below, when the man is talking you see the shot over the womans shoulder to see him. However, when she speaks the opposite is shown, over his shoulder. 

• 180 degree rule -  this is when you are filming say a conversation between 2 or more people, and you are filming on say the left hand side of the room you cannot cross the line 180 degrees over to the right hand side of the shot. The film maker will use this rule as then, if he crosses the line, the two people in the shot will appear to jump and switch places. Film makers stay to this rule as otherwise the dramatic change will confuse the viewer. Below I have included a diagram to help explain:

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Below is our example of Continuity Editing, when filming we tried to include all of these things in our video.

• Match on Action - this is shown at the beginning when Kayley walks into the room in the dark, you see her walk and begin to open the door, in the next shot you see this action continuing on from inside the room of her walking in, this is effective as at first you wonder who it is and where is she walking and you see it is into the dark room. The camera angles 
• Eye-line  Match - at the beginning when you see Nicola typing, the camera then shows the screen in which she is looking at, we carried this out well as it defines what she is looking at, it is effective because of the tension of not knowing what she is typing. The only problem is you cannot see any typing on the screen, so you would need a word document or words on the screen to show that she is actually typing.
• Shot, Reverse Shot - this is shown at the beginning where the two first characters are plotting, you see and over the shoulder shot of Nicola from Kayleys perspective however, the reverse shot isn't over Nicola's shoulder, it is a wide shot of the two of them. Although we did get a reverse shot, we did not include it as the wide shot worked better.
• 180 degree rule - in the first room you see throughout the whole story within that room that we stay on one side of the characters, at no point do we cross the 180 degree line and film from the perspective behind the characters we stayed on one side. 

Overall, although there are some points to improve on, I think our film was quite successful with the task of continuity and maintaining that we have successfully shown all of the above mentioned editing techniques, however it is only little mistakes such as the computer screen having no typing on it and more speech between the characters to provide the shot, reverse, shot. Other than this the task went well.