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Understanding Continuity Basics

you talked about a role yesterday called the script supervisor or the script E and why this person is so important on any set. And it's because when you are building even even on a small project, if you have somebody who can be your you couldn't can be your script supervisor. It's really helpful because if you're shooting anything out of sequence and most I don't know about most because I'm not on every film set everywhere. But I know a lot of films are not shot the page for page in the script there. Things there are jumbled and juggled around in terms of how you want to set up different shots, different locations. So let's say we go back and forth two different locations in in the film, which is pretty much every film, right? So let's say we have a house location and we have 20 scenes in that location, but they're spread out throughout the entire script. Well, we're not going to just keep going back and forth because every time you have a company move and you move your set, it's gonna...

cost money. It cost time, and it's just not effective way to do filmmaking, so you would shoot all of those scenes and they may come over different days and become a different times of day. But you're gonna shoot them all in that location at the same time or consecutively, right? And that's out of sequence. So if you don't have continuity and a script supervisor who understands really well how to track all those changes and say, Okay, we're in scene 31 seen 31 So and so is wearing this. So and so is wearing that, and your department heads all know this is well, but it's the script supervisors job toe pointed out to make sure that everything is the right thing. So the department heads might check in with the script, he to say. I just want to make sure so And so is wearing striped shirt in scene 31. Yes, Okay, good. And then that's that. So and that would be in terms of every department. And continuity needs to be achieved throughout and their different ways of shoot of different ideas, of continuity and what they are so going to go through them a little bit. So we have four different types of continuity that you need to be conscious off when you're making a film and its content in new of content, continuity of movement, continuity of position, on continuity of time. So I'm gonna talk about what, what that actually means. And we can think about Aiken. We could try to think about or actually do some research later about examples of this, because the Internet is filled with examples of films that have continuity issues in them because people love to point out when stuff goes wrong. On there's some very big ones in some very famous films that some have been corrected in later re masters and some having so All right, so continuity of content is anything visible in the scene, right? So wardrobe, hair style, actors, cars, time on the clock, basically anything you see visually from scene to scene has to match and follow the story line. So I'll give an example of when I watched yesterday. So, uh, there's a scene where ah, in, um, Pulp Fiction, where there in the in the room with the young guys and he he gives Samuel Jackson does his thing and the kid comes out of the closet with the gun and he shoots at issues that them, And in Samuel L. Jackson says, Oh, it was a miracle that the bullets hit us, but there's a huge continuity issue in that scene because the bullet holes in the wall before the guy actually shot the gun so that, you know exactly right. But for most most people watching a film, you get so engrossed in the story that you miss these things. And the other one was in T 23 the the Terminator movie where the Robert Patrick character gets up and bashes his head through the helicopter. When Shield takes over the helicopter pilot and then goes off on the very next scene, the windshield is back. So these are, you know, these air kinds of things that, you know are not noticeable for most people. But when you're on a film set and you make a mistake like that and something like that comes up in the dailies and you're like, Oh my God, we miss that, then you want then that that's where the script supervisor is, sort of like taken to task by the director, you know? So okay, then there we have also continuity of movement. So that means that anything that's moving in the shot needs to continue to move in the next shot. So cars, people walking, doors opening. So if there's a cut in the middle of somebody coming through a door, the door needs to continue to move on this on the cut, uh, picking up something off the floor. Whatever it might be on, there has to be an awareness in post production, in terms, in production, for post production that these things need to match up your needs to be a continuity of movement. So ah, lot of time. So let's say somebody is getting into a chair and the scene completes the action of them sitting in the chair. But there's going to be a cut, a closer cut when the person is actually in the chair so they might do something that's called Rocking, which might be something like, I'm kind of right here, and I I drop into the chair, and that gives the editor the opportunity to cut as I'm sitting into that next shot. So that's one of those kind of continuity of movement situations where you become aware of that and I was, you know, and watching some of the actors that were really seasoned on the feature was watching them do things like the way they picked up a fork. And they understood that every single time they, their hand position and and other things needed to be in exactly the same thing. And that's the next one. Positioning so positioning. And it's a broader sense for a lot of it is about propping and the set. So if I am in a scene and I'm drinking this glass of water, I take a sip and I put it back in exactly the same spot every single time. Because if I am in the middle of the scene and I put it down over here and all of a sudden we have a continuity issue because if I cut and then all of a sudden we cut in this glasses in a different position or the time on the clock is a different is different, you know, this could be a problem with the propping right and professional actors are very aware of their body movements that they have to repeat it, repeat their body movements, repeat the things they do, where they do in which hand they do with them. With all of these things have to be considered. And if you're coaching, if you're directing people in a narrative story, you have to be aware that if they're not aware of it and they're not professionals or they haven't done it before, they may not understand that their body movements and the props that they're using and the sets that are there everything needs to match from seeing the scene from cut to cut. And if it's not, it's gonna create a continuity problem. So the script supervisor, sitting there with every scene, drawing a little picture, making sure taking a picture with their phone. So our script supervisor took a picture of every set before action was called and then take a picture after and then move everything back to where it waas. So that would be that the Let's say the production designer would have to come and check in with the script supervisor and say, Where was the vase? Because I can't remember where it was before we started. Put it back, reset the scene. Go again. So, um, this is really essential in the terminology of continuity. And then the last one is time. So it refers to the flow of time really in that if you are watching something and it looks like something is happening on the screen, but it's not happening at a normal human pace, like people are walking together. Then we cut and we come back and one person is walking ahead of the other person, and that's not where it was before. Or, um, pacing of speech feels a little off, like so all of the timing aspects, and it is one other one that's not really mentioned here. But it's also, I think, connected to time. Um is light because I know that if you're shooting an outdoor scene and the sun is in the sky in a position. And so, for example, I've been on a set where we shot an outdoor scene all day and the sun clearly moves in. The shadows clearly move, and that is a continuity issue. So you have to be aware that you may need to fix those things in post production, right? So you, if the lighting is different, you might need to adjust the lighting in post production to match the time of day because you're the scene itself is only gonna take 20 minutes on screen. But it took eight hours to film. So the whole idea of where the lighting is and this is the problem with food photography with what you mentioned to me yesterday, um, we mentioned to me yesterday that the clients sometimes says, Why can't you just throw the video camera on and take a video of what you just took a picture off? And a lot of times, what they don't understand is that if you're doing a video, even if you had it well planned and everything else if you're doing a daylight food photography shoot, you can't just throw the camera on and then film all day because nothing's gonna match. The lighting is gonna change all day long. So it's the same issue. It's just that that becomes this continuity issue that you have to be aware off. So, um so those are the basic four things again, I encourage you to do a little homework, go research what this looks like, and it's actually kind of funny. And some of the other ones that I watched yesterday was There's one in It's a Wonderful Life, which is really blatant and funny and the fact that it was in the cut for as long as it Waas, where a guy while he walks into the room and he has a wreath on his arm. And then he goes. He takes the wreath, offi throws it on the table, goes to answer the phone, picks up the phone, and when he's talking on the phone, the reef is back on his arm. So, like, it just makes the audience aware that there's a movie happening right, because stuff like that doesn't happen in real life. And some of the other ones that happen pretty often are in animation because they re use the cells. And then if, if there's one missing in the middle somewhere, it actually looks pretty funny. And in seven Snow White and seven Dwarfs, there's this whole scene where one of the dwarfs keeps coming in and out of the door and the doors. Sometimes it's open. Sometimes it's close. Sometimes it's open, sometimes closed, so it's like, you know, these are the things that you know. There, we get a lot of we get a kick out of them, but not when you're on set. You do not get a kick out of these things when you're on set. Very unnerve ing.