continuity editing

a core of editing in mainstream cinema, introduced in the early 1900s
hollywood standard and most dominant form of editing - also referred to as “invisible editing”
it aims to ensure that the viewer perceives the story space as unified and coherent
with hundreds of transitions that make up the average feature film, continuity editors face severak challenges: to depict space with a coherent geography and to create the illusion that narrative time unfolds in a linear way
continuity editing works to hide any fragmentation that may occur when a scene cuts to a new shot: it relies on a systematic order for presenting shots and maintins a consistency of idrection on screen. creates linkages

soviet cinema, linkage & constructive editing

“the foundation of film art is editing”
in a similar vein to filmmaker Lev kuleshov, filmmaker and theorist vsevolod pudovkin puts forward an alternative approach to eisenstein’s idea on the function of editing: linkage, as opposed to collision

dimensions of editing

spatial
- key conventions to establish spatial continuity
  - standard shot patter — orientation of the audience
  - shot reverse shot
    - another way that filmmakers can tap into the expressive potential of a shot reverse shot is to orchestrate patters of repetition and change
    - the alternating images in a shot reverse shot sequence create a pattern of repetition → when shot returns to the reverse angle, filmmakers often use a shot that is mainly consistent with the previous reverse angle shot
    - however, editing can mark significant shifts in the emotional dynamics of a scene by abruptly altering this pattern
  - eyeline match (pov shot)
    - an eyeline match is where the character’s line of sight is used to motivate the cut
    - through most of psycho’s parlour scene, hitchcock deploys eye-line matches using eye-level medium shots between characters
    - as the conversation grows more laden with the character’s emotional baggage, the editing highlights the sudden, unspoken seriousness of the exchange
    - to emphasize that a character is looking at a particular object or person, the director will include a shot of the character looking offscreen, followed by a shot of the object or person that the character observes
    - this sequence of shots makes spatial relationships clear and guides the viewer through the character’s though process, helping them to understand what has captured his or her action. however, sometimes we do not see what characters see
  - graphic match — match on action
    - how the compositional properties of a shot — lines, colors, shapes etc, relate to those of the other shot
    - as with all the dimensions of film editing, any edit can sit on a continuum running from radical discontinuity to maximum continuity — so any given edit can be graphically continuous or disconinuous, as well as spatially, temporally, and rhythmically
  - cutaways
    - a cut-away is the interruption of a continuous shot by inserting an image of something else, usually followed by the original shot
    - may draw attention to non-human elements of mise-en-scene that influence plot or develop themes of the film
    - focuses the viewer’s attention of precise details and what is salient in the diegetic space
    - unlike an eyeline match, a cutaway is not character centered — the appearance of an object doesn’t depend the character having to see it in the previous shot
    - often used in flashback sequences or to illustrate character subjectivity
temporal
graphic
rhythmic
the same is true for non-adjacent shots (a+e)

continuity: 30° rule

when we cut from one shot of a subject to another shot of the same subject, we need to make sure that each shot is a very specific composition in terms of frame size and camera angle
if we try to cut together 2 shots of the ssame subject when frames are very similar, it is almost as if the camera has just lurches forward a little, creating the impression of a jump cut — awkwardness of the cut calls attention to itself
the 30 degree rule ensures each shot is a distinct composition but is also of a different size

bending the rules: discontinuity

to minimize the disruption of flashback sequences, filmmakers often include an appropriate shot transition — however, an abrupt shift in time and place results in a jump cut
discontinuity
- jump cuts (breaking the match on action)
- crosscutting — not to be confused with jump cut
- breaking the 180-degree line of axis
- repetition of the same shot in a film
- lack of establishing shot