Providing smooth, seamless continuity across transitions is a very important element to keeping your edits unnoticed by the viewer. Once again, editors are not responsible for the quality of the footage that they are given, but they are responsible for massaging that material into the best motion picture possible. If the production team and talent did not provide the correct visual performances to transition with smooth continuity, it will be the editor’s job to make up for that deficiency in some way in the editing. And to make matters more interesting, there are actually several different forms of continuity that need to be addressed at various points throughout the editing process. Let take a look.
Continuity of Content
Actions performed by the on-camera talent must match from one shot to the next. Because actors are obliged to make the same actions from one take to the next, and from one camera set-up framing to another, for each shot covered in the scene, one hopes that they did the same thing over and over and over. This is not necessarily always the way it is. The continuity of content must be watched for but may not be easily fixed.
As an example, if the family dog is sitting in a chair during the wide shot of a dinner table scene, then the dog should also be seen in the tighter shots used to show the remainder of the scene. If the dog had been taken off set and there were no other shots with the dog sitting at the table with the family, then, as the editor, you get to make a choice. Do you begin the family dinner scene without the wide establishing shot that shows the dog? Perhaps you start the scene on a close-up of the character speaking the first line. Perhaps you start with a close-up of a plate of food, then move out to a two or three-shot. Additionally, you have the option of showing the dog in the wide shot and then laying in the sound effect of the dog walking away on the hardwood or linoleum flooring while you show the tighter shots of the family without the dog at the table.
Perhaps you cut in a shot of the dog lying on the floor in a different part of the house. Regardless of your approach, you are searching for a solution to a continuity problem.
If a man picks up a telephone in an MLS using his right hand, then the telephone device should still be in his right hand when you next transition into an MCU of him speaking on the phone. If, for whatever reason, the production team did not provide any shots of the man with the phone in his right hand, but only in his left, then you would have to cut away to some other shot after the MLS and before the phone-in-left-hand MCU. This will give the audience enough of a break from continuous action so that they can believe the man had time to transfer the telephone from his right hand to his left while he was off screen.
In this case, the cut-away is any brief shot that will provide the appropriate distraction and time filler to allow the audience to make the leap in logic of object continuity adjustment.
So either the footage already contains the proper material to edit with the correct continuity of content, or the editor must create some means of hiding, masking, or “explaining” the visual incongruity. No matter the approach taken, the audience must remain ignorant of the issue or else you run the risk of breaking their belief in the filmed illusion. In this respect, editors are rather like magicians or illusionists purposefully distracting the eyes of the audience to cover the trick of the edit.
Continuity of Movement
Screen direction is the movement of talent or objects toward frame right or frame left. This must be maintained as you transition from one shot to the next, if the next shot still covers the same movement of talent or objects. The production team should have respected the scene’s screen direction and the 180 degree rule during the shooting of coverage. If they did not, and the shot that you would like to use next that continues your talent’s movement contradicts the already established screen direction, then you will have to insert a logical shot that will continue the narrative and still provide a visual break from the discontinuity of movement. This other shot, of whatever material you have that fits the narrative flow, will offer the audience a break to allow the character time to reverse his direction in the third shot continuing the previous action.
Continuity of Position
Since the film space has direction as noted above, it also must have a sense of place. Talent subjects or physical objects within the frame occupy a certain space within the film world as well. It is important for the editor to string together shots where that subject or object placement is maintained continuously. If an actor is shown frame right in shot one, then he must be somewhere on frame right in any subsequent shots during that scene. Of course, if the actor physically moves, during the shot, to a different location within the film space then it is logical to show him on a new side of the frame. Cutting together two shots that cause the subject or object to jump from one side of the screen to the other will distract the viewer and the illusion of smooth editing will be broken.
Continuity of Sound
The continuity of sound and its perspective is of critical importance. If the action of the scene is happening in the same place and at the same time, then the sound will continue from one shot to the next. If there is an airplane in the sky in the first shot, and it can be seen and heard by the viewer, then the sound of that airplane should carry over across the transition into the next shot from that scene. Even if the airplane is not seen in the next shot of this sequence, the sound of it would still be audible to the characters; therefore it should still be represented to the viewing audience as well.
Sound levels for voices and objects should be consistent throughout an edited scene.
Changes in object distances from camera, within the film space, should also be accounted for through raising or lowering volume levels in the audio mix for those shots. Perspective increase or drop off should be represented. Additionally, all spaces have a background noise level. It may be soft, deep, high, or loud depending on the environment depicted on screen. This ever present layer of sound is commonly called ambience, but it may also be referred to as atmosphere or natural sound (nats for short). It is responsible for creating a bed of consistent audio tone over which the dialogue and other more prominent sound effects and so forth are placed. This extra, uninterrupted sound bed is either lifted from the production audio recordings (sometimes called room tone), or it is generated by an editor or sound design person from other sources. This ambience track helps smooth out audio transitions when you cut from one shot within a scene to another.
Commentaires