Thursday, 16 January 2025

Film continuity

 

From googling:  

Quote 

In film, continuity is the notion that a sequence of shots all need to feel as unified and fluid as if they were a single shot. If a director chooses to cut from one shot to another, audiences should feel like nothing has changed in terms of time and space. 

Unquote


I’m watching a mainland Chinese drama on YouTube at the moment.


    In filming terms, whether it’s documentary or drama, continuity is very important.


    I’ve only ever worked in documentary film production, so I shall speak from this angle.


    In 1988, I was in China as a member of the crew filming an American motorcyclist working his way across China on the Silk Route, from Shanghai in the east to Xinjiang in the south west, exiting China into north Pakistan.


    The final copy that goes out is almost never ever shot in the same sequence.  Often there’re extra shots filmed later as fillers-in / cutaways.  


    For example, we might film the man entering a village, walking around the market and buying a watermelon.  A crowd would predictably gather in no time at all, to watch, sometimes even out of thin air if we were filming in the middle of nowhere, so we might have to get out as soon as we’d done the main shots, filming his departure. 

 

    We might then decide it’d be good to add a shot of him eating the watermelon he’d bought, but it might have to be done somewhere else or even a day later when we’d have a bit more time without having to do crowd control.  


    This is when continuity comes in:  we must make sure the motorcyclist is still wearing the same clothes as when he rode into the village, if we wanted to make it look like he was eating the watermelon there and then.


    The YouTube Chinese drama I’m watching was set and aired in 2016, so it’s very modern, with the female protagonist sporting hair dyed orange and curly. 

 

    In episode 14, she falls down a great height, is found unconscious by two passers-by and taken to hospital where she remains in a coma for a few days.  


    When she wakes up, her hair is still orange, but now straight.  So who would’ve combed her hair while she was lying in a coma in a hospital bed, never mind to the point of straightening out the curls?


    At the point of leaving the hospital, her curls are back.  This bit might be a bit more believable, as she could’ve dolled herself up again just before stepping out into the wide world, although the plot didn’t actually need this detail. 


    This is sheer sloppiness in continuity.  (Occupational hazard on my part, always noticing such things…)



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