Continuity - Understanding Cinematography
- Tea L
- Aug 8
- 8 min read
Updated: Sep 4
This article is a follow up and companion to the Shooting for the Sequence article, where we are going to focus on the continuity editing system.
You may be thinking that seems a bit random considering,
Everyone in film school has some understanding of the continuity editing system.
It's an editing system, shouldn't this be in understanding post-production?
But, you need to shoot the footage that fits the system so that you can then edit using the system. This is in many ways even more important for documentary shoots in my opinion, because fiction shoots have the advantage of being pre-planned. You spend time realizing what is going to fit and not fit with the system.
When shooting documentary your work greatly improves by knowing these same rules so that you can shoot to fit within it, without those shots having the advantage of being pre-planned.
The utilitarian quick reference
If you are returning to this from a workshop or having already read this article as a reference I don't want to bury the lead. If you continue reading you'll quickly grasp what each of these mean.
Get multiple shot sizes of a subject
Make sure you vary your angles
Don't cross the (continuity) line
Try to remember proper framing
Turn in the same directions
Do you literally mean continuity?
No.
This is not going to be concerned with creating seamless perfect continuity in the fiction sense, where things appear as if they are portraying continuous reality and time.
Instead we mean continuity of editing, continuity of movement or smoothness if you will.
What are our tools?
Here we can stick broadly to three "rules" and two guidelines from the perspective of shooting footage:
Shot Progression
The 30° Rule
The 180° Rule
Composition Similarity
Movement Similarity
If you can keep at least the first three rules in mind when shooting you will be doing great.
Shot Progression (Rule)
In a classic sense
Ok you probably already know this one very well, but it's a basic tenant of continuity editing so let's refresh.
In a classic sequence you start the scene with an establishing shot, a wide shot that at least clearly places the audience in a location. In classic narrative cinema this could be extreme, like a helicopter shot of an entire city.
You then get closer to the action itself, this could still be a wide shot but more centered on establishing the people in the location, rather than the location itself. We are now establishing our characters.
Once these are established the shots in the scene will continue "approaching" the characters, slowly moving through Medium-Wide shots, to Mediums and Medium-Close-ups.
When you hit the emotional center or the most explosive part of a scene this may get to a full close-up of faces or perhaps a close-up insert of an important object.
This is done because the wider shots permit more of an "objective" perspective visually; you get a good idea of action, positioning, movement. Closer shots permit you to see small details and hence emotions when framing a human face. At the end of the day all of the shot size descriptions are from the perspective of a human face.
Then once the tension is released, the tightness of the shots once again eases and we move back to Mediums or Wides until the scene ends and the cycle repeats.
How this applies to shooting documentary
The emotional elements of fiction filmmaking don't necessarily apply to documentary work, but the movement from contextualization to detail still does. Additionally, since people's expectations of film/video is built on the legacy of the continuity editing system, following it feels "right" to most audiences.
When you are shooting documentary you rarely always start from the wide, you might start from a medium or even a close-up. But if you get a tighter shot you like to start with, I encourage you to back up or zoom out and get some wider shots. This helps give you the bones for a montage.
The 30° Rule
In a classic sense
The 30° rule is dummy simple.
To avoid jump-cuts, always vary your shot angle by at least 30°.
This is referring to horizontal angles rather than vertical, pan rather than tilt as they say.
You accomplish this by moving your position with your camera to the left or the right of your first position while maintaining a lock on your subject. By changing the angle by that minimum of 30° the audience doesn't perceive a jump-cut or obvious break in continuity.
How this applies to shooting documentary
Simply put: change positions. Even if you have a zoom lens, which you may not, move around change your angle. This will allow you to cut multiple shots of the same thing together without visually jarring your audience.
This is true even if you aren't shooting a single person. If you are documenting a location, finding different perspectives, different angles on it will be much more interesting and cut much better.
The 180° Rule
In a classic sense
This can be a bit tricky to grasp at first, but is also fundamentally simple.
Imagine an invisible line dividing the space you are shooting, always shoot from the same side of that line.
Ok so what does that mean and what is that doing?
Like how the 30° Rule avoids jump cuts, the 180° rule avoids things switching sides of the screen, thereby disorienting the viewer. This is easiest to observe when shooting two people, like an interview.
Imagine the line goes through both of your subjects.
If you keep yourself and your camera on the line, or on the same side of the line, one of these characters will always be on the right and one always on the left. This helps the audience not feel disoriented and develop and understanding of space. If you shoot from the opposite side, they will flip which is disorienting.
Exceptions
Now an obvious exception to this is camera movement. If the camera moves continuously, breaking the line, the audience has the context needed to not be disoriented.
Additionally, if enough shots have progressed for the audience to have a solid idea of the space, you can break the line to intentionally jar the audience without necessarily disorienting them.
How this applies to documentary shooting
Obviously if you are shooting an interview this is very important, however it is also loosely useful when shooting a significant amount of b-roll in a location.
As you shoot, set yourself a line and try to shoot from that side of things. This will help all of your b-roll shots keep the same orientation, making them cut better.
If things change and there are important shots you can only get from the other side of the line, try to then make sure to get some more shot sizes from that side of the line. That way you have shots that will cut together from both orientations.
Composition Similarity (Guideline)
What is this?
Now while you want to vary things up, in terms of angles and frame size, it can be useful to keep things a bit more similar in terms of positioning within the frame.
An extremely simple version of this is center framing, whereby you place the point of interest of your shot in the center of the frame.
If you were to frame every shot of your film using center framing... well that could be very boring, but it would cut well in a sense. This is because from shot to shot the center of attention within the frame is the same.
At the cut between each shot in a film, the center of attention for the audience shifts. In a practical physical way, this causes the audiences eyes to move in order to find the next point of interest.
If from one shot to another the center of attention is clear and in close proximity, this makes for an easy transition for the viewer. They lock back in quickly.
If however, the center of attention moves from one side of the screen to the other, the audience goes from look at something intently to looking at nothing. (This is minorly jarring) They must then start to move their eyes to hunt for the next center of attention.
This can be interesting in encouraging them to explore a complex shot with a longer duration. In a tense dialogue scene making the audience move repeatedly from hard left to hard right of the frame when doing shot reverse shot can create a "tennis match" effect for instance.
But if the audience does not find the center of attention before the next cut, they will be jarred twice. Repeated over multiple shots in succession this will irritate an audience quickly.
So in the example above from "Beautiful Alchemy" I start in the center, move to shots that are framed more on the left side, return to center and then introduce shots more framed to the right. This keeps the jumps in center of attention small from shot to shot, and even keeps the final cut which breaks the 180 degree rule from being jarring fro the audience.
How this applies to documentary filmmaking
When you are shooting, try to use similar framing techniques like the Rule of Thirds and Center Framing rather than extreme compositions so that when you go to edit, your audiences center of attention is not whipping all over the frame.
Movement Similarity (Guideline)
What is this?
When shooting documentary, camera movement can be a really engaging and frankly fun part of the work. Being able to cover multiple details with a pan or a tilt, to reveal things through movement. Or while not strictly speaking "movement", smooth zooms also fall into this category.
However, these kinds of movement can also be tricky to integrate into a final edit with still shots. They can be easier to integrate however, if we focus on their similarities.
How this applies to documentary filmmaking
When you are shooting in a given location, try to follow the rules below.
Keep your pans and tilts relatively consistent in terms of speed.
Or else do a couple at different speeds.
Keep your pans moving in the same direction.
Always start and end with a couple seconds of stillness.
And try to start the motion smoothly.
We'll expand on these in sequence.
By keeping your pans relatively consistent in speed, it becomes possible to cut between them in the middle of movement. A big struggle with camera movement is that you often have to go from the start of a movement to the end before you can cut to something else in the edit, making them less flexible. Cutting between different pans of the same subject is a bit of an advanced cheat for this, but it works best when both pans are relatively similar in speed.
Alternatively, if you do a fast pan, a slow pan and one in the middle, then in post you can just use the one that fits best.
Next, if you cut between pans, as suggested above, they will need to be moving the same direction, otherwise they are very jarring. This also applies if you use multiple full (start to finish) pan movements in the same montage, less jarring that cutting between them, but still jarring. So if you try to keep all your pans moving left to right, or right to left, that can help.
Lastly, when editing between moving and still shots, you ideally want the moving shot to "start moving" rather than starting "in movement." So when you want to do pans or other movements, try to wait a second or two before you start and after you end the motion to give yourself room to edit.
Conclusion
Keeping track of all five of these is certainly a bit more advanced, but if you can at least keep track of the first three, you'll be making your life a lot easier in post. Especially if you are also shooting for the sequence, as discussed in another article.
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