Continuity Exercise - 'Mint'

   A group of colleagues and I made this short film to practice what we'd learned about preserving continuity in a moving image text. You can watch the finished product here - after the jump I'll go into more detail about the decisions we made and how that affected the outcome.

   The plotline, as you probably saw, involves a packet of mints and its journey across the hallway. We chose this sort of narrative as we decided it would present many opportunities for such continuity techniques as 'match on action' and 'eyeline match'. And that we certainly took advantage of - One particular moment that fellow editor Louie and myself were proud of was the part where Lucia passes the mints:

This cut looked near enough seamless, and complete with the rest of the group's feedback, really added to the flow of the piece. It looks authentic since, as a general rule, match-on-actions cut from a mid or long shot to a close up. As you can see from the thumbnail above, this is exactly what we did. We put effort into making sure that the image cuts at exactly the right time to make sure that the cut isn't too jarring. It's good to know that a lot of the time it's okay if the match backtracks slightly, as sometimes the action is too quick to have a sufficient half in each frame. 

There were a lot of match-on-actions in this piece here, as you can see here:

We also paid close attention to following the 180-degree rule when framing these shots. This rule is one of the more important ones to keep track of, as it can mean the difference between a good scene and a nonsensical one. What it entails is keeping the camera on one side of a conversation, making sure people's eyelines point toward each other, much like in Louie and Lucia's silent exchange at the beginning:

As you can see, even in separate shots the eyelines match. The viewer can easily tell that these two characters are looking at each other, even though they don't appear in frame at the same time. A good tip for filming something with the 180-degree rule when starting out is to film your actor/actresses against a wall or other surface, so there is an actual tangible 180-degree line that can't physically be crossed. 

In order for the audience to understand the geography of this starting scene, what we need to do is start with an establishing shot. This easily helps the viewer understand where everyone is in relation to each other and their environment and negates any possible confusion later on.

Here we can clearly see that Louie is on the left and Lucia is on the right. Now that the audience has seen this shot they are aware of how they are sitting in relation to each other. And, so long as we abide by the 180-degree rule, subsequent shots showing just one character are still easily understandable.

We use one moving shot throughout the piece, and this is the one where the mints roll along the floor. It's an effective use of the crabbing movement because since the camera follows it, the illusion is given that they travel much further than they actually did. This acts almost as a build up to a punchline, the punchline being that the mints didn't travel that far at all. It also serves to add some excitement and movement in an otherwise static and unmoving scene.

Not a lot can be said about lighting in this case, since a) we were focusing mainly on continuity for this exercise; and b) we were in an already lit corridor, so we were working mainly with ambient lighting. Since this is the case I can't make any comments on what it suggests; however if I were to film this again I might have used a reflector to get a more rounded light out on the subjects. 

We also used a shot-reverse-shot when Louie and Lucia were shaking their heads in dismay at the mints. This allowed us to easily and quickly see both characters' faces and their reactions, whilst also remaining subtle and not giving too much weight to their reactions with a close-up.

There are varying shot distances at play here, with a close up on the mints, an extreme close up on the bag, a long and mid shot on George as he picks up the mints.

An interesting thing happened while we were filming the scene at the door. In post it was noted that Lucia's clothing matched her environment and Louie's his.

As much as I'd like to admit that this was purposeful, and that it had some higher meaning that portrayed deep symbolism that attacks the nature of our very society, this was a total accident. We didn't even notice until we were editing the video. But it really helps tie the colours together in the video, and helps anchor each character in their respective corners.

Finally, the video ends with a slow fade to black. This is a classic ending tactic, going back to stage productions where the lights would fade after a performance. It classically ties things up and lets the viewer know that the video has ended without abruptly cutting them off.

I enjoyed working together as a group on this piece, I've found in the past with my own projects that it's sometimes difficult to get everyone on the same page but I was pleasantly surprised at how co-operative everyone was this time.