Continuity Editing

Today was a very useful lesson, because I learnt a lot more about editing. I learnt about continuity editing. In continuity editing, there are different types of key techniques. I thought the eyeline match shot is a very important and basic shot that everyone should know, because this shot is commonly used in many movies, in fact, each movie seem to have eyeline match shots. I also thought the Match on action cut is quite a cool technique because it flows to another shot without hesitating and this way the actor won’t actually have to do the complete action and risk a possibility of injuring him and herself. My favorite technique was Directional Continuity, meaning a character exists from the right of the screen, and he/she should enter the next shot from the left of the screen.
I realized how important editing is, because the techniques used really affects the way the story is presented, if the timing isn’t right, and then the audience might get the wrong idea. Therefore editing is the most significant part of the production of a movie.
In order to get familiar with continuity editing, we were given a class exercise. With the groups last exercise, we are to choose one script between the four choices and use the very few lines to create a storyline. Then after filming, we must use the editing key techniques we learnt this lesson to edit the film. Working with Bernice, Ashley, and Louise again, we picked script 4. We decided to focus on the match on action cut, when Louise is walking down to find me. Bernice was the cameraman while Ashley’s the sound person. We worked quite well together; we all had a lot of ideas which kept our options open. Our storyline is very simple therefore we really have to show how we feel by the tone of our voice. I thought we managed our time quite well as we had enough time to film all the shots we need, we tried to flow each shot to the next shot so that less editing of the lighting will be needed.
I thought our best shot when we film Louise walking down, because we shot a wide variety of shots of her walking down and it will let us easily show more editing skills. I gained a lot of new knowledge today’s lesson and I enjoyed it very much.