Continuity Editing Intro

This week in Media we began to look at creating our own piece of work called 'The Encounter'. We were given a brief which told us what our final outcome had to include. Some of the aspects were:

• a character has to open a door, cross a room and sit down on a chair opposite another character.
• Dialogue must be exchanged.
• The task must demonstrate knowledge and understanding of match on action, shot/reverse/shot and the 180-degree rule.
• Must be between 30 seconds and 1 minute long.

Once I was given the task me and my partner (Paman Uppal) had to think of a concept which could fit the given bullet points. We wanted a humorous idea so in the end decided on having a camp male manager of a fashion magazine interviewing a stereotypical farm girl. Within the interview he obliterates her and mocks her continuously. Our idea meets the brief as the brief wanted a character opening a door and exchanging dialogue with another character and an interview is a perfect example of this happening. The brief also said it should include the 180-degree rule which is easy to achieve in an interview environment-just stay on one side of the two actors. The brief also mentioned to film extra cutaways which we did do-mainly of the female actress to exaggerate her terrible outfit and makeup choice.

Explanation of 180-degree rule

I thought of the idea from Ugly Betty-I find this programme very funny and the actors in it are very comedic, I thought the idea of a sassy interviewer would be easy to achieve as I had the perfect actor in mind, my partner then helped me expand on the idea and create our second character Bailey (acted by Simran Mahil). The image of the male manager is inspired by Michael Urie who was in Ugly Betty. The female character is inspired partially from Ugly Betty and partially from a stereotypical farm girl.

Michael Urie

Farm girl inspiration for Bailey

Ugly Betty inspiration for Bailey

During this week at school we were also taught about match on action, shot/reverse/shot and the 180-degree rule so we were aware of what we had to do ourselves.

In one lesson we began to plan what each shot would include roughly on paper, we also focused on what type of shot we would want as different shots can connote different things. We carefully chose our shots, lighting (high key/lowkey and artificial/natural), angles (high angle/low angle), sound (SFX/music/dialogue) and timing. These are all very important as the choices we made will emphasise the comedic aura of the piece. 

We also had to pick people to be part of our work as actors and we chose Naveed Rahman and Simran Mahil who are friends of ours outside of class. We also discussed between us what costume and props we will be needed and have decided that the farm girl should wear a button up shirt, glasses and have pigtails. The fashion manager is going to be wearing many rings and maybe a bandanna in his hair to portray the look of a camp over the top 'fashionable' man. 

The last task we conducted was to create the storyboard, me and Paman split this job in half, she done shots 1-10 and I did 11-19, this was to spread the work evenly and so we both got practice with storyboarding. I think it was very simple and fun to do and is so useful when filming so we know exactly what to be doing all of the time. Below is the entire storyboard; the first three pages are Paman's and the following three are mine.

In the last shot of this page you can see that the eyes of Sam are a little above halfway-here we have kept to the 1/3 rule-this rule says that in all shots the eyes need to be one third from the top, this is to avoid confusion of age/height etc. So when we show Bailey we make sure her eyes are in the same place, this is done so people know that she is not a child-she is the same height which shows she is an adult too.

The transition used from the establishing shot to the close up of Sam is a fade, this makes it much smoother and also shows that there is a location change, it suggests that the next shot is now in the building which was previously shown. Putting the shot of the building and then going straight to an office suggests there is a connection between the two. The establishing shot also is a continuity technique, it establishes the place in which the action will take place.

A long shot has been used to show Bailey when she arrives into the room, this is useful as it shows her entire outfit and shows the audience why Sam has decided to mock her.

The effect of having a close up of Sam's rolling eyes focuses the audience on this one element, it is a sign that he is not impressed and adds a comedic affect as he is very sassy. 

Here the 180-degree rule has been shown, in all of the shots Sam is on the right, this is done to avoid confusion for the audience, if I moved to the other side then the audience would have got confused because it would have looked like they had moved when in reality they are stationary. 

The duration of the last shot is only 1 second as we feel that the quicker it is the funnier it will be, the audience are not expecting her to fall over so if we quickly flash this moment it will shock them and make them laugh.

I also made sure each character had the same approx amount of screen time, although we filmed many extra cutaways for Bailey as we wanted to focus on her appearance as it is the main reason she is mocked.

We also cut to Sam the most during the conversation-his perspective is privileged as he is the manager and we want to see his reaction to Bailey's outfit and actions, We aimed to have continuity in our work by having the 180-degree rule and match on action, this makes the piece flow a lot more and makes it easier on the eye for the audience, it makes it less rehearsed and allows it to make more sense. Continuity editing also creates realism, the edit in the match on action is invisible and not seen as much so actions feel real rather than constructed.

Example of match on action