Rules of Continuity

Continuity
Continuity in filming, is a series of cutting and maintaining continuous and clear narrative action, by following a set of rules e.g 180 rule, Match Action, shot reverse shot and many more. The benefits of using these rules is that it has a more stable structure that looks more realistic, by breaking these rules your film/clip may look messy,unrealistic and can look quite confusing especially towards the audience.

180 Rule
The 180 rule is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. An imaginary line called the axis connects the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene, the first character is always frame right of the second character, who is then always frame left of the first character. the camera passing over the axis is called jumping the line or crossing the line, breaking the 180- degree rule by shooting on all sides is known as shooting in the round. Overall using the 180-degree makes the shot more realistic when editing it all together.

The clip below explains the rules of the 180 degree rule and tips that may help you when you film and you need to understand where the line axis is and what will happen if you break this rule and how unrealistic it can be.

Match shot
Match shot is a cutting on action or matching on action refers to a film editing techniques where the editor cuts from one shot to another view which matches with the first shot. For example someone walking up to the door and opening the door handle. It cuts from one shot to another demonstrating, its normally used by 2 camera but you can use it with one camera but it means you have to get the camera angles and the mese-en-sen the same in every shot you do and you would have to edit it and it takes much longer. In this clip it shows the match on action shot and the way the camera get close up and changes to another shot

Shot Reverse Shot

Shot reverse shot or other known as shot/counter shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character on and off screen and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. It is a shot which shows the character looking over the shoulder or in the point of view. Since the characters are shown facing in the opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other, the shot is followed by a reverse camera shot of the character themselves looking at it.The shots you should have for a basic shot reverse shot are two shots of the character usually in a wide, medium shot or an over the shoulder shot.

In the clip it shows how the shot reverse shot works as as the two characters are having a conversation and the camera films at each shoulder point so the audience can see that the two characters are looking at each other. This clip is useful as it shows how shot reverse shot are like in films