Continuity Editing Research

As I have never done any work with video and this is the option I have decided to take for my coursework, I have decided to research in to some of the key words associated with the film task. I chose to do this because without knowing these key words I would not be able to create a good quality piece of work and therefore not reach the best grades. From doing this research I have learnt what the listed below editing techniques are and also how to use them effectively.

Continuity editing - Editing which is done to make one event follow on from another with a natural look. The audience shouldn't notice that the edit has been made.


Match on action - This is an editing technique where you switch from one shot to another, the second shot matches the first shot's action. A common example is where a character walks through a door, as seen on the embedded youtube video below.

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Shot reverse shot - A reverse shot is an editing technique where a character looks over at another character (second character not in shot) and then the second character is shown looking back at the first character. A good way of using this is during conversation of two people, where the camera goes from behind one character to the other. It shows the flow of conversation really well when used effectively.

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180º rule - When two or more characters are having a conversation the camera should stay on one side of an imaginary 180º line. This is so the two characters maintain the same left/right relationship, and if the camera crossed this line then the characters would reverse positions and it would become a reverse angle shot.

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