What Is Continuity Editing In Film? A Quick Rundown.

What is Continuity Editing in film definition examples featured image

Published: June 1, 2021 | Last Updated: November 22, 2024

Continuity editing definition and meaning

Continuity editing involves cutting the film so the audience doesn’t notice the edits. The goal is to help the audience disband any disbelief that might otherwise arise from editing. Continuity editing creates coherence through time and space (which is why it’s also called three-dimensional continuity) and keeps the audience immersed in the film’s fictional world (a.k.a. the movie’s diegesis).

The invisible cut

In continuity editing, the editor tries to create a seamless and natural flow between cuts, making them invisible to the audience.

The cuts can be between two different camera angles of a person in the same location and time, but they can also take us from one point in time and space to another without us even really noticing.

Techniques used to ensure continuity in editing

There are several ways continuity editing is achieved. However, the simple cut is the most dominant transition between the two frames.

The cut is sometimes softened with an audio J-cut or L-cut to smoothen the transition. Fades and crossfades are also used.

Other effective techniques include matching action (cutting on action) to create a seamless transition between two shots.

The most famous example of a match cut is probably this cut from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Talk about being transferred in time and space in a single cut:

It’s also important to follow the 180-degree rule and the 30-degree rule to avoid confusing the viewer—though there are exceptions to both.

Good continuity editing also traces characters’ eyes so that when a character looks at something, it feels natural that it’s the next object we cut to.

The same goes for when two (or more) characters are talking to each other. In that case, we must understand that the characters are looking at each other by establishing a good eyeline match, which again is helped by not breaking the 180-degree rule.

However, introducing flashy transitions always happens at the risk of removing the audience from the immersive experience of the movie.

Why does continuous editing work?

As Lev Kuleshov and Alfred Hitchcock discovered, the human imagination is excellent at stitching together – or filling in the gaps – between two frames.

Perhaps no one understands this better than comic book creators. Comic book authors are masters of telling stories with frames, seamlessly transporting the reader between locations in time and space.

In Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art (link to Amazon), the author Scott McCloud describes how we are masters at observing details but perceiving the whole, also known as closure.

With closure, we can create meaning from a simple symbol—like a stick figure of a man or a woman—that tells us whether we are about to enter the ladies’ or men’s room.

Closure also makes us automatically fill in the “gap” between two panels in a comic book. That cap can be a small move in time and space or take us to another planet and another time – just like a cut in a movie between two frames.

I highly recommend Understanding Comics by McCloud for anyone interested in storytelling. It’s a great study on using still frames to tell a story—and what a movie is, if not a continuous sequence of still frames.

The visible cut – or non-continuity editing

Continuity editing is the opposite of when the filmmaker tries to draw attention to the medium.

Fx when a director chooses to break the fourth wall and make an actor address the audience directly or when he/she chooses to use a fancy transition between two scenes that draws our attention.

In the opening monologue scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), you can see some great examples of both.

This example from Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) is another great example of how the director and editor draw attention to the film medium and surprise the audience.

In both examples above, our attention is drawn to the mechanics of the film medium because the director and editor intentionally wanted us to. I.e., the effects are used for comedic effects.

However, that is not always the case. Bad editing—like unintentionally breaking the 180-degree rule or 30-degree rule—can unintentionally draw our attention away from the story, making us confused, annoyed, or even uninterested in watching the rest of the movie.

Summing Up

Continuity editing is the invisible art of cutting a movie without not noticing the edits.

Continuity editing helps the audience remain immersed in the film’s fictional world by disbanding any disbelief that might otherwise arise from editing. Thus, it helps create a seemingly natural coherence through time and space.

Do you know of any great examples of continuity editing? Let us know in the comment section below.

Up Next: What is Kinetic Editing?

By Jan Sørup

Jan Sørup is a indie filmmaker, videographer and photographer from Denmark. He owns filmdaft.com and the Danish company Apertura, which produces video content for big companies in Denmark and Scandinavia. Jan has a background in music, has drawn webcomics, and is a former lecturer at the University of Copenhagen.

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