Continuity editing refers to arranging shots to suggest a progression of events and guide the audience through a story. It establishes temporal and spatial continuity through techniques like matching actions across cuts, following the 180-degree rule of camera placement, and using shot reverse shots or eyeline matches to make clear who characters are looking at. Graphic matching also helps smooth cuts by placing the focus in similar areas of subsequent shots. These techniques help audiences smoothly follow a narrative while breaks in continuity can create intended discomfort.

1. Editing Concepts & Techniques

2. Continuity editing

3. • Editing establishes the structure and content of the production, along
with the production's overall mood, intensity, and tempo.
• Continuity editing refers to arranging the sequence of shots to
suggest a progression of events.
• Continuity editing can be divided into two categories: temporal
continuity and spatial continuity. Within each category, Continuity
editing primarily suggests guiding an audience through a sequence of
events, and, in the process, showing them what they want to see
when they want to see it. The techniques therefore causing a
passage to be continuous, giving the viewer a concrete physical
narration to follow, or discontinuous, causing viewer disorientation,
pondering, or even subliminal interpretation or reaction, as in the
montage style. Overall, by the end, you've told a story or logically
traced a series of events to their conclusion.

4. 180 Degrees Rule

5. • In filmmaking, the 180-degree 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
• Another aspect of the 180 degree axis is that the closer to the axis the
camera is, the more the viewer's point of view resembles the characters,
and thus he feels with the character. This encourages the important
identification with the characters which viewers should feel.
• Crossing the 180 degree axis can be very confusing since
the directions established for the viewer is changed. An example of
this would be like watching a football game with the runner going to
the right and all of a sudden we cut to him running to the left. It
would make the viewer wonder if he was running the wrong way or
not.

6. Matching On Action

7. • Cutting on action or matching on action refers to film
editing and video editing techniques where the editor cuts from
one shot to another view that matches the first shot's action.
• Cutting on action gives the impression of continuity when
watching an edited film.
• By having an event commence in one shot to be further shown
of completed in the next, the editor is creating a visual bridge
distracting the audience from noticing the actual cut or
unfortunate error of continuity between the two shots.
• This technique is rather quite popular in today's day and age of
films yet it matters if the director has used this technique to its
full potential which is seen rarely, except for numerous movies
one film series for example is the “Die hard” series of films.

8. Shot Reverse Shot

9. Also known as the reverse angle shot, commonly used in close-
up dialogue scenes. The camera adopts the eyeline trajectory
of the interlocutor looking at the other person as she or he
speaks, then switches to the other person's position and does
the same.
This is a film technique where one character is shown looking at
another character (often off-screen), and then the other
character is shown looking back at the first character. Since
the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the
viewer assumes that they are looking at each other
Shot reverse shot is a feature of the "classical" Hollywood style
of continuity editing. It is an example of an eyeline match.

10. Eyeline Matching

11. A term used to point to the object continuity editing practice
ensuring the logic of the look or gaze. In other words, eyeline
matching is based on the belief in mainstream cinema that
when a character looks into off-screen space the spectator
expects to see what he or she is looking at. Thus there will be a
cut to show what is being looked at:
1. view
2. another character
3. Eyeline then refers to the trajectory of the looking eye. For
example, character A will look off-screen at character B. Cut to
character B, who-if she or he is in the same room and engaged
in an exchange either of glances or words with character A-will
return that look and so 'certify' that character A is indeed in the
space from which we first saw her or him look. This "stabilising"
is true in the other primary use of the eyeline match which is
the shot/reverse angle shot.

12. Graphic Matching

13. • Whenever your making a cut it is important to realize where
your viewers center of focus is on the previous shot. If
possible you want the focus of the next shot to be in a similar
place.
• Alternatively, if you want to cause an uncomfortable feeling to
your audience or jar them on a cut you simply have to make
sure that the images don't match graphically.