Analysis of my first Continuity Sequence (for Sean)

Our video begins immediately with the first, establishing shot, without a fade up to it. This is a medium-long shot of the person in grey walking up to the door, which last for around 9 seconds; this lasts for too long and could be improved by being shortened, specifically by adding in a cut to a new shot from a different angle showing the other character in blue approach the door for example.

The shot ends with the door being opened, which leads into the second shot with a match-cut-on-action of the door being opened from the outside perspective, with a slightly out of focus and overexposed shot - something which should of course be improved for future. A slight low-angle is used here, and continues quite smoothly from the shot before it in terms of continuity. At the end of this part, the character in grey is grabbed by the shoulders and turns around to the one in blue who did it.

The intent of this part of the video included the person in grey turning and hitting the one in the blue, with this shot leading into the next one with the turn and the action of punching. However, during filming, the actor of the person in grey turned and punched opposite ways in each shot without realizing, as well as also having their arm on the door in one but not the next, causing them to lead into another very suddenly due to a jarring cut used in post as an attempt to show less continuity errors, with no techniques similar to the ones previously mentioned used well. The shot of the beginning of the punch is an over-the-shoulder shot of the person in grey.

This then cuts to a match-on-action of the punch in a reverse-shot, showing it make contact and the immediate physical response to it. The shot does not last very long at all and ends a bit too fast, with the next shot following quickly after;

Using shot/reverse-shot again, the response from the guy in blue to being punched is continued using match-on-action again from the previous shot, with a full fight breaking out between the two immediately after. However, the fight being performed was not choreographed, leading to continuity of the fight between shots being a lot harder to pull off well and make to look smooth because of this. For fight scenes like this one in pieces of media, it is extremely important to always choreograph them specifically before recording in order to have well done continuity, as opposed to them being random like this one and completely messing it up.

Despite this, another match-cut-on-action is used to cut to the fight continuing with the camera being located with them inside the hallway. In the shot before this one, the character-in-grey's back is towards the door, which is the same in the beginning frame of this following shot, meaning that the continuity between is pretty good, while definitely not perfect.

Following this shot, which last a little under 4 seconds, the video cuts to the guy in blue holding the one in grey up against the wall. While the shot before this does show the person in grey pushed almost out of frame to the left, these two shots do not continue into each other well. If the person in blue was seen grabbing the one in grey like this in the shot beforehand, then it would work a little better.

Following a short clip of this happening, the next shot is with the exact same camera angle, distance and shot type, with the only difference being that the footage is zoomed in a little bit more. This is a needless cut and ideally should not be used in future, with the only reason it is there being because it is the same piece of footage but I decided to edit it this way in post as to not keep the clip going on for too long and getting boring - however, now I know not to do needless edits like this in future.

Ending the shot, a fade down is used after the character in grey has fell down out of frame. A couple seconds later, the next shot is introduced with by fading in, until ending with another fade down once the character in grey has been dragged out of the left of the frame. Fade ups and downs have been used to reflect and portray to the viewer the fact that the character has passed out and a bit of time has been passed between shots. This shot was filmed with the camera being handheld as opposed to being on the tripod like for the rest of the shots, but is not framed well at all; the idea was to have it as a slight higher-angle shot looking down at the character, but was not pulled off very well in the end product. Throughout the full video though, it's notable to mention that the 180 degree rule is followed with no breaking of it evident.

In conclusion, the overall continuity of this sequence was not great. Despite the fact that there were a few shots that lead into each other nicely and did have a good continuity flow to them, most of the shots were either too fast paced or vice versa, with unplanned action leading to shots that did not link perfectly to each other among other similar issues that all together made the clips continuity suffer.