Continuity – getting it right
Continuity is often known as the hidden art, because if you get it right no-one notices a thing, but if you get it wrong, it can be a disaster. Most productions have a script supervisor on hand whose job is to pay attention to and attempt to maintain continuity across the chaotic and typically non-linear production shoot. In a feature film, they might shoot the exterior arrival shot on day one, but the matching interior walk-in shot only weeks later. For the audience there is no gap in time, every detail has to match. It doesn’t always work, though.
In Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man’s Chest, Orlando Bloom exits the water to check the Black Pearl, but in the next shot he enters the jungle with dry clothes. That’s a classic visual continuity error, the most common type.
Other errors take the form of story editing errors, where a character might be aware of something before it happens like in Saving Private Ryan where Miller suggests using the 60-ton tank, (a Tiger), as a roadblock before they know which tank is coming to attack them.
Another example is in Die Hard 4.0. When McClane first brings Farrell to the Cyber division, McClane has an actual cut over his eyebrow that he gets from a fight scene that was shot earlier but that appears later in the film.
In Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, there’s a scene in which she is trying on shoes. For a brief moment, among the beautifully ribboned satin pumps and hand-made designer shoes, you can see a pair of Converse All Stars. It looks like a mistake, a continuity error of the worst kind, but it’s not. It’s merely a nod to the audience, a little grace note from the director pointing to the fact that Marie-Antoinette is a typical teenage girl, regardless of what era she lived in.
The truth is, if you look closely you’ll see lots of mistakes, even in the best movies. But don’t get too carried away by it all, otherwise you’ll miss out on the story as a whole. And that would be the biggest mistake of all.
Shoot for the Heart 