Fuck-Up #33

“Continuity Isn’t as Important as Performance”

Why if continuity doesn’t match, performance doesn’t matter

 

“Good acting is consistency of performance.”3

—Jim Dale

 

The Fuck-Up…

It’s your perfect take. The actors are perfect, the light is perfect, the camera work is perfect. Everything is perfect, except in this one take, your star was holding her drink in a different hand than in any of the other shots it will need to cut together with. Guess what? Your perfect take is useless; the continuity error would be too jarring to the audience to use it.

Many people think dealing with continuity is monotonous and thus don’t want to bother with it. But without it, your movie will look amateurish or will simply appear to be a “bad movie.” ...

Get First-Time Filmmaker F*ck-ups now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.