JD Photography

One of the things I enjoy most out of video editing is making a sequence. Taking the various angles and takes from the video shoot and making a cohesive story is thrilling. It seems as though only the editor knows how much work goes into making something that could be boring come alive.

Tom Schroeppel writes in his book, The Bare Bone Camera Course for Film and Video, “To break up one long scene into several shorter scenes. This makes the story more interesting for your viewers. It also gives us the opportunity, in editing, to vary the length and emphasis of the story as we desire.”

Now, this is often easier said than done. Hollywood, with all their money to make quality productions will still make mistakes.

As you can see, it’s easy to make mistakes in continuity, but that’s not a good excuse. Attention to detail is critical onset and in post production to ensure accuracy of sequences.

It doesn’t have to be a major Hollywood blockbuster. This short sequence shows that actor walking up stairs and his movements throughout keep him moving in the proper direction.

That leads to another point when editing a sequence, maintaining screen direction and not crossing the line.
Screen direction is simply the direction people or things face on camera.
Crossing the line means you’ve reversed the screen direction of the subject in a scene.

It makes the scene hard to follow and distracts from the story trying to be told. There are ways to break the 180 rule and ways to bend the rule, and this wasn’t it.

Heat has some of the best examples to pull from when learning about visual storytelling.

Now, I went back and forth on what I should do for a sequence. I thought of doing a manicure, or a make-up session. I opted instead for a good old fashioned breakfast. Scrambled eggs.

There are some continuity errors with dishes and utensils in the background. What an exercise like this does is give you the appreciation for how hard a job continuity is on a big set. But its still fun to spot them when they happen.