seamless

Seamless

When an editing style is referred to as classic Hollywood continuity editing it is because one of its principle aims is to make the mechanics of the editing process invisible to the viewer. These first elements synthesise and have a bearing on one another.

Good continuity editing shouldn’t draw attention to itself in any way. The viewers focus and attention should not be taken away from the action of the story. The aims of invisibility leads us to the term of reference ‘seamless’.

To be seamless, cuts should take on a n invisible quality about them, the viewer should not notice them.

To be seamless, continuity in terms of all elements of mise-en-scene and all elements of action in the frame should be preserved perfectly from one clip or taken to the next across the cut., this must be made sure of because if there are noticeable elements in one scene which are not included or featured in another, they will certainly go noticed by the audience as an obvious form of editing.

The script continuity supervisor –

Any mise-en-scene element such as the position of figure or object changing erroneously across a cut breaks continuity and leads to editing which is not seamless.

Any unit of action that doesn’t match properly across a cut also breaks continuity and this again leads to editing which is not seamless.

Breaking the 180 degree axis rule – or any of the associated rules – will also result in continuity issues and undermine the goal of invisible editing.

Continuity editing is the dominant style of film editing in the western world and most cinematic cultures around the rest of the globe.

Its purpose is to ‘smooth over the essential discontinuity of the process of editing and to establish a logical coherence between sequences and the constitutive shots from which they are composed.

The act of cutting represents a move-away from the real time action (detraction) from the continuous progress of a piece of action.

Removing or adding frames condenses or expands the time of the original action.

If we cut away from one angle to another there is a noticeable break from the continuous action of the first take to a new shot.

The task of the continuity editor is to reduce that noticeability, so that the viewer’s immersion in the story is undisturbed.

Continuity editing is a process which attempt to make deviations from the continuous real time action of a single stretch of footage as inconspicuous as possible.

Editors achieve logical coherence by cutting to continuity where the emphasis is on smooth transition of time and space.

Why is motivated used by editors? Because the story calls the shots – we then let the story remain the focus for the audience, rather than unimportant details.

In mainstream cinematic narratives, emphasis is out on the story being told in a logical and clear order.

Seamless editing helps and audience suspend its disbelief.

Motivational editing complements continuity editing allowing the story to dictate what the audience sees.