Original subtitles

Take a look at this scene...

( Oh my... )

( Oh my... god! ) Notice anything? If you did, good for you.

You have a very keen eye. I cut that

scene and I probably watched it more

than a hundred times, often sitting with

the director together, and I never

noticed the mistake.

And then one day, I happened to stop

right at this frame and it hit me.

I asked mark: Did you notice anything? But

he didn't. Mark is wearing no jacket and

now he's wearing a jacket.

This is a failure of continuity editing.

( Thank you. )

Continuity editing is the process of

combining more or less related shots so

as to direct the viewers attention to a

pre-existing consistency of story across

both time and physical location. And here,

we're breaking that rule. Clearly when

you make a mistake like this it can

really hurt the success of a film.

Did you see it? How about this one?

It seems that continuity gaffes are rampant

in film. ( If you watch closely during the

scene with the Velociraptor you may

notice an out-of-place hand. ) ( In the first

Pirates of the Caribbean you can

clearly see a crewmember over jack

sparrow's shoulder. ) ( Predictable damage ensues.

But seconds later that same

windshield is seen in perfect condition. )

And many are not shy to make fun of the

filmmakers. ( And how this floating broom

pantomime made it into the finished film

is anyone's guess. ) ( Let's just enjoy that special

star wars moments again. ) ( We're just saying that

some script supervisors or editors could

have done their jobs just a teeny bit

better. )

Should we put the blame on the script

supervisor onset or later, the editor who

for some reason or another did not cut it

correctly,

like I did? And then how do some of the

greats feel about continuity errors.

Thelma Schoonmaker,the iconic editor who

worked on many of Scorsese's films says in an

interview:

Martin Hunter, the editor for Stanley

Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket says: There's

a cut when the drill sergeant punches

Mathew Motley in the stomach and in one

shot he pulls back with his left hand

and in the cut he punches with his

right...

Walter Murch is so uninterested in

continuity editing he actually give it the

least priority in terms of when to

make a cut. He writes an ideal cut for me

is the one that satisfies the following

six criteria at once...

Emotion if the thing that you should try

to preserve at all costs. If you find you

have to sacrifice certain of those six

elements to make a cut, sacrifice your

way up from the bottom.

So three legendary editors, all don't

really care all that much about

continuity. Are they just full of it or is there

actually some science behind it?

Tim J Smith is a lecturer of

physiological sciences, Birkbeck

University of London, and he studies all

kinds of visual cognition. He did some

extensive tests with eye tracking, where he

traces the eye movement to find out

where audiences look and what they pay

attention to. Attentional Synchrony is where

the majority of viewers will have their

eyes focused in on the same element of

the screen. The number one predictor of

where most people are going to look in a

frame - or rather what they will pay

attention to - is whether there's a human

face in the shot. If it is science tells

us that all the attention is geared

towards that. And that's why so many

continuity problems go unnoticed.

It actually turns out that Hitchcock who,

is a master at composing shots, really understood this concept.

( I'm not required to answer this question? This is scary me. )

Humans study other human faces. When it

comes to still images we tend to look

at the eyes. When it comes to moving

images we tend to look around the nose

and move up and down between the mouth

and eyes, as we're trying to understand

what somebody is saying or the emotions

that their express. ( One question, short and sweet? )

( Where's my bed, what's better than that? )

I have to say, first-time filmmakers tend to

point out continuity errors and they're

very concerned about fixing these

problems - to the point where they're

willing to sacrifice the performance or

a moment.

So for example, in this scene Mark has to

wake his three-year-old son and move out

of the house because he can't afford the

rent anymore. And as he's walking down

the stairs a continuity error happens

( Baby Crying ) See it? You can see the camera. And we

could have decided to cut around it but

it would have broken this moment that

really played most powerful in real time.

So when does continuity matter? Pretty

much never. And if it does then maybe

there's something else wrong with the

scene. I asked you if you thought that

continuity is important and in a poll, the

majority pretty much better said that they

don't care as long as the scene works. But

Larry writes, i often noticed them.

Especially now that i'm studying

filmmaking. Burt says, I don't look for

them so if i end up noticing them they tend

to bother me. Steve says I have an error

that I actually find more interesting than an

actual flaw. In martin scorsese's

Shutter Island there's what i believe to

be an implied continuity error during the

interrogation scene. For me personally, I

think it was both Scoreses and Schoonmaker decision

to use it as a device to throw

the audience into a "nothing is as it seems"

state of mind. I hope you got a kick

out of this episode. Check out the video

description for more research on the

topic and hopefully, I'll see you see soon.

Thanks for watching.