Continuity Editing is mainly used for Hollywood films and TV programmes. It is used to make the film edits as invisible as possible, so the audience forget they are watching a TV show and instead get more involved with the story to make the experience more enjoyable. The viewer should not notice the cuts, and the shots should flow together naturally so the sequence of shots should appear to be continuous.
The key editing techniques used in order to achieve this are:
Match on action cut- This technique occurs when two pieces of footage of the same event but filmed or framed in different ways are edited together to make them appear continuous.
180 degree rule- When two characters are facing each other they must never appear in the same half of the frame. Each time the camera cuts they must remain in their half of the frame otherwise the spatial continuity of the scene will be broken and the audience will be aware of the constructed nature of the text.
Eye-line match- Another technique is to be aware of the eye-line match. Where footage is matched to the eye line of the characters so their conversation looks realistic.
