Continuity 101

There are an awful lot of books out there about filmmaking. And very few about Continuity (which some might say explains a lot…).

Below is my small Script Supervisor’s library. I don’t know of any other Continuity books in print – if you do, then please let me know because I’d love to read them.

For all the books below, I have included links to both amazon.com (the US site) and amazon.co.uk (the UK site), as prices vary and sometimes one is considerably cheaper than the other. Both are a lot cheaper than trying to buy any of these books in Australia (which you mostly can’t anyway).

A note if you’re looking at the UK site and don’t live in the UK – the prices quoted include VAT (the British version of GST/Sales Tax) at 17.5%. Which you don’t pay if your books are being shipped to a non-UK address. That’s a fairly hefty portion of the cost, and more than covers international postage charges, but the 17.5% won’t be deducted until the final stage of placing your order.

The prices on the US site don’t include sales tax, so what you see is what you pay, plus postage.

The Scripty’s Bible. If you only own one book about Continuity, then it should be this one.

In fact, this should be required reading for anyone involved in any aspect of making film or television drama.

‘Nuff said.

This one’s British rather than American. It’s a much slighter and more basic book than Pat Miller’s, and a fair bit of it isn’t really about the Continuity Supervisor at all, but about working as a Production Assistant or Production Coordinator (the average Continuity Supervisor doesn’t generally look at insurance or catering…). Still very informative though, and most of it does stick to the title.^[1] Covers some of post-production as well, plus a little bit on doing Continuity on documentary productions and the like.

The most useful thing I picked up from this was my habit of lettering each dialogue line A-Z (and then AA-AZ and so on), which you can see on the Marked-Up Script excerpts over in my Samples section. The US system (primarily for television shows) is to number each dialogue line for reference, but I prefer the letters when using consecutive slating as it is much clearer that you’re talking about a script reference rather than a scene or shot or take.^[2] I have extended the system to letter each action point as well as each dialogue line, which has been well-received by editors. It works particularly well with action scenes.

1. An earlier edition (this is the fourth) was titled Continuity in Film and Video: Handbook for Directors, Script Supervisors and PAs, which makes it a little more understandable. [↩︎]
2. Consecutive Slating is when the first shot of a shoot is Shot 1, the next is Shot 2, all the way up the final Shot 786 or whatever on the last day. The Scene Number can be added to the slate, or the Script Supervisor simply keeps track of what shot corresponds to what scene (which is our job anyway). This is the system usually used in Australia and the UK.
   American Slating is when shots are named by scene. The first shot of Scene 6 will be 6, then 6A, then 6B, all the way to 6Z and starting again at 6AA if required. This is marked on the slate as the Scene. In this case, numbering rather than lettering the script makes more sense as otherwise the script references could be confused with the Scene/Shot. [↩︎]

Yes, this book is from 1965, and yes, it’s still entirely valid (which is why it’s never gone out of print).^[1]

Continuity is the second C – and to quote directly from the introduction to the relevant chapter:

"It is the continuous aspect of a motion picture; it is Continuity that decides success or failure of the production."[2]

Mr. Mascelli’s italics. And a paragraph further on:

"A picture with faulty continuity is unacceptable, because it distracts rather than attracts."

Indeed.

And since you’re wondering, the other four Cs are Camera Angles, Cutting, Close-Ups and Composition.

1. And yes, the author was the cinematographer on 1964’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Filmed in Terrorama no less. But he was in good company – his camera crew were Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács. [↩︎]
2. I know he's talking about Continuity the concept rather than Continuity the person - i.e. me - but all the same Joseph V. Mascelli is close to my heart for this. [↩︎]

This one is not for the faint-hearted. Essentially, it attempts to show you every possible valid way of positioning and moving actors and camera to capture a shot. Yes, really. Hence the title – it’s providing the “rules of grammar” for film. So after the introductory chapters establishing the basic rules, you’ll get a chapter on shooting two-player dialogue, then one on three-player dialogue, then one on four-or-more, then on interior moves, then external moves and so on. And no, it’s not an easy read. But if you think this sort of thing is far too dry and theoretical and stifles the creativity needed to make great art on film, then you should stick to your home video.

It’s also the only book I’ve ever read (fiction or non) to come out of Uruguay.

And on the plus side, there are diagrams throughout demonstrating every point. The book was however originally written in 1976, so all the male actors in the diagrams wear sunglasses, polar necks and shaggy hairstyles, while the female actors… well, not much at all generally. These do at least provide some light relief, and you can always distract yourself trying to imagine what the hell the plots for these films could possibly have been (my favourite is the one on page 532, which I’m fairly sure is about to involve human sacrifice).