Episode 2, Removing Dead Space and Pictorial Continuity

Hey everybody, Jonathan here from Glitz & Glam TV Productions, back again with another episode of the official Glitz & Glam TV Productions podcast!

In this episode I'm going to be talking about dead space and pictorial Continuity. Now, I'm sure most listening to this knows what dead space is, but if you're not a filmmaker, you might not be familiar with pictorial Continuity.

Let me first address dead space and then I'll show you why it closely relates to pictorial Continuity.

Dead space... it's a content killer. Whether you're shooting videos or recording podcasts, you want to avoid dead space as much as possible because it carries the potential of losing audience engagement. A good example of dead space would be someone taking long breaks between speaking and saying alot of "ummmms" and "buts" with pauses in between. A couple of "ums" here and there are passable but when it gets excessive it becomes a huge distraction and disrupts the viewer's attention and engagement.

These are moments in the video or audio that you want to trim up as much as possible to improve the flow of your production.

But just like with most things in the film and audio world, there are exceptions to just about everything and it requires YOUR discretion. When might it NOT be a good idea to turn your footage into swiss cheese by cutting out a lot of dead space?

I'm going to use an example from the channel I produce called "Rosie Revolution." I'm going to put it up on the screen and play it for you and then I'll be right back. Let's watch.

Okay so you might be thinking, why didnt he cut that part out? I wanted to and in fact, I believe I initially did. However, this is now where pictorial Continuity comes into play. Let me play this clip again, but this time I'm going to cut out the dead space. Let's watch.

So as you probably noticed, by cutting out that dead space, it made the transition very disorienting to the viewer because theres alot of movement going on in this scene. One minute Rosie is welcoming you into her home and then POOF she's on the other side of the room. This is why creator discretion is so crucial at times like this. Removing the dead space here would hurt the flow rather than help it because it breaks the pictorial Continuity.

So at this point I imagine pictorial Continuity is kinda self explanatory but basically all it is in a nutshell is the natural flow of a sequence of pictures or video. Filmmakers use this concept all of the time in movies, but its overlooked because it just makes sense. However, if pictorial Continuity is MISSING, you most certainly will miss it, whether the viewer knows what pictorial Continuity is or not. Why? Because lack of pictorial Continuity CONFUSES the audience.

Imagine your watching a movie. And in the movie, the actor says, I'm going to the museum. We could just cut right to the scene where they are in the museum, and in some cases that will work. But we could make the transition instead by showing a scene of them walking to the car. Followed up by an aerial shot of the car driving down the road. Followed up by an aerial shot of the museum and surrounding buildings. Then lastly an establishing shot of the outside of the museum at street level before cutting to the scene INSIDE the museum. This is one example of pictorial Continuity.

Keep in mind, all these scenes are just seconds long in order to tell the story on screen. We could've just jumped from one scene to the next, and as I said earlier, that is okay at times, however that can start to bore the audience. A sequence of events leading up to a scene can make things more interesting.

Okay, anyway, that's getting a bit of track now because this podcast isn't about filmmaking, rather just how pictorial Continuity can be affected by eliminating dead space. And I did mention a while back in another video that filmmaking principles can and should be applied to all avenues of video. This concept is definitely one of them.

So my final thoughts here as I close out this session is this. As an editor and content creator, always use your discretion when it comes to removing chunks of silence or dead space. Sure you'll eliminate the dead space, but play it back and ask yourself if it disrupts or confuses you. Pretend you're someone watching the video that knows nothing about you or the show. Would you be confused? Confusion and disorientation is BAD when it comes to video because it BREAKS viewer engagement. And that is something you NEVER want to happen.

I want to thank you for joining me today, and I hope you'll join me on the next episode.

If you haven't already, please like & subscribe and if you're a content creator or are interested in getting started, check out the link in the description for my community United Content Creators.

Until next time, enjoy, and never stop creating.