Why They Just Don't Care About Continuity

Why one of the greatest film editors of all time does not care about continuity.

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[VasudevAnandcva]

People say Kubrick was a perfectionist, so all the continuity errors in his movies must be a hidden message or whatever. Kubrick wasn't that focused on continuity, he focused on the acting and cinematography. That's his perfectionism

[Bakedpotatomanforever]

Trying to find all the little things Thomas changes is so much fun

[LaurieTheberge]

As a script supervisor on sets, it is exactly my job to make sure these don’t happen while we film. But unfortunately I have no power in post-production, and even if the notes I write to the editor say that there’s an error in a take, the acting and pacing will always win over my continuity work! That’s life, and that’s film, it can’t be perfect all the time

[JDLaney-zkwb]

Can’t wait for his next video “In praise of visible boom mics.”

[ahaskarkarde]

This was fun seeing you playing with non-continuity editing by literally altering your surrounding and even your own appearance as the video progressed. Another gem of a video.

[akareject]

Excellent job maintaining one continuous voice throughout all of your scene changes. The objects in the background clearly changed, but your VO never felt disjointed. That is difficult to do and you executed it wonderfully!

[vinylarchaeologist]

As someone who works in film, I can tell you that these mistakes are seen, acknowledged, and addressed on set. However, we also know that the footage will be edited together by someone who hasn't been on set, and didn't get to hear all the discussion, so that he or she can edit the film based purely on emotional impact. So if a mistake slipped by in one take, they might opt for that instead of a later take where it's been corrected. Their decision.

[Mr_Case_Time]

My favorite use of purposeful continuity breaking is in the movie Snatch. It’s when Benicio Del Toro’s character is trying on different clothes while on the phone. Every time it would cut to the person on the other line and then cut back, he’d be wearing different clothes, as though he completely changed in half a second.

[briangonigal]

I remember when I first noticed that cigar discontinuity from Goodfellas I thought “whoa, that doesn’t match up”, but then as I began to pay attention to the cuts in that scene more closely I started to notice that NOTHING was really quite matching up. It was usually a lot more subtle, but Paul Sorveno’s position almost never really matched from cut to cut, and as it went on it started to feel less like a “mistake” and more like a deliberate aesthetic choice, one that called into question the time frame of what we were watching. By the end of the scene, I’d come to see it not as a straight forward real-time chronicle of a complete conversation, but something more like a montage of selected moments from a much longer, rambling, repetitive conversation, boiled down to the essential core moments that just magically seemed to have the flow of a real-time conversation. So maybe I wasn’t exactly sure just what they were doing, but I’d definitely come to the conclusion that it was fascinating rather than just sloppy.

[raidriarthegodking]

00:16 Hey, I saw that book disappear. Sneaky.

[GetSmartish]

A similar argument in popular music is constantly beaten over our heads. The concept of "pitchiness" has been exacerbated to the point of railroading performances into autotuned blandness rather than celebrating the heartfelt emotion that variations from tonality evoke.

[rjonas]

I think my favorite example of non-continuity editing is in The Social Network where they cut between depositions to connect different characters' accounts of events, even when they aren't in the room together to respond to each other directly. Another best editing Oscar there too!

[Brione]

Imagine being an actor and delivering the most raw emotional line delivery of your career. Then the director is like “We gotta redo it, your left thumb was in the wrong position!!!”
That’s why there are so many continuity errors: *they do not matter*

[potkettle]

The one where Thomas games his audience into watching 250% of the playtime minutes to spot all his hidden details.
Well played, good sir, well played.

[roel.vinckens]

Most of these make me smile when I notice them.
So did this vid.
Love how you break open the language of the art by going back to its beginning. Great job.

[cegalo]

Editor: How many continuity errors do you want?

Lars Von Trier: *Yes*

[charlieg]

Hey, wait a minute… wasn’t that thing just different a second ago?

[worldbfre]

This video made me realize that Continuity Editing is just another style of filmmaking, as opposed to the "correct" way of making movies. In another vein, think about the art styles we saw with paintings. Once artists got so technically advanced that they could depict scenes with near photo accuracy, we saw new styles emerge like impressionsim, expressionism, abstractionism. Art was no longer about depicting true accuracy in a literal sense but instead about conveying feelings and emotions.

[ddebnath]

My favourite both from Martin Scorsese: The Taxi Driver speech "you screwheads" where it cuts and begins again. and Shutter Island, the glass disappearing to symbolize Teddy's aversion to water (in the interrogation scene with the patients)

[waywardmind]

Oh my god. I thought I was going insane when you started to talk about the painting in the Wes Anderson shot, showing it briefly, and then cutting back to you speaking . . . and that very same painting was no longer on the wall behind you. ow my head