The Continuity System of Editing

The continuity system is about stopping your audience getting confused when editing.





The 180 degree rule suggests that a cameraman should not go past a line in the middle of the shot.




For example This shot of the walking dead shows that everyone is on one side of the camera. If the camera was to go the other side it wouldn't work because the characters would be the opposite side.

The shot reverse shot is a technique shown to show characters looking at each other or objects.
 For example this shot from the Wolf of Wall-street. It shows our two characters looking at each other and the camera will have a close up shot of one and then a close up shot of the other one.









An establishing shot, normally used at the start of a scene is used to establish where our characters are at the start of the scene.  For example this establishing shot of the walking dead.

This shot shows where our character is going and where he is positioned.





An eye-line match shows for example if a character is looking at a football the camera will then look at the football at a similar angle our character was looking at.

For example the film Rear Window from Alfred Hitchcock shows our man looking somewhere for the camera to then reveal its at a lady's legs.



A match on action portrays a character doing something in one shot and it carrying over to the next, for example if there was a long shot of someone going to pick up a cup of coffee it then could cut to a close up of my hand actually picking up the cup.