Pictorial Continuity

The proper development and connection of motion sequences to create a smoothly joined, coherent motion story

Sequence

Series of related shots Simple Sequence

Long shot Medium shot Close-up

Reestablishing Shot

Pull back Pan Reverse angle

Overlap & Matching Action

Reshoot the action that has taken place at the end of the previous shot

Those shots can then be cut together in the editing process

Cut-ins & Cut-aways

Cut-in cuts into the main action, to something already on the screen

Cut-away cuts away to a related subject or separate action that is going on at the same time

Head-on & tail-away

General rule

When shooting a new shot, change the size of the image or change the angle or both

Covers jumpy action by changing the audience’s frame of reference

Camera angles

Variation brings drama and excitement to the action

Low angle High angle Dutch angle Side angle

Panning

Panning requires steadiness of stance, keeping the camera level, moving it smoothly, evenly and slowly.

A pan is usually made from left to right, a "tilt" from bottom to top.

Hold the camera steady for a moment before beginning and after ending a pan.

If the action is not to be followed through, let it go cleanly out of the frame before stopping the camera. (Clean exit)

Panning

Avoid switching from an action pan to a still scene.

Avoid whitewashing. Do not pan merely to avoid moving back far

enough to get all the subject in the frame with a single long shot.

A pan is rarely indispensable to a picture and a bad pan is much worse than no pan at all.

Avoid panning unless following action.

Moving shots

Pan Tilt Dolly Truck Arc Zoom

don’t unless there is not alternative

Zoom or Dolly?

Varying the focal length of a zoom lens changes more than just the size of the image on the camera target, or CCD.

Three other things are also affected: the apparent distance between objects in

the scene the relative size of objects at different

distances the apparent speed of objects moving

toward or away from the camera