In the credits of any major feature film there will usually be one or more people listed under “continuity”. As I understand it, continuity people report to the script supervisor, and are responsible for keeping track of little scene details (the posture of actors, the location of props, hair and makeup styles, etc.) to make sure that they don’t conspicuously change from shot to shot and thus spoil the audience’s suspension of disbelief when the shots are edited together.
My question is, how does one get into such a line of work? Is this a job to which one is apprenticed? Or is continuity management a subject offered in theatre/drama degree programs? Or does the script supervisor just hire any old bums off the street to do the job? Or is “continuity person” not really a profession as such, but rather a role that other theatre professionals (set dressers, makeup artists) might take on from time to time according to the demands of a given production?
It’s really just an editor with a good memory and an eye for detail. Nobody much goes into the field to become a continuity editor. That’s just the job they get assigned to on the project.
I thought editors don’t get involved until after the movie has been shot. Or are they really on set the whole time to keep track of continuity for future reference?
The continuity editors see to it that the sequence of shots makes sense. That will be the job that someone is assigned to oversee, and those people are the continuity editors. Not every scene will involve continuity, though, so you might have another batch of people who oversee montages, for instance.
It’s just a branch of editing, and any competent editor will know various methods for preserving continuity when it’s required.
My understanding is that people often start out as general-purpose production assistants and then take an interest in something more specific, getting a more senior person to mentor them.
I’ve heard behind-the-scenes podcasts where they mention a specific person is great to have doing continuity, so I believe there are people who specialize in it.
Hah, I thought this was going to be the person whose job it is to prevent the Internet from blowing up with posts like: “In season 5 episode 16, occasional character X said he has a younger brother, but in Season 2 episode 9 he said he was the youngest in his family!”
So the script supervisor and all the people on set checking that hair, makeup, props, etc. match across shots are all trained editors? Or they’re just working for a trained editor? If the latter, then my question still stands: how does one get such a job?
That’s a good point. I assumed what the OP was asking about was the person who is in charge of continuity between takes, i.e. hair and clothes are the same, clocks haven’t moved, liquids in glasses aren’t going up and down, etc. But for TV there is continuity throughout the series as well. I assume those are two separate jobs?
I’ve always wanted a job as Continuity Maven, where I have complete carte blanche to wander the sets, talk to the actors and the director, and crew, and stop filming for any little detail.
There would have been no Starbucks cup in Game O’ Thrones if I were around.
I figure, I’m catching these mistakes for free, as pretty much a full-time job, so why not get paid for it?
Oh, and I’d also get to lurk in the editing room, too… oh, and the pitch meeting! I could head off a lot of problems right there!
In those cases, they are normally working for one of the editors. But many times, they actually are an editor or an assistant director who is just wearing more than one hat.
How to get a job in the movies is a complicated question. You probably need some film schooling, but that’s not an absolute requirement. For the jobs you listed, you will usually need experience 1) working on a film set and 2) overseeing something (anything) on a film set. Then you move up or sideways until you’re doing the thing that you like to do.
Having writing credits wouldn’t hurt. Having editing experience wouldn’t hurt. Working in wardrobe or makeup wouldn’t hurt.
On anything more complex than a Youtube cat video different parts of a continuous scene will be shot out of order, so there has to be a person who is tracking exactly what each character looks like at every specific point in the scene. It means making sure that the character’s shirt and blood splatters look the same when filming on set in Paris and in the studio in LA six month later.
It is mainly a wardrobe function and makeup function. They need to be the person who mainly makes sure there are seven copies of the character’s unique shirt in different states of meltdown to be used at the right time in the shoot.
Editors might come into it if a continuity mistake needs to be hidden.
There must sometimes be a lot for props people to do too, no? In action films you’ve got all those fights and explosions that leave broken furniture, damaged vehicles, bullet holes, and assorted debris that need to match up from shot to shot.
I should not have said ‘mainly’. Its probably the most evident to the viewer, but yes props are important, and also the technical aspects of filming, so that things like the height of the camera and lighting remains constant across days / months of different versions of the scene shot with different equipment, so that when they are cut together it looks like it was all shot in one take on one set.