Hi all!!!
Today I will be looking into the importance of continuity in filmmaking and continuity errors made in the newly released Bollywood film Gehraiyaan.
What is Continuity in filmmaking and why is it important?
“Continuity is the principle of making sure that all details in a film or TV show are consistent from shot to shot and from scene to scene” (Masterclass, 2021).
Film scenes that appear seamless between shots and angles allows the audience to get immersed into the story. On the other hand, if the scenes are not seamless, viewers can be distracted with their focus on the inconsistencies of the scene rather than the dialogues and the main plot. This I have experienced many times recently, when I could clearly see one shot not matching the other. This would cringe me out a lot!!! 😤
Gehraiyaan film & its Continuity
*Warning Film Spoilers Ahead*
This week I watched Gehraiyaan film , which had an interesting storyline, with very good use of sound, lighting plus good acting – overall was a good watch in my opinion.
So what was technically wrong with this movie?? It was the continuity, aka seamless transition between scenes where a lot of flaws were identified ….. and it is this part that I cringed on!!! Let me explain what I saw….
In scene 1 above, the sound and lighting flows very well from one shot to another. But the acting does not follow the same seamlessness. As the POV (point of view) shots change from Tia (Ananya) to Alisha (Deepika), where Tia questions Alisha’s relationship with her father, Alisha’s arm positions change with each different shot. In one shot Alisha’s left arm is on the rail, and in the next the same arm is down, then back again on the rail in the following shot. This annoyed me a little, but since it is blurred on the OS (over the shoulder) shot from Alisha’s POV, the film can almost get away with this flaw – I myself didn’t notice initially, and it only stood out in the second viewing when I could focus more on the technical aspects and not the story.
The more obvious scene with continuity errors with acting is scene 2 above. In this scene (towards the end of the film), Jitesh (Rajat) and Alisha are in a tense conversation around the consequences of Alisha revealing her affair with Zayn (Siddhant) and the cause of his death. In the first six seconds of the clip we see Jitesh’s head facing straight ahead, and in the next shot his head has already turned to face Alisha. From 00:09 to 00:12, we see different shots of Alisha breaking down but they don’t seem to be continuous. Below in shot 1, she is trembling and looking down but in Shot 2 she looks ahead and has no sign of trembling, then in shot 3 she continues her trembling and breaking down. I think if we wanted to keep this shot continuous then it would have been best to take out the second shot until there was a similar action to change the current shot to keep the story going. There is also more parts in this scene that lacks continuity but this was just an entree into understanding its importance.
My Thoughts
I loved the story, acting, cinematography and the visuals of this film, but I think if we want to immerse ourselves into the realism of its story, then continuity is something that needs to be taken into greater consideration.
Yes I am a film student and still got lots to learn about filmmaking, but what I wrote about continuity was based on what I learnt from early last year in one of my film units. In my last short film group project, I learned about some of the roles that people take on when making a film and one of them was continuity. At first, our group didn’t put much thought into it, but once we gathered the clips and started editing the draft version, we had difficulty matching up some of the shots for our film, which jarred our story a lot. There were continuity errors in the lighting, shoot timings and acting. It was during this post-production stage that we regretted not putting much consideration towards the continuity of our story and shots.
In such a collaborative, artistic and technical form of entertainment, continuity is equally as important as the many other roles that is known in the world of filmmaking.