Film Directing 118: The Director and Continuity

LEVEL 100 blogs are for film students and first-time directors taking on the directing role for a short film. The series is designed to help and guide new filmmakers through the director’s prep duties, pre-production activities, and principle photography dynamics.

Embrace continuity and be a better director

It can be challenging to find people to work on your student or short indie film. I get it. When you’re crewing up for camera, lighting, sound, makeup, etc., the role of script continuity can be an afterthought.

However, I recommend you find someone to do script continuity on every film. Someone who is keenly interested in taking on the job.

It’s an important role in longer form television and feature productions. When you get onto a professional set, they will be at your side for every shot. Value the support they provide, and you will be a better director.

They are your best partner on set.

What does the script continuity person do?

Continuity performs a script timing for the producer and the director in pre-production. A script timing breaks down the script into timed estimates for each scene, as well as an overall total timing.

The script timing is one of the first documents you receive when you’re working in television. TV scripts are written for a designated length, so a producer does NOT want a half-hour show to come in short.

Let’s start here:

A great exercise for a learning director is to do your own script timing.

With a stopwatch in one hand and the script in the other, read the description and dialogue out loud – scene by scene. Walk around. Find the pace. Find the pauses. Make the timing notes for each scene with the energy and activity that you have pre-visualized.

Keep these notes in your director’s playbook.

When you get to set, these notes may be helpful. Particularly if you’re doing a scene in one shot. For example, if you do a take, and it runs over two minutes long, but your timing notes had it pegged at a minute and a half, then you can get the actors to adjust their performances, pick up their cues, and do another take to get closer to your original idea of the pace and energy of the scene.

The dynamics of doing a scene in one shot limit your choices in the editing room, so the choices for performance, pacing, and energy must be created on set.

The script continuity person is the principle note-keeper on set. Before a camera rolls, they liaise with the editor to establish a plan for organizing the shots with the camera slate info: Scene 1. Shot 2. Take 4. Or whatever. Editors love organization.

Since we’re shooting scenes out of chronological order, script continuity is the director’s second set of eyes – watching specifically for continuity details, correcting dialogue, and answering questions: was the briefcase in their right or left hand? On what line did they sit down? Were they wearing a hat before they entered?  

Continuity is also going to time each shot – from calling ‘roll camera’ to ‘cut’. In the days of shooting on film, this was essential to know if there’s enough film in the magazine for the director to get another take without running out. In digital, not so important. Maybe that’s the reason why continuity has fallen behind in film education?

If you can get a script continuity person on board – great! Ask them to give you their initial timing report. Scene-by-scene. And an overall time, as well.

Discussing their timing and putting it up against your own can be insightful. It may help you understand why script continuity is invaluable to the directing process.

During principle photography, continuity gathers the technical camera and sound information, along with a lot of administrative details, such as the crew call and crew wrap. These are the hours for which people will expect to be paid. That’s important producer info.

From a directing perspective, the continuity notes are the only ‘director’ notes that travel from set to the film processing lab to the editing room. In the days of shooting on film, directors would circle their preferred take(s) and only these would be printed and used in post-production. A huge cost savings for the producer.

For the learning digital film director, continuity can still circle the takes you like. If you circle take 3, the editor will know you liked it and use it in their assembly. It doesn’t mean you can’t change the take in the cut, but you may want to check why you preferred it in the first place.

Continuity is one of the 5 C’s of Cinematography.

Haven’t read the book yet? You don’t know what you’re missing. But if you don’t embrace ‘continuity’, you may find out how important it is the hard way – in post-production. And then it may be too late to save your film.

 Get your stopwatch!