The person responsible for continuity provides a complete, written document of the shooting. It should be a very detailed and accurate yet very concise work. By concise, I mean that while a two-page essay on each shot in a flowing literary style may be aesthetically pleasing it will be virtually useless as a working document, as no one will have the time to read it.
The document is of twofold use.
1. To the person doing continuity on location. As the material is shot out of sequence it is obviously necessary to have some record, built up over the shooting period, of what was actually shot in order to preserve continuity from one shot to another and from scene to scene, irrespective of the shooting order.
This means that the closest attention must be paid to every shot. A description of the shot, how it begins and ends, the relationship between the characters’ actions to the dialogue, the position of props – in fact, as much of what the camera sees as possible – must be written down for immediate and later reference.
You might be asked by the camera operator to note down certain technical information, such as the lens, the stop, distance and special filters. This would assist him to match shots or compose retakes.
2. To the editor. The editor will not want to know details of costume and props as such notes are of use only while shooting is still taking place. But the editor will be interested in the reference point for the shot – the slate number in film or the ‘in’ point of timecode in video – the shot description, the agreed take and, most especially, the reason why a take was considered NG.
The role of continuity ensures that when the finished material is assembled and finally shown it will flow in chronological order in a smooth way, and that continuity is preserved in action, sound, costume and props within each scene and from one scene to another.
Continuity Work
You provide a written record of the shooting. This document is built up while shooting takes place and is used as a reference. It is also of interest to the film or video editor for the technical information it contains.