| Film Fanatic May 2003
Suspending Disbelief: Part Two
I typically watch a film a minimum of three times:
once for enjoyment, once to study its technical aspects, and once to figure out if the
film is still interesting. If I watch a film only once, it’s because I did not get
lost in its illusion. As I said last month, it’s an audience’s job to get lost
in a film’s illusion, not to pick it apart. Once an audience starts picking a film
apart it fails to suspend disbelief. In many cases the fault lies in a poor story or bad
acting. In other cases continuity errors occur from frame to frame, which compromise the
illusion.
There are thousands of technical errors that can crop up
with a film’s continuity, everything from a character’s hair changing between
shots to fall foliage appearing during a scene set in the spring. Continuity includes
every detail in the frames that come together to create the illusion of a filmed story.
Websites and other publications have documented continuity errors that have appeared
across the history of film. What I’m here to do is give you a couple of examples of
some basic continuity errors, so you will have an idea of what to look for the next time
you watch a film.
Story and acting problems, like those discussed last month,
usually hit an audience square in the face. Technical problems are subtler and more
subconsciously jarring. In small doses they are usually not fatal to a film’s
illusion. Like that nagging feeling you get when you forget to turn off the oven, a
continuity error indicates, in one’s subconscious, that something isn’t quite
right. Slight technical errors don’t usually pop-out unless you’re actively
looking for them. Small ones occur and disappear within a fraction of a second, while
larger errors stay in the frame for entire scenes. In some cases the error may be outside
the action of a scene. In other cases the director may have shot enough coverage so that
the editor can "edit around" the problem by using a different shot. Filmmakers
will re-shoot scenes with large errors, but often a film’s budget precludes a second
chance, so those errors end up in the final version of the film.
It’s all about consistency
The logistics of putting scenes together require that
details related to props, camera movements, and actors’ gestures remain consistent
from scene to scene. Details can be something as small as the amount of ash on a
cigarette, the expression on someone’s face, the position of someone’s hand
relative to a glass on a table, or the model of automobile being used. Lose track of these
details and a film’s continuity, or the natural flow of the filmed images, will
breakdown.
Say a master shot was taken where the camera was setup at 6
o’clock and an actor was moving from screen-left to screen-right. Through the
camera’s eye the actor would enter from the left side of the frame then move out of
the right side of the frame. Now what if the camera was repositioned at 12 o’clock
and the actor repeated the same motion? Looking through the lens the actor would look as
if he was moving in the opposite direction (from the right side to the left side of the
frame). If those two separate shots were edited together the effect would be jarring
because the actor would look as if he suddenly changed direction without a reason. Cutting
in the middle of action like this is commonly referred to as a "jump cut," or an
edit that breaks up the natural flow of action within a scene. Without visually explaining
why the action changed direction (in this case maybe a bird’s eye shot of the actor
spinning around sandwiched between the two shots), the audience’s point of reference
is compromised. As a result the audience is jolted out of the illusion, which requires
that they reconnect with the film, and its story.
Charisma and story can compensate
An example of this form of truncated motion
is in The Godfather: Part III where Michael collapses after realizing he’s
being pulled "back in." The Don’s breakdown seamlessly moves from the
Corleone’s kitchen to the adjoining pantry, but the action makes a jarring four-foot
jump as he shouts his dead brother Fredo’s name before finally falling to the floor.
Only director Francis Ford Coppola knows why the jump cut was necessary -- maybe it was
because of film-processing problems, or maybe the director failed to get adequate coverage
that day. Luckily Pacino’s bravura performance does enough to pull the
audience’s attention away from the glitch, and therefore lessens the jolt. This scene
also shows how charismatic acting can not only cover up problems with a story’s
internal logic, but also make technical errors less apparent.
But continuity errors don’t have to be time-based,
like a jump cut. They can also be related to props that mysteriously change from shot to
shot.
Take the end of Speed where Keanu Reeves realizes
the police stakeout of the trashcan holding the money has been compromised. As officer
Traven runs across the street a red car screeches to a stop. The scene cuts from Reeves
running at the camera to a reverse angle of the same shot after the red car stops. Look
closer and you’ll see what was once a red Ford Tempo turn into a red Mazda Protégé.
In this case the continuity error wasn’t as big a deal
(I didn’t pick up on it until I saw the film a second time). The forward momentum of
the scene, the attention of the audience on Reeves and the fact that both cars were the
same color, was enough to cover up the error. It may have been a case where the script
supervisor didn’t make note of the model of automobile, or the reverse shot was
re-shot months later and the same car wasn’t available. The audience might have
noticed if Reeves had run to the red car and jumped in, but the car was secondary to the
action in this sequence of shots. It all depends upon where the director decides to aim an
audience's attention.
Glitches like this do reveal the seams in filmmaking, but
like charismatic acting, a compelling story can help gloss over continuity errors.
When you watch a television show or film, pay close
attention to small details from shot to shot. If you start seeing differences in the
amount of liquid left in a glass as a character drinks from it, or a bleeding wound that
mysterious moves from cheek to cheek, you’ll know that an error was made. But be
careful because once you start seeing these errors, getting lost in the illusion may be
harder next time around. You’ll also realize that continuity errors are more common
than you may have thought.
Next month we’ll conclude our discussion about
suspension of disbelief with the most serious of filmmaking sins: the self-conscious
camera.
...Anthony Di Marco
anthony@hometheatersound.com |
