Chapter 1 -  Pictorial Continuity:
The Simple Sequence

The Meaning of Continuity | Basic Elements of the Sequence | The Long Sot | The Medium Shot | The Close-up | Action - Not Posing! | Audience Reaction | Not by tin’Numbers | Summary

The Meaning Of Continuity

Most people who have pressed the button of either a still or movie camera appreciate the fact that a motion picture is only a series of still pictures in which the change between the frames is so slight that the illusion of motion is  gained.

But a good motion picture is more than just a series of an­imated snapshots. It hangs together, it tells a story smoothly, coherently, logically. The know-how of this is contained in the technique of pictorial continuity.

Pictorial continuity is a rather fancy term, but we like it, because it states so precisely what we're out to describe. The dictionary explains "continuity" as an "uninterrupted, close union of separate parts." Pictorial continuity, therefore, in a fully rounded definition, would be the proper development and connection of motion-picture sequences to create a smoothly joined, coherent motion-picture story.

Basic Elements Of The Sequence

Defining more closely, we use the dictionary description of a "sequence" as a "series of things following in a certain order or succession," and we therefore term our motion-pic­ture sequence a related series of shots. The sequence thus is a fundamental unit in pictorial continuity. And it has three simple basic elements: the long shot, the medium shot, and the closeup. We break down the sequence this way because all people view action in real life with their eyes in terms of long shot, medium shot, and close-up, even if they do not realize it.

Grasp these elements, and their correct logical use, and you have caught the basic idea. They arc elementary, but you can­not start without learning them. They are the abc's of contin­uity; the xyz's will come in due time.

The Long Shot

We say these elements are simple and that they correspond to the stages by which the human eye views action. Let's prove it by shooting a simple sequence.

We will use two admirable photographic instruments. First, we'll shoot with the greatest, most inimitable camera of them all—the human eye. Then we'll shoot the same action with a motion-picture camera.

Now for our action. We want something ordinal) and even-day, such as one person's visiting another. To bring it closer to home, we make it an event which has doubtless occurred in the lives of many of our readers—profitably, we trust, for some: a salesman's call on a prospective customer.

You cuter the door of Mr. Prospect's office. The scene is new to you, so you hesitate for an instant to orient yourself and to satisfy your curiosity. Your eye has automatically start­ed to shoot. In a split-second glance, it has swept the room, registering walls, ceiling, window, charts, desk, and most im­portant, Mr. Prospect seated at the telephone. Your eye, in short, has established the locale and your subject in it.

Now your camera must do for a movie audience what your eye did for you, so that what the audience sees on the screen will be what your eye has seen in real life, so that it will know without asking questions that it is looking at an office.

This first shot which establishes the scene is the long shot, the "LS."

Well, then, take it. Pick up your camera and guided b\ what your eye sees in the viewfinder, shoot.

Don't move your camera so fast! Shoot what your eye sees, but don't try to shoot it in the same way. There's no camera made that can imitate your eye in throwing a glance around the room with lightning speed. Try it with your camera and you'll have a weird, waving effect (blurred, too. if von do it hist enough) that will force your audience to shut its eyes be­cause it is so painful to look at.

Many an over-ambitious but under-experienced beginner has lost his audience by selling his photographic soul for a "flashy pan.   You can "pan" later—on the right occasion.

Right now. your LS can be taken from a nice, steady, sta­tionary position. From where you stand in the doorway, you are far enough back to take in your subject and a great deal of his surroundings—enough to establish the locale.

If you are fussy about composition, you can move back even more, and shoot the office interior with the doorway as a frame on either side. It won't be worth it. though it you cut off too much of the interior, or if your subject is so far away that he seems lost. It is, after all, his office; he dominates it. You don't want to suggest the reverse. This is just a simple home­made movie, not a deep,  dark psychological  drama.

By now, the long shot and its function should be well established in your mind. Co on into the office, with your eye again doing the shooting.

You and your eye want to get as close to your subject as you can. As you move in toward Mr. Prospect, your eye instantly, automatically, and continuously keeps readjusting itself to the changing perspective and proportions of the scene. It takes in increasingly more and more of Mr. Prospect, his face, hair, shoulders tie. shirt, the articles on his desk and less and less of the rest of his surroundings, such as the wall, the win­dow, and the body of the desk

This is the way you want it. After all, the vital part of the scene is Mr. Prospect, not his location. You want to cut out as much of the extraneous, distracting locale as you can, and come as close to his face as your eye, and politeness, will allow. This is your closeup, the heart of your picture.

The Medium Shot

But before discussing the closeup, we must look at the technique by which we duplicate the eye's transition from long shot to closeup with the camera. This brings forth the inevitable question. Why is a transition shot needed at all?

The argument is a follows: We say that the closeup is the heart of the picture. We take the LS, which no one disputes is essential for establishing the location of the scene. So, once the scene is established, why waste the audience's time and the photographer's film on a transition shot, why not go directly to the closeup?

It is a good question, but one which overlooks a vital factor. Never forget that your camera is mimicking the human eye. Suppose you were suddenly blindfolded as you stood at the door of Mr. Prospect's office; then his charming secretary took you by the hand, led you right up to him, and abruptly removed the blindfold so that you found yourself staring at Mr. Prospect within a foot of his face. What would your re­action be?

You would certainly be lost momentarily. The jump from the general long shot to the intimate, concentrated closeup would have been too much for the eye. Instinctively, it would seek to reorient itself by backing tip in order to place Mr. Prospect  in relation to his surroundings.

Now suppose an audience, looking at your film on the screen is suddenly confronted with that closeup after seeing the long shot. It cannot reorient itself outside the boundaries of the screen. Imagine how much greater the shock would be for it!

No, this great jump will not do. It is too abrupt. There must be a midway or transition shot—the medium shot.

What do you do then—mimic the eye as it moves from long shot to closeup by grinding away constantly with your camera as you move in on Mr. Prospect? That would be wasteful, tedi­ous, and give a very jumpy picture, unless you used a special device such as a "dolly" or a zoom lens. The "dolly" is a stable platform on wheels which keeps your camera steady as it moves. The zoom lens enables you to move in close on the subject without moving your camera. Not every cameraman is equipped with these devices. They are elaborate and expen­sive. They are certainly useful—ami we will discuss them at greater length later on—but they are not indispensable.

One stationary shot about midway will be perfectly adequ­ate. By moving closer to your subject, you eliminate a lot of background detail no longer of interest. What is more, your subject grows larger on the screen; interest is being concen­trated on him; and smoothly, naturally, unobtrusively, he is being built up for the ultimate closeup.

The medium shot, or "MS," is transition shot bridging the jump from long shot to closeup, and building up the subject.

Before proceeding, it is essential to clear up any uncertainty about just where to place the MS. We called it a midway shot. but that term, like so many others in motion-picture photo­graphy, is elastic. The medium shot does not have to be a mathematical half of the distance between long shot and closeup. It can be nearer either one. whichever serves the pur­pose better. It depends on the circumstances; long shot, med­ium shot, and closeup are all relative. Bear in mind only that you want your transition to be smooth, and your subject to be built up   gradually.

For the case in point, an MS taking in the top of Mr. Pro­spect's desk and a little of the background suits your purpose nicely. The desk is now not just another piece of furniture, but the main prop to set off—and focus attention on—Mr. Prospect.

The Closeup

It is the closeup, the "CU." to which the LS and MS, pro­perly executed, pave the way.

Your human eye, we noted, came as close to Mr. Prospect as it could. And that closeness created intimacy and warmth. Your eye's CU gratified a natural urge to see Mr. Prospect from a point where his facial expressions might be studied closely and in detail.

Thus when your camera takes its closeup. your audience will see Mr. Prospect's face, his head and shoulders filling tin-screen, his every expression vivid and alive. In the full mean­ing of the term, he will be "big as life." Certain things about him that might have been vague or lost to the audience in a long or medium shot, his prominent nose, his dapper mustache, his fancy tie. all elements of his personality,  will  now strike

the audience with great emphasis and clarity. It. too, will be face to face with Mr. Prospect ami he able to observe and re­spond to the play of emotion his face shows. The closeup is the most revealing, most expressive of motion-picture shots.

The use of the CU can be a great art; its mere introduction by David Wark Griffith revolutionized early film technique. So don't take it for granted, or dismiss it as obvious. It is obvi­ous enough when seen, but main years of movie-making passed before (Griffith first used it.

It is sadly neglected by the home movie cameraman today.

Action —Not Posing!

Then1 is a word we have used with great familiarity, a word describing something so inherent in motion-picture continu­ity, so much taken for granted, that it is often passed by with­out proper mention. The word is action. Let us hold onto it for a moment and give it due emphasis.

It is a characteristic of the animated-snapshot, pseudo-movie to have the subjects posing, doing nothing but obvious­ly aware of what is going on.

Now, pictorial continuity must create a motion-picture story. To achieve the effect of a story, get your subjects to do something; don't let them stand or sit stiffly and stare into the camera.

(The very bad thing about staring into the camera is that the audience immediate perceives that the actor is aware of the camera. This destroys that enjoyable illusion of being pri­vileged to peep into a scene wherein the players are unconscious of spectators; it destroys the scene's naturalness.)

Getting a subject to do something is very simple. Instead of leaving Mr. Prospect just sitting there, waiting to "nave his picture took, give him something to do. Have him use the phone, or write a note, or both. Even though he may sit mo­tionless as he listens intently to the phone, his attitude sug­gests action.

Giving your subject a natural action to perform relaxes him, diverts his attention from the camera, and makes the scene appear to be "stolen" directly from life.

Audience Reaction

It cannot be too stubbornly reiterated that the photo­grapher must enable his audience to see action on the screen the same way he sees it with his own eye. Always the camera­man must remember the screen's limitations, must remember that the audience is at the mercy of the screen. He must keep that audience at all times clearly informed of what is going on through what the film depicts. In other words, action should be self-explanatory. Sound and dialogue may be added as trim­mings, but never as necessities.

You cannot be too greatly preoccupied with audience reac­tion. If you are going to show your films to friends, neighbors. and relatives, to local camera clubs, you've got to be con­cerned with it. You must never assume that they will know the things you unconsciously take for granted.

If you plan to take pictures of Baby cavorting i" her play­pen win. you may ask. waste good film on long and medium shots to establish a room already familiar to you through a thousand comings and goings? Why not get to those closeups of Baby right away?

The friends you invite in to see your films, however, aren't familiar with that room. If you stick to closeups alone, your audience will be interrupting constantly to ask where various scenes were taken. And you'll have to establish the shots by saying: "Oh, that was taken in the bedroom ... That was taken in the living room ... That's in the upstairs hall...."

In addition, closeups in themselves will not do Baby justice Of course, you want to show off the baby's best points, but if you throw closeups at your audience before building up with establishing and medium shots. Uncle Hal and Neighbor Montgomery are going to get bored very quickly. It's too much of a good thing. Also, a succession of closeups destroys the effect of telling a motion picture story; it's too much like a series of still picture snapshots.

All the above arguments are so many unconvincing words when spoken to a photographer who isn't interested in show­ing his pictures to someone else. But there's a niche in the Smithsonian Institution for that rara avis. It's still empty.

Not By The Numbers

Granted, you may say, that the basic elements of the se­quence arc simple, fundamental, and necessary; nevertheless

isn't tin's one-two-three routine of LS. MS, and CU too regid. stiff, too much—as the army drill term puts it—"by the num­bers”?

It's a pertinent question. Hut that one-two-three pattern isn't inflexible. There can be lots of leeway in applying it, lots of room for imagination. The last thing in the world we want you to do is to shoot as a matter of mechanical routine. But you did have to learn to crawl before you walked, and you've got to learn your long shot, medium shot, and closeup procedure before going on into more complex phases of continuity.

Thus, as you read on, you will discover how to get all the flexibility you want into the simple sequence, through what you will learn about the varied technique of shooting and, ulti­mately, through what you will find out about cutting and edit­ing—that final assembling of your film, after it comes back developed and printed, in the exact length and order you desire.

We have been arbitrary in deciding on the order in which we will discuss the various phases of pictorial continuity, and we have had to be. For one authority will argue that study of the general rule should precede overlap, the next will state tin reverse, and a third will firmly declare that understanding of cut-ins and cut-aways should come before either. It is impos­sible to agree on the relative importance of these various sub­jects. All aspects of pictorial continuity are so closely inter­related that we must study the thing whole. For our purpose here we have placed the chapters in an order of precedence which we are certain will present the Study of pictorial con­tinuity in a logical manner, and will, at the end of this book, have made a complete picture of it.

Summary

A motion picture, to be more than just a series of animated snapshots, must have pictorial continuity.

Pictorial continuity is the proper development and connection of motion-picture sequences to create a smoothly flowing, coherent motion-picture story.

The sequence is a Fundamental unit of continuity and lias three basic, all-important elements: long shot, medium shot, and closeup. These elements correspond to the three stages in which the human eye unconsciously views action.

To avoid the "animated snapshot" type of movie, the cameraman should have his subjects do something instead of posing in stilted fashion. He must aim for action. And by applying the technique of pictorial continuity, he can get ac­tion into scenes that have no live actors.

The cameraman must never forget he is shooting for an audience which will view the action secondhand. By being at all times aware of the screen's limitations, he can make the audience see his action on the screen as he saw it in real life

 The reader will find the apparent one-two-three routine of the LS, MS, and CU is not inflexible. There is lots of leeway in continuity for the photographers imagination, as will be explained in the chapters to come.

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