Chapter 4 - Overlap and Matching Action

Curing Jumpy Action | How to Match Action | Controlled and Uncontrolled Action | When Controlled Action is Impossible | Summary

Curing Jumpy Action

Good continuity demands a smooth, uninterrupted flow of action from one shot to the next. That impression of smooth­ness is destroyed for the audience when there are sudden gaps in the movement of screen actors between shots.

If (returning to the original example) your first shot of Mr. Prospect shows him starting to rise from his chair, and your next shows him standing erect, the audience may be conscious of an irritating jump in the action, as though the few feet of film showing Mr. Prospect going through the act of rising had been cut out.

This "jumpy action" is hard on the audience's eyes—and harder on your reputation as a cameraman and cutter. A cure is overlap. Defining this brand new term, we say that overlap is the reshooting of action that has taken place at the tail end of the preceding seem1.

Try shooting a sequence of Cousin Robert relaxing over a good cigar. You start in MS position and take a shot showing him sitting with the lit cigar, admiring the nice long ash, put­ting the cigar to his lips for a drag, and blowing out the smoke. At this point you stop the camera and move in for a closeup.

But before you start your CU, you ask Cousin Robert to repeat the final action of the medium shot. From CU position, you press the button as lie once again raises the cigar for a drag, and exhales. Then you continue on with your closeup and new action.

Stop for a moment and look at what you have done. If you screen the sequence, you will see that you have two shots from different positions, showing identical action. This is the footage that comprises the overlap. (There would be the same result had yon made an LS-to-MS sequence of Cousin Robert.)

Now with your finished movie, as you want the audience to see it, you are obviously not going to show both pieces of action in their entirety. This sort of repetition would be worse from an audience s point of view than a gap in the action. So you avoid it, when editing the film, by performing a film-cutting operation known as matching action.

Overlap and Matching Action
Matching Actions (between Shots)

Medium Shot                                       Closeup

How To Match Action

To match action in the overlap of Cousin Robert, you pick a frame in your MS footage and a frame in your CU footage where the action is most identical. Take as example the frames where Cousin Robert has placed the cigar in his mouth. You discard everything that comes after this frame in the MS, and everything that comes before the identical frame in the CU. Then you splice the two shots together.

The frames where Cousin Robert has just put the cigar in his mouth serve your purpose best because it is easiest to match action at a point in the film where the action is com­paratively slow or where it has stopped altogether. As you gain experience and deftness in editing, however, you should practice matching action on motion, such as the point where Cousin Robert is in the act of removing the cigar from his mouth and blowing out the smoke. A much smoother transi­tion between scenes results, inasmuch as the audiences eye is busy following movement, instead of pausing at a static point in the action.

The human eye watching Cousin Robert does not need overlap because, unlike the camera which stops shooting when you change distance or angle, it does not stop looking at Cousin Robert even while it moves around the room. By using overlap, the eyes of your audience may also look at him with­out being made conscious of interruptions while positions are being changed.

Controlled And Uncontrolled   Action

You can readily sec that for a cameraman to shoot overlap, lie must he able to control the action so that his subject will repeat it at the beginning of the next shot.

The home cameraman will he able to control action quite often because his subjects will be intimate ones, such as the family at home eating Sunday dinner, or vacation friends on the beach.

If the action cannot be controlled—if your subject is Baby romping in her playpen, or a four-alarm fire, or a professional tennis match—overlap can still be made by using two or more cameras instead of just one.

This, of course, calls for one or two confederates with addi­tional cameras—really three—stationed at LS, MS, and CU positions. To get the overlap, you simply start your MS camera rolling just before you stop your LS, and start the CU before ending your MS shot.

If you have only two cameras, the best solution is to assign one to take both the LS and MS shots, and the other to do just the CU work. Overlap then occurs only on the MS and CU shots, but this is the most efficient compromise, since once your scene has been established you are bound to use more MS than LS shots.

Once in a lifetime you will have a story where instead of shooting regular overlap, you will want to run three cameras simultaneously throughout the entire length of a movie se­quence, so that the complete action will be registered on three separate strips of film, each taken from a different position: one. entirely a long shot; another, a medium shot; and the third, a closeup. You will then be able, when editing, to cut back and forth between LS. MS, and CU anywhere in the film, matching action between every shot. The possibilities for constant variety are self-evident.

This procedure naturally invokes a great deal of expense in film expenditure and a great deal of difficulty in assembl

ing a camera team from among your photographer friends. It would be too much to undertake such a project unless you had an opportunity to shoot an exceedingly rare or important story that would never be repeated—the President of the United States dedicating a local hospital, or engineers dynamiting the side of a mountain to make way for a new road.

This expensive procedure is followed in the professional film world when shooting unusual newsreel subjects, such as a championship boxing match, or during movie-making when the shot involves the destruction of a costly set. Never-to-be-repeated scenes virtually demand several cameras running simultaneously from different positions and angles to assure complete coverage. This method has added advantages in making entertainment films for television. It not only saves shooting time, but preserves the feeling of spontaneity in the actors performance.

When Controlled Action Is Impossible

Although overlap should usually be considered a "must" by the cameraman, occasions will arise when it will be impossible to match action between shots.

What happens, for instance, when you have uncontrolled ac­tion such as Baby romping in her playpen, and you cannot get another cameraman to shoot overlap for you? Well, von don't abandon that appealing subject just because you cant match action between shots! Of course not. You shoot Baby just the same and resign yourself to a slight jump between shots.

But you can minimize that jump between shots by taking pains to pick up your subject in approximately the same posi­tion and action as at the tail end of your last shot. This can usually be done with home subjects. If your LS of Baby ended with her in the center of the playpen, catch her in the center again when you begin your MS. If her action at the end of the LS was to put a rattle in her mouth—an action she is extremely likely to repeat—start your MS as she does it again. While it isn't likely that the movements will be so closely similar that you'll be enabled to match action, the similarity that does exist will help a lot to smooth over the jump between shots.

There will even be certain times when overlap can be en­tirely dispensed with, because the audience will not notice the failure to match action. Take that subject mentioned earlier— vacation friends on the beach. If your scene is a general one showing many people doing various things — swimming, throwing a beach ball around—which are all going on at the same time, it isn't necessary to match action from LS to MS as you move your camera closer to the scene. Your audience still sees a variety of actions, and since it is not following one ac­tion specifically, it will not be conscious of slight jumps between shots. If you move in on one specific action, how­ever, and oblige your audience to follow it to the exclusion of any other, then you should overlap if possible.

The professional cutter or film editor talks of shots which move smoothly from one to the next as shots which "cut to­gether." Overlap is essential for scenes to cut together well. Since you will probably do most of your own cutting, overlap whenever you can.

Summary

Jumpy action destroys that impression of smoothness between shots in a sequence which is a mark of good continu­ity.

Overlap is a cure for jumpy action. It is the1 reshooting of action that has taken place at the tail end of the previous scene.

Overlap makes possible the matching of action between successive shots by picking frames in each where the action is identical, regardless of a difference in angle or distance from the subject.

Overlap  can  be  made  by  the  individual   cameraman when the action is controlled. When the action is uncon­trolled, overlap is possible through the use of additional cameras.
In the case of never-to-be-repeated scenes, it pays to run several cameras simultaneously from various positions through­out the entire action, so that the editor can cut between LS, MS, and CU anywhere in the film.

When it is impossible to get overlap, new shots should he begun with the subjects position and action as similar as possible to what they were at the end of the preceding shot.

Occasionally overlap can be dispensed with when shooting a general scene with various activities going on, since the audience will be too busy trying to follow the several activities simultaneously to notice the failure to match action between shots.

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