Continuity (fiction)
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- For other uses, see continuity.
In fiction, continuity is consistency of the characteristics of persons, plot, objects, places and events seen by the reader or viewer. It is of relevance to several media.
Continuity is particularly a concern in the production of film and television due to the difficulty of rectifying an error in continuity after shooting has completed, although it also applies to other art forms, including novels, comics, anime, videogames and animation, though usually on a much broader scale. Most productions have a script supervisor (formerly "script girl") on hand whose job is solely to pay attention to and attempt to maintain continuity across the chaotic and typically non-linear production shoot. This takes the form of a large amount of paperwork, photographs, and attention to and memory of large quantities of detail. It usually regards factors both within the scene and often even technical details including meticulous records of camera positioning and equipment settings. The use of a Polaroid camera was standard but has since been replaced by the advent of digital cameras. All of this is done so that ideally all related shots can match, despite perhaps parts being shot thousands of miles and several months apart. It is a less conspicuous job, though, because if done perfectly, no one will ever notice.
In comic books, continuity has also come to mean a set of contiguous events, sometimes said to be "set in the same universe" (see fictional crossover) or "separate universes" (see intercompany crossover).
Today, maintaining strong plot and character continuity is also a high priority for many writers of long-running television series.
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[edit] Continuity errors
While most continuity errors are subtle, such as changes in the level of drink in a character's glass or the length of a cigarette, others can be more noticeable, such as sudden drastic changes in appearance of a character, or the unexplained appearance of a character believed to be dead. Such errors in continuity can ruin the illusion of realism, and affect suspension of disbelief. In cinema special attention must be paid to continuity because films are rarely shot in the order in which they are presented: that is, a crew may film a scene from the end of a movie first, followed by one from the middle, and so on. The shooting schedule is often dictated by location permit issues. A character may return to Times Square in New York City several times throughout a movie, but as it is extraordinarily expensive to close off Times Square, those scenes will likely be filmed all at once in order to reduce permit costs. Weather, the ambience of natural light, cast and crew availability, or any number of other circumstances can also influence a shooting schedule. There are three main types of continuity errors.
[edit] Editing errors
Editing errors can occur when a character in a scene references a scene or incident that has not occurred yet, or that they should not yet be aware of.
An example of an editing error can be seen in the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), where a scene of people climbing a slope at the start is seen from below and then replayed from above.
[edit] Visual errors
Visual errors are instant discontinuities occurring in visual media such as film and television. Items of clothing change colors, shadows get longer or shorter, items within a scene change place or disappear.
One example of a visual error occurs in the 1998 film Waking Ned Devine, when two of the film's characters, Jackie and Michael, are walking through a storm towards Ned's house. The umbrella they are under is black during their conversation as they walk towards the house (filmed from slightly above and to the front); yet after cutting to a lower shot (filmed from behind Jackie), Michael walks onscreen from the right holding an umbrella that is not black but beige, with a brown band at the rim.
(Though visual continuity errors are logically confined to visual media, parallel mistakes can occur in text. In "The Miller's Tale" in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales a door is ripped off its hinges only to be slowly closed again in the next scene.)
[edit] Plot errors
Plot errors reflect a failure in the consistency of the created fictional world. For example, a character might state he was an only child, yet later mention having a sister. In the TV show Cheers, the character Frasier Crane's wife Lilith mentions Frasier's parents are both dead, but when the character was spun off and given his own show (Frasier), his father became a central character (albeit with the explanation that Frasier was embarrassed about his father's lowbrow attitudes, and claimed his death as a result — see Retroactive continuity).
[edit] Dealing with errors
When continuity mistakes have been made, explanations are often proposed by either writers or fans to smooth over discrepancies. Fans sometimes make up explanations for such errors that may or may not be integrated into canon; this is known as fanwanking. Often when a fan does not agree with one of the events in a story (such as the death of a favorite character), he or she decides to simply ignore that the event ever happened. Discarding all existing continuity and starting from scratch is known as rebooting. A less extreme literary technique that erases one episode is called the reset button.
Discrepancies in past continuity are sometimes made deliberately; this is known as retconning.
[edit] Real time programs vs traditional films
Television programs like 24, in which actors have to appear as if it is the same day for 24 consecutive episodes, have raised public recognition of continuity. However, traditional films have frequently had much of the same sort of the issues to deal with; film shoots may last several months and as scenes are frequently shot out of story sequence, footage shot weeks apart may be edited together as part of the same day's action in the completed film. In some ways, 24 presents a simpler situation, as costumes and hairstyles generally should not change very frequently; in many feature films a range of different hairstyles and costumes must be created, changed, and then recreated exactly, as various scenes are shot.
