What time of day is this?

Does she have the bruise in this scene?

Are they wearing pants or shorts? Is this before or after they go to the store? Was her hair like that in the scene right before this? Is he supposed to have his spear in this scene? I thought they left those? Are we changing the lighting or matching the previous scene? Didn’t that glass break like three scenes ago?

Aaaaaaaaaaarg, please make it stop.

These kinds of questions drive unprepared directors nuts on set. and reduce their capacity to make good decisions.

But you’re not an unprepared director, are you {{ subscriber.first_name }}? Are you?

Of course you’re not. You’re going to have a continuity meeting before the production starts. You'll iron out all these details so you stay sane and make good decisions.

That’s why this week we’re talking about the most important pre-production meeting: The Continuity Meeting:

• What is a continuity meeting?
• Why is it so important?
• How to run a continuity meeting

If directors don't get everyone on the same page before the shoot, they'll face continuity questions all day, every day on set. But once you understand the value of a great continuity meeting, you give yourself the freedom to focus on what matters most on set: making a great movie.

Let’s roll.

A good continuity meeting saves you a million questions later

Directors answer questions.

All day long.

To give good answers and make good decisions, you need to avoid decision fatigue. The more decisions we make in a day, the more likely we are to start making ill-considered ones as the day goes on.

The continuity meeting is the perfect occasion for addressing a lot of questions from all your department heads in one sitting.

The goal: get everyone on the same page before you go into production.

What exactly is a continuity meeting?

The continuity meeting is where all the department heads, the director, the producer, and the script supervisor go through the entire script in detail.

These meetings are looooooong.

But they’re also invaluable.

The goal is to go through the entire script to lay out the chronological timeline of the movie.

You need to establish when something happens in story time so you can track continuity between scenes. For instance, if your character gets a bruise in scene 20, you have to keep track of that and decide what it’s going to look like in scenes 40, 60, 80, etc.

Everyone brings their own breakdowns to compare and contrast. And as a leader, it’s your job to encourage questions and dialogue and be thorough.

You go through every aspect of the scenes and bring in everyone’s point of view and expertise. With input from the whole team, you make sure you’ve covered every continuity question you can think of.

Agreeing on continuity helps all departments work together. It leads to a seamless, cohesive film.

What’s the big deal?

The reason this is so important is that without this meeting, every department is on its own. Everyone’s going around doing their own version of the movie.

You’ll end up with a character who has wet hair from the scene before, but dry clothes, or a damaged prop, but no bruise on your character’s arm.

There are a thousand and one little details that fall through the cracks when you don’t take the time to decide on your film’s truth upfront.

Over the course of a film, they add up and you end up with a film that feels sloppy and poorly executed.

On the upside, when you have a great continuity meeting, you save tons of time on set. Your collaborators are able to do their jobs without bugging you every five minutes. And you’re able to focus on shooting the movie that lives in your head.

Empowering your team is crucial for directors who want to work with other great creatives. When you establish one truth for your film in the continuity meeting, you give your department heads clear guidelines. You also empower your script supervisor. You can let them be the point of contact for all extra continuity questions that come up on the day.

Great prep means putting in the work upfront so you can make a better film once you’re in production.

How to run a continuity meeting

Rule #1: prepare to prepare.

What I mean is, make sure everyone has the chance to show up to the meeting prepared. Give them the latest script well ahead of the meeting so they have time to take notes, do their breakdowns, and list any questions.

Encourage everyone to prepare questions ahead of time to make the process faster during the meeting.

I like continuity meetings where the script supervisor leads the meeting. It gives them ownership over the continuity, and lets me focus on the story and answer questions from the team.

Go through every scene, and make sure everyone is good before moving on.

If you have a non-linear timeline or large time jumps, pay extra attention to these. It might help to write out a chronology of the scenes beforehand.

Give space for everyone to be heard, and be open to questions and debate.

Once a matter is settled, move on, don’t linger or this meeting will take weeks.

And for the gods’ sake, take breaks.

Too often these meetings go without breaks, or with minimal stops.

You’ll work faster with regular breaks to stretch legs, grab a bite etc.

And cut!

That does it for this week. Now you’re armed with the knowledge to run a successful continuity meeting and never face 1,001 continuity questions per hour ever again.

Congrats!

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