Common questions about Continuity (fiction)

Short answers, pulled from the story.

What is the role of the script supervisor in film production?

The script supervisor is the sole guardian of narrative consistency who gathers paperwork and documentation to ensure that a character's drink level, the position of a hat, or the angle of the camera remains identical across shots filmed months apart. This role involves creating a story bible that allows editors to match shots taken on different sets, under different weather conditions, and with different lighting. Before the digital age, this documentation relied on film-based Polaroid cameras to capture the state of sets and actors at the beginning and end of every shooting day.

What is the earliest and most famous continuity error in Charlie Chaplin's The Property Man?

One of the earliest and most famous continuity errors occurred in Charlie Chaplin's 1914 comedy short The Property Man where the Tramp loses his hat in one room only to have it instantly reappear on his head as he steps through a door into the next. This visual discontinuity highlights how loose plots and a lack of continuity editing made early films rife with such mistakes. The error in The Property Man is particularly notable because it happens in a supposedly smooth transition proving that even the masters of cinema were not immune to the logistical challenges of early filmmaking.

What is the Homeric nod and how does it appear in the Iliad?

The Homeric nod is a name for continuity errors derived from the Roman poet Horace's Ars Poetica which states that even the great Homer nods off. In the Iliad this phenomenon is evident when Menelaos kills a minor character named Pylaimenes only for Pylaimenes to be alive later to witness the death of his own son. Modern scholarship suggests these inconsistencies are the result of the poem being retold and improvised by generations of oral poets leading to conflated versions of the story.

What is Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome and how does it affect the BBC's Merlin series?

Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome or SORAS describes the practice of accelerating the age of a television character in conflict with the timeline of a series and the real-world progression of time. A striking example occurred in the BBC's Merlin series where Mordred was initially played by a young child in Season 4 only to grow up into his late teens by the start of Season 5 while the rest of the characters aged by only three years. This phenomenon is often used to open up a character to a wider range of storylines and to attract younger viewers typically coinciding with a recast.

How does the Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup use continuity errors for comedy?

In the Marx Brothers' classic film Duck Soup the camera shows a shot of Groucho Marx speaking a line followed by a cutaway shot of something else happening and then another shot of Groucho each time with his hat changing to something more outrageous such as a Napoleonic hat or a Prussian hat. These deliberate errors serve to highlight the artificiality of the medium inviting the audience to laugh at the very inconsistencies that they usually strive to avoid. By breaking the rules of continuity creators can create a unique form of humor that relies on the audience's knowledge of the genre's conventions.

What is fanwanking and how does it relate to the TV show Cheers and Frasier Crane?

Fanwanking is a process colloquially known as fans making up explanations for errors that may or may not be integrated into the official canon. In the TV show Cheers for example Frasier Crane's wife Lilith mentions that his parents are both dead yet in another episode Frasier claims his father was a scientist. When the character was spun off into Frasier his father a retired policeman named Martin became a central character and the inconsistency was given a retroactive explanation that Frasier was embarrassed about his father's lowbrow attitudes and thus claimed his death.

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