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Ask Slashdot: Maintaining Continuity In Your Creative Works?
imac.usr writes: I recently rewatched the Stonecutters episode of The Simpsons and laughed as always at the scene where Homer pulls into his parking space — right next to his house. It's such a great little comic moment. This time, though, it occurred to me that someone probably wrote in to complain that the power plant was normally in a completely different part of town, no doubt adding "I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder." And that got me to wondering: how do creators of serial media — books, web comics, TV shows, even movie serials — record their various continuities? Is there a story bible with the information, or a database of people/places/things, or even something scribbled on a 3x5 card. I know Slashdot is full of artists who must deal with this issue on a regular basis, so I'd be interested in hearing any perspectives on how (or even if) you manage it.
Stephen King found himself in such a pickle to explain several continuity errors in his Dark Tower series that he wrote himself in as a character. Not the first time he wrote about an author being confronted by one of his own characters.
I vaguely remember seeing a behind-the-scenes thing many moons ago about a UK soap - might have been EastEnders - and it was all notebooks and card indexes.
Oh, and the Homer thing might have been a joke. Some companies give the closest parking spaces as an incentive to the best employees. Homer was lucky he didn't have to drive away from the plant.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In film, there's a person who's entire job is making sure that there is continuity from scene to scene (and from titles to credits). Sometimes they're called "continuity supervisor" but that's becoming less common. Usually, they're known as "script supervisor".
So if a character is wearing a hoodie zipped with the hood up in the closeup, the script supervisor makes sure that in the long shot of the character walking away he still has his hoodie zipped with the hood up. Since almost all movies are shot out of sequence, this becomes very important, and the script supervisor has to note all props, so if there's a glass filled 3/4 on a table where two characters are dining, the glass is still 3/4 full in the reaction shot, even though the reaction shot might be shot weeks or months later. Along with the lighting director, they match shadows and along with the costume director, match clothing.
If you ever want to see what a movie looks like when there is no script supervisor (or the script supervisor is stoned), watch Plan 9 From Outer Space by the great Ed Wood. Errors in continuity cause a very disorienting experience for the viewer. It's a fun movie, especially when you see a car pull up in a graveyard in broad daylight and then there's a cut to people exiting the car and it's the middle of the night. You probably have already heard the stories. Bela Lugosi died during filming, so they shot some scenes with someone who was several inches taller and years younger, except he held his cape in front of his face, Dracula style.
Some film makers have used continuity breaks to great effect. For example, the 1940s art film "Meshes of the Afternoon" by Maya Deren is hallucinogenic in its continuity breaks. This film has influenced generations of filmmakers, including current guys like Darren Aronofsky, David Lynch and even more mainstream filmmakers. Also, a generation of Japanese horror directors pay tribute to Maya Deren and her shocking breaks from continuity.
Here, go watch Meshes of the Afternoon right now and see what I mean. It's only like 10 minutes long, so relax a bit and watch the whole thing. It's very trippy. The music is also very very good.
https://youtu.be/YSY0TA-ttMA
You are welcome on my lawn.
Movies have a Script Supervisor whose job is to keep track of things like that. Since most movies are not shot in chronological order, in many locations and over the course of several weeks or months or sometimes even years, this is a bigger challenge than it appears at first glance.
The invention of the digital still camera was a godsend for these folks; they used to go through ungodly quantities of Polaroid film. Now they can keep it all on their computer.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
In one videogame studio I've worked at, the game designers used an internal Wiki to keep track of the both the game lore as well as planned game design elements. It's a great way to summarize people, places, things, and major events for quick reference, and of course, for cross-referencing related topics. I'm not sure what other studios use, but I'd presume an online bible like this is especially useful for RPGs, with their sprawling stories and large numbers of characters.
What's interesting is that post-release, you can actually rely more on the *public* wiki that the fans help to fill out to completely document the game, at least for the parts that are known to them. There are obviously a lot more fans than designers, so it's nearly always much more detailed and comprehensive. The internal wiki can then be trimmed back to future or as-yet-unknown-by-fans sort of knowledge.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
If they didn't do it, that would make your game too easy.
If you look in imdb, even big budget movies with people paid full time to make sure continuity is maintained manage to have a dozen of mistakes.
Write according to the list of existing rules, and choose to break them strategically.
Something the Simpsons does a lot. They frequently break continuity on purpose, just to stick it to fans who pay too much attention. For example having a door that both goes the the basement and is a closet, or moving the where the door to the basement is, to make it impossible to make an accurate map of the house. Some of the same writers on the other hand spent a lot of time making sure the stars go by in the right direction on the ship in Futurama, as they were trying to make the layout of the ship there a little more sensible, most of the time.
This time, though, it occurred to me that someone probably wrote in to complain that the power plant was normally in a completely different part of town, no doubt adding "I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder."
Nobody has actually complained* about that because... wait for it... that episode was really good. In fact there is a special reason why they got away with that particular gag: If they had shown you an accurate portrayal of Homer's drive to work it would have taken much longer than the window of time available to make that joke funny. In other words, they didn't show you that Homer lives next door to the power plant, they just showed you that his time was wasted in a visual way.
I'm not saying you don't need to pay attention to continuity. In fact, I can tell you a simple way to avoid a good deal of continuity issues: Avoid declaring anything about a character that isn't important to the plot. Dave Lister, for example, has had his appendix out twice. They used it early on as a gag because they needed a life event that can only happen once. The second time it was to show off that a new character had benevolent intentions towards them. Did it make sense to use it the first time? Yes. The second time... Um, no, they ended up locking him into a detail for just a throwaway gag. They did, however, establish he was an orphan and that was so important that it rang several times through the entire run of the series. You won't find any lines about him knowing his biological parents** for exactly that reason. Don't say your character has a brother or sister if you never intend to meet them or at least write them in again. We hear about Rimmer's brothers all the time, for example, but have no idea if Kochanski or the Cat are only-childs. Etc. We know about Rimmer's brothers because their treatment of him as a kid has had consequences on his character. It's built in to his character that his brothers tormented him, were smarter and more successful than him, and that they were more loved by his parents than he was. Because of this nobody is going to write a Red Dwarf script where Rimmer is an only child.
That said, don't worry so much about continuity. Make your story work. If you start hearing nitpicks about your character being left-handed instead of right-handed in one episode, it's not because continuity is such an ugly sin, it's because your story isn't entertaining and the nitpicks start becoming a lot more observable.
Oh... that and assholes like me look for problems like that just so we can point them out in order to look smarter. Don't worry about us, though, we paid for the DVD's and/or books because we wanted to go overboard researching it. ;)
* Not one person saw that and said "I won't watch that show anymore."
** Yes, I know there's a problem with that statement, no I don't want to go into it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
There are some software solutions out there that in addition to actually store your writing, have functions that help to store your research, character bios, locations etc... Some are gear more towards writing novels and others can cover a wide gamut.
I've used Liquid Story Binder (which doesn't seem to be actively updated any more) and Scrivener. They both have ways to keep your facts straight.
You don't necessarily need to use software that's specifically created for this. I've also used mind mapping tools (Mindjet MindManager, MindGenius, FreeMind (open source)) when I am starting out with some ideas. Other tools that I have used includes MS OneNote (free), Evernote (on-line), AllMyNotes, Right Note, myBase and Ultra Recall.
Interestingly, even with access to these these tools, I still use Notepad++, or vi a lot of the time to store some info in txt files.
Even with any of these tools, you should always double check and use people to verify that you didn't mess up.
This article is good about Star Wars continuity... http://archive.wired.com/enter...
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I've read a number of comments about all the movies that let you know you're in Paris by the fact that you can see the Eiffel Tower through a window. After a while, some viewers start to realize that in the movie's world, the Eiffel Tower is visible from every window in Paris. So is there really a regulation in Paris saying that windows are illegal on the other sides of buildings?
Other readers can probably list a number of other such landmarks that they've spotted. The Golden Gate Bridge is another, so SF apparently has a similar construction regulation.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.