ABSTRACT
Editing is at once the most frequently overlooked and the most powerful component of television style. In the single-camera mode of production, editing is largely determined during the pre-production and production stages. The continuity editing system matches classicism's narrative coherence with continuities of space and time. In the single-camera mode of production, editing is largely determined during the pre-production and production stages. When television's multiple-camera mode of production arrived in the 1940s, it adopted many of these editing practices but had to modify them to suit its simultaneous use of several cameras. The differences between multiple-camera and single-camera editing are very subtle and may not be immediately noticeable to viewers. Although originally a method for editing theatrical films, continuity system principles underpin both of the major modes of production for television: single-camera and multiple-camera. Many techniques are used to construct the continuity system.
