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• Shot/reverse shot is used to show conversations. The film will cut from one person in the conversation to another.
• Match on action / cutting on action features cuts which are placed in the middle of a specific action. A wide shot of a man raising his arms might cut midway through the motion to a closer shot of him in the same position finishing the action. In this type of cut the fact that the action can begin in one shot and be completed in the second, creates a visual bridge which stops viewers from noticing the cut.
• Eyeline match allows the audience to see what a character on-screen is seeing. It typically works by first having a shot of a character gazing in the direction of something off-screen. It then cuts immediately to a shot of something else. For example, a shot of a woman looking off-screen to her left might be followed by a cut to a painting that she’s looking at.
• Graphic match cuts between two similar, but markedly different shots, in order to suggest some kind of important link. The most famous Graphic match occurs in the science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) where there is a cut from a bone being tossed into the air by a prehistoric ape to a futuristic space ship. Because both the bone and the spaceship are white and in roughly the same part of frame, the images match well enough to suggest a link between humanity’s ancestors and its future.

Montage editing

The main alternative to continuity editing is montage editing.

Montage editing can be used to create excitement, terror or startling new meanings.

Instead of allowing shots to flow smoothly from one to another, montage editing juxtaposes images for effect and can cut rapidly from wide shots to extreme close-ups.

Montage editing draws attention to itself in ways continuity editing does not.