Match on Action

Match on action is an editing technique which is used to show an action from two different view points. The shots are edited in a way so that the action appears seamless, which will create continuity for the audience.

In class we were assigned a task which would display an example of how match on action is used. For our activity we were asked to film someone walking through a door; firstly walking up to the door and beginning to open it, then the second shot would be from inside the room they have walked in to. We decided to film two girls walking through the corridors in school whilst having a casual conversation. I created a birdseye view sketch on Paint as a plan for where I would place the camera and where the characters would be.

The video above shows my group's example of match on action. The actresses were Ishpreet Sundal and Ranjana Nisanth. The first shot was filmed by Chloe Connell, and the second shot was filmed by myself. I then edited the shots together using iMovie.

Whilst I was filming the scene, it didn't seem very difficult. I already knew where to place the cameras and where the actresses were going since this was previously planned. Therefore all I had to do was click the record button to start filming the sequence. However when it came to editing the two shots together, I noticed that Chloe and I had not filmed all of the takes simultaneously. This meant that it became difficult to synchronise the shots as they did not match. I decided to use shots from two alternative takes which were fairly similar, however the dialogue in the two shots does not match. In the future, when using more than one camera I will make sure that they are definitely both filming at the same time so that the problem doesn't occur again.