The Importance of Continuity in TV & Film

Continuity is an essential element to shooting any movie. As the process of creating a film can be rather longwinded, often over a period of weeks or months maintaining continuity can be the most difficult element to the whole film and without it ruins the audiences ability to believe what they re watching on screen. Often most of these errors are created in post production or missed in editing whereby they may have been fixed. 
Continuity Errors in Costume 
The Wizard of Oz

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When Dorothy and the Scarecrow are in a struggle with the trees the Scarecrow is visibly gets hit with a lot of apples. The error occurs in the next shot whereby Dorothy is wearing black shoes instead of her “Ruby slippers”. This is due to the fact that Judy Garland (Dorathy) would have been in more appropriate comfortable shoes for all shots closer than 3/4 shots as the feet wouldn't be visible. Within this shot the frame is slightly to far outwards and therefore the incorrect shoes can be clearly seen. Obviously back then they did not have the ability to edit the shoes out and therefore would have probably not noticed or been unable to fix the problem. 
Errors in Makeup
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Frodo has a wound on his lower right cheek near his chin but later in the film the wound flips to his opposite cheek. The injury continues to switch position on numerous occasions throughout the film making it rather obvious to those who notice of the continuity errors int the makeup. It is vital to remember when working with makeup and hair on a film that requires accurate continuity to make sure you take images throughout the day of the makeup from numerous angles so that you can duplicate it accurately.