Field guide

What's a continuity sheet?

Passport reads two documents that are standard on scripted film and TV — but if you cut in another corner of post, you may never have seen either one. Here's what they are and how to ask for them.

The continuity sheet

A continuity — sometimes called an editor's continuity or scene continuity — is a scene-by-scene list of the locked cut that picture editorial puts together at turnover: the scene number, the slugline (INT/EXT, location, DAY/NIGHT), and usually timecodes and durations.

On scripted shows the assistant editor makes one anyway, because half the building wants it — the post supervisor, the composer, the music editor, VFX, the studio. Sound is just one of the customers.

So yes — it's absolutely something an editor can create on request, and it's a quick job for an AE, since all the information is sitting right there in the cut.

The picture EDL

The EDL is the other half: a plain-text list of every cut in the picture, with timecodes. Passport reads the standard CMX3600 format — the one every NLE has exported since forever. It's not just an Avid thing. Avid, Premiere, and Resolve all export it natively; if your show cuts in Premiere, it's File ▸ Export ▸ EDL.

How to ask

The whole request, at turnover:

Any AE on a scripted show will know exactly what that means.

No continuity? No problem.

If your show doesn't do formal continuities, you don't need the official document. Passport will happily take:

• a lined script or plain script PDF,
• a one-liner (the production one-line schedule),
• or a simple CSV or text list of scene numbers and locations — something any editor can knock out in minutes.

And if you have literally nothing but the EDL, Passport still builds your scene track — the clips are just named by scene number, without the location labels.