Continuity

Continuity basically means, that the action of a film through difference scenes and shots has to make sense for the audience.

This is best to understand by seeing some examples, where this wasn't the case.
Here is a scene from the first Harry Potter movie; Harry suddenly sits on the other side of the table:

The next scene is from Twilight. Bella's bag suddenly disappears in the background:

Match on Action

Match on action basically means that an action that continues through different shots has to go on at the point in a new shot, where it was cut in the shot before.
For example: If you show a man opening a door and in the first shot, filmed from outside the room, he opens the door half, and you change the camera perpective to inside the room, the door must also be half opened in the new shot.
Match on action is important for the audience to understand the action happening.

You can see an example in the video above at 0:18, when the shot changes from Close-Up to Mid Shot as the girl flips a page.

180 Degree Rule

Another rule that is important for filmed dialogues. It states that the left/right relationship of to talking people shouldn't change during a scene, which means:
When in one shot Person 1 is sitting on the right and Person 2 on the left, they should still sit like this in the following shot.
It's called the 180 degree rule, because an imagined line that runs through both people shouldn't be crossed by the camera, which should only be placed in the 180 degrees on one side of that line. 

For example: 

If two people are shown talking like this,

they shouldn't be shown like this

in another shot.

So this is the rule:

The camera should only be placed in the 180° on the green side of the line.

Shot/Reverse Shot

Shot/Reverse shot is used when to people are shown talking. When the first person is shown looking to the right, the other person must be shown looking to the left to create the impression for the audience that the two people are looking at/talking to each other. It would be very confusing if both persons were shown looking to the right in their shots, because that creates the impression that they're not looking at each other while talking. 

For example:

Imagine to see a Two-shot like this,

and after that a shot (l.) and reverse shot (r.) like this

or this:

Doesn't really create the impression of the two of them talking to each other.

The right way would be like this:

Exercises

The first thing we're going to do is a preliminary exercise, which is a continuity exercise. It involves a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom they exchange a couple of lines of dialogue. The task should demonstrate

• match on action,
• shot/reverse shot
• and 180 degree rule.

The main task is going to be an opening to a new fiction film and titles.

Introduction

Hi there, my name is Joelle Piep, I'm seventeen years old and I'm from Wolfsburg in Germany.
My group member is Alina.