Importance of Coverage and Cutaways when shooting a scene

Coverage is important while shooting a scene, because it is basically the amount of shots you have from various camera angles, and different types of shot. The more coverage you have, the mroe raw material you have, thus making it much easier to do a good job when it comes to editing the piece of work. If you only shoot the scene from 2 angles, you are going to have much less choice of shots than if you filmed the shot 10 times as you would have a vast range of angles and shots to choose from.

Cutaways are also important in filmmaking, because it gives you freedom to make shots slightly longer by cutting to something relevant, although at the same time unnecessary to add suspense. Such as in a drama, if a director wants to change between two different shots, it could be seen to be made cleaner by putting a few seconds of footage of someone watching the character, possibly from a window, or alley. This extra footage is unnecessary, though adds tension to the scene, it would still make sense if it wasn't there.

It can also be used to show responses, such as in the film airplane while something is going wrong, it will suddenly cut back to the flight control and their response to what is happening. This is generaly followed by a cut back to the main character as he resumes whatever was happening beforeth cut.