If you are filming two characters speaking to each other, you have to imagine that there is an imaginary line running horizontally through the both characters. When filming you should only position cameras on one side of the imaginary line (the line of action). If a camera crosses the line the piece will not achieve continuity.
Here is an example:
Here you can see that cameras A, B and C are all positioned on the same side of the line, but camera D is on the opposite side. To the right of the picture there are examples of what the camera would be filming; on camera A, B and C the character in blue is always positioned on the left side of the frame. This allows the viewer to understand where characters are in relation to other characters. However in camera D the character in blue is on the right of the frame, this is because the 180 degree rule is not followed. This may confuse the viewer, so the 180 degree rule should always be followed!
However there is only one way that a camera can cross onto the other side of the line of action. This if you film the camera crossing the line by the use of crabbing or tracking.
Here is a video to demonstrate how the 180 degree rule would look like in a movie, and what the consequences would look like if the rule was broken:
No comments:
Post a Comment