Anybody very pro/anti 180 degree rule?

It's not just a rule. It's a fact.

If you do not observe it, which you are perfectly entitled to do, then you run the risk of confusing the stage direction. If you don't care about that then fine.

As for insulting the audience. A movie is not the recording of an objective commodity or event. Everything on screen is a creation of the artform. As the audience, we experience it. The movie and our understanding of the spacial relationships of the people in them are not two complimentary concepts. It's not an insult because the movie choses the perspective from which it is necessary or desirable for expressing those relationships.

It's also a rule and a fact that if you don't pull focus as a character moves out of the focal plane then they will be out of focus. Nobody's insulting you or your ability to understand that it is still the same person only no longer in focus by doing this. That's just what the film is. If they choose not to pull focus then that is because that's what the film is.

Glasgow's FOREMOST authority Italics = irony. Infer the opposite please.

sounds interesting, but I don't know what "the 180° Rule" is. Does it involve more than just what the focus puller is doing or not doing?

Any help?

E pluribus unum

I wrote an article about the 180-degree rule that explains what it is and why it is used.

http://www.iadt.edu/student-life/iadt-buzz/december-2013/why-the-180-degree-rule-is-important

Rules are meant to be broken, if you know when and why to break them, Nia. In my opinion, you can break this rule if you do so DURING a shot, so the left-to-right and right-to-left logistics of who or what is facing who or what are re-oriented and are thus preserved for the audience DURING the shot. If you change screen direction on an edit or cut, so that right is suddenly left and left is suddenly right, you risk confusing the hell out of the audience. Inserting a cutaway between the screen direction change helps.

Watch the beginning of A Serious Man. The part that takes place in the "old" country. When the knock is heard at the door, there is a clever choreograph done w/ the camera to maintain the 180 rule. If you don't see it, go back and look again. This kind of thing is don't so smoothly, everyday that we don't see it. But is part of a director/cinematographer's box of tools. If you don't choose to follow it, both people in a conversation will appear to facing in the same direction, rather than toward each other. There are many and this is one of them. Learn the rest and you will be surprised at the black art.

Short version.

If you hare shooting a scene with two people talking to each other, there is an imaginary line running between them. You can cover both actors from any angle you like as long as you stay on one side of the line for the entire scene. If you cross the line then the shot taken from the angle runs the risk of misleading the audience and making it appear that the two actors are facing in the same direction or looking into space instead of facing each other.

Like all rules in film-making it's merely an acknowledgement of cause and effect. The effect of crossing the line, depending on context or intent, can be detrimental or it could be desirable. It's the artist's choice. They make their choices based on the experience they want the audience to have. Not what they expect the audience to be insulted by or otherwise.


Glasgow's FOREMOST authority Italics = irony. Infer the opposite please.

The movie and our understanding of the spacial relationships of the people in them are not two complimentary concepts.

I don't like the rule and fact thing, and I think you contradict yourself. Bunuel played with it in Tristana for example, therefore making it complimentary to the purpose of the film. And isn't it more or less what the french new wave was all about? Transgression of aspects which weren't even conceived as choices but as obligations to the craft?

Everything can be transgressed with the intention to hold an artistic statement or to give a new meaning to a scene. There are no obligatory physical and or mechanical restrictions for artists to follow in any form of art. The only thing required is someone experiencing the art, art being communication in the end.

Later that day, after tea... I died, suddenly.

I don't mean it's a fact as opposed to a rule. It's just that by calling it a rule you acknoweldge a particular. cause and possible effect. By breeaking the rule you do the same thing.

Bunuel played with the fact that breaking the imaginary line can lead to ambiguity in spatial relationships (it's not the only factor). By defying that rule he is still acknowledging a certain fact.

There are no obligatory physical and or mechanical restrictions for artists to follow in any form of art.

Absolutely. That's why I don't understand the need to be pro or anti, or to take insult at someone else's choice to observe the "rule" because they feel it's complimpentary to the purpose of their film.

There is no governing body for enforcing movie "rules", except the artists themselves.


Glasgow's FOREMOST authority Italics = irony. Infer the opposite please.

Gotcha

Later that day, after tea... I died, suddenly.