Yeah, I have to create a 1:30 film (I'm gonna shoot freestyle mountainbiking) that takes advantage of the stage line and crosses it using the nuetral zone for film class.

What exactly does this mean?

Thanks,

mike

Doesn't your film class have a textbook?

Difficult to explain without a diagram... but imagine a simple scene wit two people facing one another and talking. John is on the left, Marsha on the right. The camera is showing both of them in the same shot.

Draw a line between John and Marsha. This is "The Line" that is normally not crossed. (Notice I didn't say never).

The camera is free to move around, anywhere on the side of the line that will keep John on the "left" and Marsha on the "Right".

If you suddenly cross the line in the middle of the dialogue, it will appear to the view that suddenly, John and Marsha have magically switched places.

This can be confusing. Which might, or might not be an effect you want to convery.

Hi Michael,

It refers to the fact that you should film the 'action' in no more than a 180 arc in front of you. The reason being is that the viewer will become disoriented as to direction of the action if you exceed this limit. The best example of this I can think of is when you watch say, football on TV. The cameras are placed on one side of the field and are kept there for the duration of the telecast. That way, you the viewer can see the change of direction on the playing field at the end of each quarter or say if a ball is intercepted. If they were to keep jumping back and forth with cameras on both sides, you would be disoriented. You'll only see those reverse angle shots during replay or isolation shots such as a player's facial expression.

You'll notice the same with auto racing. The camera could be placed in the center field and simply follow the cars around the track in a circle. That's not done because it would violate the 180 rule.

To sum it up, this 180 line is for giving you, the viewer, a directional reference when given the limited peripheral view afforded by the camera.

Hope this clears it up for you.

regards,

-gb-

Another way to illustrate this, if you're a football fan.

Have you noticed that the main coverage cameras are on one side of the stadium? That is, the left-to-right action retains its orientation. (Referees' penalty indications by hand would be a bit chaotic otherwise, not to mention the viewers' orientation.)

Same basic principle. Screw it up in your school project and you'll learn it well.

<<imagine a simple scene wit two people facing one another and talking. John is on the left, Marsha on the right. The camera is showing both of them in the same shot.

Draw a line between John and Marsha. This is "The Line" that is normally not crossed. (Notice I didn't say never).

The camera is free to move around, anywhere on the side of the line that will keep John on the "left" and Marsha on the "Right". >>


Richard, although your conclusion is correct, I think your placement of the line may need rethinking. From the camera's perspective in the master shot, the line should be drawn between the camera and the two principals (not between the principals). So now it is easy to see how you can roam around anywhere on your side of the line without problems, as John will always stay on the left and Marsha on the right.

The easy way to think of it is to compare it to an actual stage production. The master shot becomes an audience member; the edge of the stage (proscenium) is the line. You can walk around the orchestra pit, but you can't hop up onto stage as that will cross the line.

That's the most basic form. It can get pretty complicated when you start considering three people standing in a triangle, or moving masters that cross the line, or actors rearranging themselves etc. A good book on blocking should illuminate things. Making diagrams helps to keep everyone "honest".

Now: these days, you're likely to see just as many examples of line crosses than not in contemporary filmmaking. I personally think it's important to know the "rules" before you choose to break them rather than dismiss the whole concept as uncool. Maintaining screen direction helps the audience understand where the actors are in relation to each other; occasionally I have seen examples where screen direction is not observed and suddenly it appears that characters are looking at different people than you think they are, which can be confusing.

Charles,

"Between" is the word that tripped me. I should have said "Connecting". Between could be construed as "dividing".

I meant the image you described, of course. I did say it was hard without a diagram!

One thing I haven't heard anyone say yet is that if someone looks somewhere else, a new line can be created. Let's say that John is looking at Marsha, but then that whore Suzie, who John's been sneaking around with, comes into the room, and John looks at her, a new "line" is created connecting John and Suzie. You can now move the camera anywhere on the appropriate side of THAT line. The appropriate side would be determined, most likely, by which direction John has to look, in the original setup, to see Suzie. Dig?


A book that beats this topic like a dead horse, and then chops up the horse and beats the chopped up horse-chunks, is "The 5 C's of Cinematography." Some of the info's a little dated, but it'll set you straight.

Oh, so you want to play, huh Josh??!

In that instance, you could certainly create a new line, or you can maintain the original one depending on how far John's eyeline to Suzie is compared to Marsha. You can simply add Suzie into the equation, so that John looks close right to Marsha and far right to Suzie, Marsha looks close left to John and far left to Suzie, and Suzie splits her looks left to John and right to Marsha.

Where it gets tricky is if you instead decide to create that new line so that John looks close right to Suzie and Suzie looks close left to John. But what happens if Marsha pipes up? John would likely have to look on the other side of the lens to her, in other words to the left, and Suzie would look to her right. And now you need a new angle on Marsha that requires her to split her looks, right to John and left to Suzie.

And where it gets REALLY tricky is if you want to shoot over-the-shoulders. To maintain these eyelines, you have to work inside the triangle; over John's left shoulder to Marsha, but over his right shoulder to Suzie.

and on it goes...

Or. . .

You can be really hip and cool and trendy and have a constantly circling dolly/steadicam shot for the entire scene, a la bully. It'll make you hip and dope and whatnot.

Ok Charles...please stop, I'm getting a migraine just reading that post. :-)

-gb-

Also see this thread that talks about the same and links to some
pictures to more clearly illustrate this:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38334

You can cross the line as long as you show the line being crossed with a moving camera, but if the camera is static/stationary, you have to stay behind the line. When I approach a scene, I simply stage my actors in the area that I want them to be in, and then I imagine a plus between them. This plus gives you four possible sides to stick to.

You can certainly check out the Camera 101 article I wrote on this last year that does a very good job of explaining the concept.

Cheers

For what it's worth, about a month ago, I stumbled on the movie "Shane" showing on cable. It was near the end, and I hadn't seen it in a looooong time. There's a fight in the cabin, that spills out into the 'yard' outside. The camera jumps all over the line in this one,... and it works. Kinda.

Good article and great diagrams, Stephen.

If it makes you guys feel better, I've worked for many, many directors who range from needing a little bit of help to needing a lot of help on this issue, and I'm talking folks who are directing network television series and studio features. The responsibility for maintaining screen direction, incidentally, usually falls somewhere between the operator, the DP and the script supervisor; most directors as I indicated will rely on one or more of those folks to do the hard thinking for them on this.

There are certain "sand traps" that are easy to fall in when it comes to screen direction, and after having fallen in them a few times I now hear warning bells going off in my head.

The first I've dubbed the "Friend Zone Debacle", named for a scene that we shot in the first season of "Scrubs". Zach Braff's JD realizes that his relationship with a female character is never going to be romantic, and in a fantasy sequence he walks into a room, the "Friend Zone", that is full of guys who have also been unable to make the transition themselves. We follow him in from behind as he enters the room. On the right side of the frame (Zach's back stays in the center) is Man A, who speaks to him. Man is looking left to Zach. Then Man B on the left side of the frame pipes up; he obviously looks right to Zach. All well and good.

Then we turn around to shoot Zach's closeup. We pull him into the room. He looks at Man A--now wait a second, he has to look left to Man A, and Man A was looking left at him! Same problem with Man B. OK, well then we shoot two different closeups of Zach where we move the camera so that he can look right towards Man A, then swing all the way over to get the left look at Man B. Solved? Nope, the director wants a continuous shot of Zach looking first to Man A and then to Man B to use as a bridge between shots of the other two men. What to do?

We halted shooting to discuss it for a while. It took a long time to explain the issue to everyone who needed to know, and outside of flopping the shots of the two guys (effectively reversing the screen direction), no-one could offer a workable solution other than turning around and re-shooting the shots of the guys, which we didn't have time for because of the relight.

So, what should we have done? The rule of thumb that I developed is this: when you have a character that is splitting looks i.e. looking to either side of the camera, this creates the Master Axis, the line of action off which all other coverage is based. If you don't shoot the shot that includes the split looks first as we didn't, you may be setting yourselves up for disaster unless you think it through. In our case, the shot pushing into the room had a much bigger scope because of all the extras involved, so we considered it the master shot. But it was the closeup of Zach that should have counted first in our calculations.

How I would proceed with this now would be to walk into the room (it helps to be in the actual geography) and line up the shot mentally with Zach's split looks. Then, knowing that we would have to get Man A to look right rather than left, I would have suggested that we shoot Man A's coverage over Zach's left shoulder, then Man B's coverage over Zach's right shoulder. It certainly seems counter-intuitive, but picture this scene as cut together:


1) Follow Zach into room, back of his head is center frame. Man A on the right speaks to him, looking left.

2) Over Zach's left shoulder to closeup of Man A looking right.

3) Close up of Zach looking left to Man A. Then he swings his head to look right at Man B.

4) Over Zach's right shoulder to Man B looking left at him.

And that would have been that.

Between shots 1 and 2 there seems to be a line cross, as Man A's eyeline switches. Shot 1 is actually what I would call a reverse master, a true 180 degree turnaround, which is independent of the line of action. As long as the audience understands the geography of the room and who is were within it, this is perfectly acceptable. In this instance the 1st shot was so wide that the cut is not at all jarring. The true line of action is created in shot 2 and followed throughout.

The "Friend Zone Debacle" went off to editorial and the show was aired with the incorrect screen directions, incidentally, and it works OK--but just OK (and you can see it in all its glory when the first season DVD comes out on May 17th--thank you, Rob Lohman for the heads-up!). The moral of the story again: walk through the scene, think about the screen direction, draw diagrams if you like, create a plan and stick to it and you won't have unpleasant surprises in the edit. It's much better to take 10 minutes to work through beforehand than just to rush in and shoot, you'll regret it later.

Hope this makes sense to all who have slugged through this!

This is a truly instructive thread enlivened by Charles' real-world remarks as a professional camera operator.

There are several books that treat this topic. One of the best I've found for this, and many subjects relating to shot planning and blocking, is Steven Katz's "Film Directing Shot By Shot: Visualizing From Concept to Screen" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0941188108/) It's well worth getting, even if you just love movies but never plan to shoot one.

If you think of what you are shooting as a series of individual motionless shots, rather than as a moving picture, I think the necessity of the line becomes even more clear. The Matrix illustrates this point, I believe, in the series of shots where Neo first dodges bullets.

Monty

to make this discussion more complicated i want to suggest two things:

1. see kurosawa's "rashomon" - the scene in the forest - the triangle with woman, man and toshiro mifune. when they are all siting.
when you check this scene a few times, yo will know everything about stage line. and will know how to manage this with two or more people in the frame.

good. now the second one:

2. in today's editing - in my opinion at least, (and i'm teaching editing in polish film academy) if you are NOT shooting something extremly difficult for understanding for the wiever, forget about stage line. it's not SO important. if the emotions are high, and story is interesting nobody cares for it. (check walter murch's book - "in the blink of an eye")

it's another story of course, if this is an exercise in the film school :)


michael - do not worry so much about it - check "stage coach" by john ford and you will see HOW MANY wrong stage line cuts are made in this CLASSICAL movie which is almost alway reffered as A MUST for editors. (orson welles saw that film 40 times and didn't said a word about wrong stage line cuts!!!)
or
you can check jurassic park (I part) and find some nice cuts/cheats... :)

filip

Thanks to Rob Lohman who provided the clip, I've put the "Friend Zone Debacle" up (http://homepage.mac.com/chupap/Film/iMovieTheater61.html) so you can compare against my notes.

I hadn't seen it in a few years, so it's a little different than I remember, but the issue is still there. I see that we did go ahead and cover ourselves by shooting a separate setup with the "correct" eyeline on Zach; the last shot in the sequence he is now looking right to the other actor instead of left (and you can tell from the background that we moved the camera a few feet to the left to justify this).

Chances are for most viewers, even film-savvy ones, this scene plays just fine. However, as I said, it's best to make these kind of choices knowingly rather than arbitrarily.

Is this "line" you are discussing, the same thing as "breaking the 4th wall"?

Keith,

"The fourth wall" actually comes from theatre conventions. A set would have three visable walls, and the 'fouth' invisible wall is what the audiece is looking through.

When you break the wall in theatre, you go out into, or acknowledge the audience.

In film, that convention is represented by the camera. When you 'break" the wall in film, it's usually done by having the character talk to the camera, as if it were the viewer. The old "moonlighting" episodes did this a lot. Recently, I saw a sitcom do it. The characters were rearranging their living room. They actually moved the sofa that faces the tv (the one that always faces the audience) so that their backs were to the television audience. It was a funny 'insiders' joke to the fact that no one ever enters, leaves or looks in the direction of the set represented by the audience. It was a clever combination of the theatrical and filmic conventions of 'the fourth wall'.

Richard, that's a funny bit! I've grown really tired of sitcoms and their staginess, so it's fun to see the convention played with. Which show was that?

I'm much more of a fan of single-camera comedy, like "Curb Your Enthusiasm". On "Scrubs", even though it was single-camera, we still had the guy's apartment set which inevitably felt like a three-wall sitcom set. Even the creator/executive producer disliked it.

One movie that breaks the fourth wall pretty delightfully is "Trading Places"--both Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd get to do it in that one.