What up folks? Jordy here for cinecom.net! And welcome to Creative Tuesday.
But the 180° rule might not sound that creative,
as it's a rule you have to follow.
However the cool thing is that we can actually play with this rule...
...and even break it once we understand how it works.
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Now, that 180° rule helps us with orientating or disorientating the audience.
First we have to understand what orientation for the audience means.
When we're out for a shoot on a certain location, we know how that location looks.
We have an idea of space and where the different objects are located within that space.
If you would see a picture of one of those objects,
we instantly know where that object stood.
But what if you saw that picture before you've even went to that location?
Well, then you don't really know where that object it's positioned in that space.
In other words, you are disorientated.
And the same things happens when you're going to shoot a video on any location.
If you're going to show that video to an audience who hasn't been there...
...or doesn't know the location like you do,
then they are more likely to get disoriented.
And there's where the 180° rule comes in.
We have a person walking from point A to point B.
Now you could make several shots of that.
We start off with a long shot and then perhaps cut to a medium shot.
Now in the example here I broke that 180° rule.
In the first shot Kim was walking from left to right.
But in the second shot she's walking now from right to left.
The audience would feel like she has turned around in between
and now walking back from where she came from.
But in reality, Kim was just walking in one straight line.
And that line that she walks on is an axis or a divider.
In shot A I had my camera on the bottom of this line,
and in shot B, I crossed that line,
which made it appear on camera like she has suddenly turned around.
The idea of the 180° rule is that you have to pick a side...
...and stay on that side.
You have an area of 180° in which you can place your camera.
And Whenever you stay in that area, and it doesn't matter which kind of shot you take,
your subject will always walk to the same direction in your frame.
And this is something very important to be conscious about.
It's very frustrating for the audience if they get disorientated.
And even if you have written your story that your character has turned around,
it's still best to actually show your character turning around.
When you don't do that, it's considered as a mistake by the audience.
Now, this axis or divider is not only there when you have a walking subject.
Let’s say that you have two people talking to each other.
Here the divider is between your characters.
Draw an invisible line between them and choose a side.
One of your characters will look to the right side of the frame,
and the other one to the left side of the frame.
This way the audience knows that they stand in front of each other.
If I would cross that line, the two characters would look at the same side of the framing,
making it appear as they would stand next to each other,
even though they stand in front of each other.
And the same thing implies when you have someone working at a computer.
The invisible line lays where your character is looking at,
the computer screen.
Pick a side and make all your shots from that angle.
Now we've constantly been talking about orientating the audience.
What we're actually doing, is making it easy for the audience.
Making their brains don't have to process that much,
it's just automatic pilot.
So if we would cross that line all the time,
our brains will constantly want to figure out where the objects or characters in that space are at.
So it takes a little longer to see what's going on.
And there're two reasons how we can use that to our advantage.
The first one is to create that certain atmosphere.
If you have two people talking to each other about a certain...
...strategy that they have to come up with quickly,
you could constantly cross that line.
The characters don't have much time, they need to come up with a solution quick.
So we'll make sure that things go wrong,
so that the audience is sitting in their chairs and thinking: Come on! Faster!
So, by making it even harder for them to process where the subjects are in that space,
by breaking the 180° rule, you only emphasise that feeling.
And the second reason why you should break this rule is to cover up mistakes.
When you are shooting a fight scene, you're of course not really hitting each other,
but you are pretending.
Since it's an action scene, your camera work can be a little more rough too.
But also your orientation.
By crossing the 180° line,
it takes more time for your brain to process what's going on in the shot.
When your character is not actually touching her opponent,
your brain might miss that and don't realize how fake it is.
And this is actually one of the lessons from our DSLR filmmaking course.
More information about this complete online training can be found...
...in the description below.
Thank you all so much for watching,
and stay creative!
Hi guys. Do you know what time it almost is?
It's almost Christmas time! It's my favorite time of the year.
Look at this! We have some decorations up in the window,
and over here, look at this! Look at this!
We have a snow ball!
Cool!
Yannick! Yannick, what do you think?
Yannick doesn't like Christmas.