The 180 Degree “Rule” and Why You Shouldn’t Care
Did you break the “180 Degree Rule” when you shot your exercise “50 Ways to Shoot My Daughter Doing Homework”? Not that it matters because the video looks great, but did you?
–Sohail
The 180 Degree “rule” suggests that you must keep all your cameras on the same side of an imaginary line between you and your actors when shooting. Imagine a circle split in half– the cameras go on one side of the split, the action on the other– hence, 180 degrees. If you “cross the line” with your cameras, the audience may be confused when characters appear to move suddenly from the right to left side of the screen.
This “rule” is left over from days of yore. In the early twentieth century, when cinema was new, audiences were easily confused by film language. They needed dissolves to understand passage of time, wavy wipes and twinkly music to clarify that a character was dreaming, and long establishing sequences so audiences knew where they were. Our modern film language (witness, for example, the stunningly layered digital transitions in The Life of Pi) would have confused the hell out of them.
Times have changed. It’s harder to confuse audiences now, and more sudden moves work on screen. While which side of the line you’re on is still something to consider when shooting coverage in narrative film and TV, it’s not the “rule” it once was– see Tarantino, Paul Greengrass, and many others for examples of how to break it.
I generally don’t worry about it at all in documentary, most commercials, or reality TV.
So, yes– I WAAAYY broke the 180 degree “rule” while shooting this exercise, and you should too when you try it.
