Transcripts
1. Welcome: This is an introductory
course for people interested in becoming
directors of photography. Today, I'm going to
explain 180 degree rule. It's the most
important rule that tells you where you
should put the camera. Hi, I'm periods. When I was making my first
movies 18 years ago, I was my own cinematographer, editor and sometimes an actor. Nowadays, I'm very fortunate to collaborate with
professionals. Over the years, I learned
that your growth as a filmmaker will be much quicker if you'll get
your basics right. That's why I've come up with this series of courses
that are going to teach you the fundamentals of cinematography one by one. This class is all
about 180 degree rule, believe it or not. But there is a default way
of placing the camera in the scene that every professional
cinematographer knows about. It's a rule that is a
basic guideline regarding the on-screen
spatial relationship between the characters
in the scene. So whenever you've heard on a film set something
about the axis of action, you can be sure
that it's probably the camera department discussing
where to put the camera. This rule is a useful
tool in building the sense of space in your
audience imagination. And as always, I'm
going to analyze example scenes from my
award winning film. So you can see the
application of this old-school rule in
a modern day, seen them. So hopefully, see
you in the class.
2. 180-degree Rule: Thank you for taking my class. Now, there are rules about where the camera can be placed
and how to cover the scene. By covering the scene, I mean, shooting the scene from
different camera angles. In most cases you
are going to cover the scene with a few of those. So this 180 degree rule determines the default
camera angles that you can use in almost every
scenario here in Europe, we call it the rule
of axis of action. Whenever you want to call it, the rule says that there is an invisible line between
two subjects of a scene. You are not allowed to
place the camera in the scene on both
sides of the axis. So if we have two actors
facing each other, the default way of covering
the scene would be to place one camera angle as an
establishing shot here, and then two angles for
the close-ups. Here. You can go with either
side of the axis. So you're supposed to
choose one side of the axis and stick to it
till the end of the scene. This rule is there
to help the audience get their bearings and find
themselves in this space. By the way, this chart
that you've just seen is available
in the guidebook. Be sure to check it out.
3. Geometry Of Human Perception - Example Scene: As always, let's watch an
example seen from my film. This one is from Mother Earth. Let's see if we shorted obeying the 180
degree rule or not. The scene is happening at night, so it's going to be mostly dark. You may need to adjust
brightness on your device. Let's watch and serve others. Moving in and finish
those that are sick. My mom model batches
we have executed, we should play a
view at the shelf. Those meta your mouth. We have the convenience of it. Was that them yesterday
we start moving us used to CJ's pagoda. So you always get stuck. You're after dummy
variable integral. So you've seen the scene, and now let's look at
the chart where you can see how we stage of the
camera in the scene. First, there is an
establishing shot. This is a scene in the
middle of the movie, so the audience have
already seen the room. Therefore, we don't have to introduce this space
with a wide shot. We focused on the boy
entering through the window. At that point, there are
no axis of action because the boys attention isn't focused and you
are in particular, when the father reveals Himself, the establishing shot becomes a medium shot of the Father. The axis of action is created when the boy turns around
to look at the father, the camera is on the
left side of the boy. Father is looking at the
boy from left to right. When we cut to the
close-up of the boy, he's looking from the
right to the left, is a textbook example of
application of 180 degree rule. Now we see the Father again from the first
camera position. And something interesting
is going to happen. We are going to change
side of the axis. When the father
approaches the boy, he sees the wound on his neck. The further steps on
the other side of axis and therefore
changes the direction. The camera is now on the
other side of the axis. Now the father is looking at
the boy, right, the left. Now it's time to transition
to the boys close-up. Let's try to imagine how the correct shot is
going to look like. If you recall, is left to
right, then you're correct. As you can see, you can change
the axis during the shot, but it has to happen on camera. Your audience has to see that
change in the direction. So changing the axis
during the scene is a great way of expressing
the turning points. That was the purpose of
this simple staging idea. So remember that at
anytime in the scene that a character is surprised by
unexpected turn of events, you can bump that
up by directing the actor to change the axis. Remember that if you want
to use this technique, it should be
provoked by an actor stepping on the
other side of axis. In this scene, the pretext for the father to change the
axis was very obvious. He saw that his son is wounded and he moved to the side
to examine the wound.
4. Rules Are There To Be Broken: Now, as I said before, 180 degree rule is there
to help the audience to find themselves in the space so they know what's going on. But even if you make an occasional mistake is not
going to ruin your movie. Remember that it's the overall visual
style is what matters. I don't want to do really
get caught up in it. It just one of the tools
of expressing your vision. Because perception of
modern audience is so good, they don't really need the
proper use of access anymore. So you can experiment, e.g. the film, normal
people was made with the intention of breaking
180 degree rule. When we were making this film, we decided to use
handheld camera that was treated like an active participant
of the action. When we were shooting the film, my DOP was literally walking with the camera
between the actors. However, when you decide
to break 180 degree rule, you have to be
consistent about it. You should be breaking the
rule in the whole film. That way it becomes part
of your storytelling. Now, let's see couple
of scenes where we broke the axis of action
in normal people. Which color? Stephanie, prison guards. Suddenly. He's never been since this is because it's tough
to come to them. The creation of the transport
GVHD chances to Dan Rather. I've said it's
about exam threats, push. You mostly. Do the
moment as you validity. Does it mean? So the purpose of butchering
the 180 degree rule was to focus the
audience's attention on the emotions of the actors, not the space around them. I wanted to give it, you know, this raw flavor like
in the documentary. The problem was that
we didn't want to completely redesigned from
the eye candy of shower, shallow depth of field, and the colors that are
similar to the film stock. Even though we were
shooting it on Red camera, we were successful in
creating the image that has this documentary feel. And it's all thanks to consistent breaking
of 180 degree rule. To really hammer this home. All the rules are
there to be broken. In your class project. I'm going to give you
the scene where we made a mistake
regarding the axis. It's still hard to find
since the scene works. And as an audience member, you're not going to be
confused about this space.
5. Class Projects: Zopa. Okay, in this scene, there is a minor
mistake with the axis. It doesn't disrupt
the scene in any way. But I want you to examine
the scene regarding 180 degree rule and find the shot that
should be different. I also want you to draw roughly how this particular
chart should look like. You don't have to draw it
in a very detailed manner. You can just draw the
figures of characters symbolically and mark where
the character is looking, whether he's looking left
to right or right to left. So this was your
first class project. Now let's talk about your
second and main class project. So begin by finding a dialogue scene from a
Hollywood film on YouTube. It's very common
that you can find fragments of movies
on YouTube nowadays. Examined the scene in
terms of 180 degree rule, then draw the camera
locations, the axis, or on the chart
that is similar to the ones you saw in this course. Your project is to check if filmmakers obeyed 180
degree rule or not. I hope you'll post your
work in Project Gallery. Be sure to be submitted with the link to the scene so
others can watch it as well. I will personally give feedback to every project
that is submitted. And I'll be posting my
own project as well.
6. Class project 1 explained. Watch me compleate the first class project.: This is an update
to this course. I noticed that since the
release of my course, no one really tried
to do the project, even though you guys
leave positive reviews, no one took the time to
follow up with the homework. Remember that? If you'll post your project,
I'll give feedback. And that's how we can all
learn as a community. But if you don't want to complete the project
on your own, which is fair enough. You can go ahead and
watch this lesson where I'm going to complete
the project right now. Now we're going to go
through the seam together. I have my clip from
the film here, and right here, we have this
scheme that I have prepared. So we can see clearly from above what are the shots that we are talking about and what are the exact axis that
we are talking about. So first, let's begin
with this shot. It's a medium shot of
the boy eating soup. So the axis are established here because it's over the
shoulder. As you can see here. We see the father's shoulder
here and here is the boy. So he is not looking
at the father. But we know that this
is from left to right. That he should be looking
from left to right. And then conversely, the father will be looking
from right to left. So let's play the clip. As you have seen, he looked at the father and
he's not eating. He's waiting for the
father to finish his food. Now the boy left the frame. So when the boy
was sitting here, the father would be looking at him from the right
to the left, right. So this is this exact
setup on a scheme. You have the axis
here and you have to camera angles from the
same side of the axis. This is a very basic setup. Nothing special, everything
according to the textbook. So let's move forward and
let's see what's going on. So even though the
boy left the frame and the father was looking
at him left to right. Then he comes back
to the frame and the father is looking at him right to left in exactly the same way
when we began the scene. And then we cut back to the camera angle that
we have seen before. It's the camera
angle on the boy. Even though the boy went here and change the direction
for a little moment, since we haven't moved the cameras and the boy came
back where he came from. The axis haven't changed. Okay, let's move forward. The boy is eating. The father is getting anxious, but he doesn't say anything. And now he stands up and walks towards the
cupboard to dress up. Okay, So this is an interesting moment
because we moved the camera, but in this particular
shot on the father, the axis haven't changed. Why? Because the father at the
beginning of this shot was looking to the boy,
right to left. And when we move with him, this direction doesn't change. The axis slightly moves in the space, but
it doesn't change. But look at, look at it now. Now, when we go back to
the shroud of the boy, it turns out that it's
on the other side of the axis because x is moved. And now, and now the
problem is that they are both looking right to left. It's the same direction
that the father was looking at the boy a moment ago. So this is exactly
the little mistake I told you about is
very, very subtle. This why we've decided to
leave this camera angle. Because at that point, the audience got
used to this shot. They actually saw it
two times in the scene, therefore, is not a problem. It's not going to
produce any confusion. But if we would
like to be really true to the rule of
180 degree rule, what we should do is instead of using this camera
angle, we should. Do this camera angle. If we wanted to shoot the boy from the
perspective of the Father, maybe even do over the shoulder. Right? Because in this situation, the boy would be
looking left to right. In this camera setup, the boy is looking
right to left. Now what I'm going to do is
use Microsoft paints to paint the frame of the boy looking at the father from the
perspective of the father. So here is the shoulder
of the Father. I'm going to speed up the recording of me
drawing the storyboard. So this is how we we
would see this situation. This is by the way, the head of the Father and His shoulder. So but in this shot, we would see the boy looking left to right and the father would be
looking right, the left. This shot on our scheme, it would be here. And the camera is looking
from this direction. And we see a little bit of
the Father and the table. This is exactly what you see. This is maybe not the
best drawing ever, but it kind of does this job. We see exactly how this
shot would look like. And I am going to publish this, even though it's a horrific
preview of my drawing skills. But it's enough. I draw storyboards
like this all the time and everybody on the set knows exactly
what's going on. Now, since I'm talking
about this scene, let's talk about the rest
of the scene as well. Let's analyze the axis in
the scene till the end. Okay, So this is the shot
that should be different. As you can see, the father
is getting dressed. He's looking right, the left. The boy was also looking
right, the left. So it's a mistake. Then the father leaves the frame and the
camera is panning to find the boy in the setup
that we already seen before. So let's see what
happened on the skin. This is the Father
working for his apron. He's getting dressed, right? He moves past the camera. The camera is going
back to our boy. And then we can, we can come back to
our original setup. Being here. Right? Now, the logical
thing to do would be to come back to the other side of the axis to show the father and the boy. Okay. Yeah. Now you may ask, why wouldn't I use the previous
shot, this camera angle? I remember that during the realization of the
scene during the shooting, I decided that I needed an angle that would show the father
being there in the background. I needed him here with with the knives because I needed
to show that this boy is under pressure and there isn't a better way of showing
that somebody is under pressure when someone bigger is behind them
with a few knives, The boy is under
pressure, he breaks. He stands up and we come
back to the original setup. And this is how we are showing that he is changing
to help his father. He's going there. And we come back to
the original setup. And now we come back to this camera angle is just tilted up to show
the father, right? And everything works. We're still on the
same side of the axis. The father will be looking, as you can see, left to right. And whenever we will
cut to the boy, he's going to look
at the father, right, the left, or look
directly into the camera. These are the two
options that we have. Now, you might be surprised that I've just
said that he might be looking directly into the
camera or right to left. We have these two options
because in this shot, which is medium full shot, you can't really
tell whether he's looking directly into the camera or a little bit
on the left side, which means right to left. The shot is too wide for
the audience to be sure. Therefore, by leaving more space on the left side of
the composition, me and my cinematographer, we are emphasizing that
he's looking right to left. This composition
kinds of supports the idea that he's
looking right, the left. Okay, so this was it, it was the first class project. Now, in the next lesson, we are going to go through
the main class project. See you there.
7. Main class project explained. Watch me compleate the main class project!: Now, your main project was to find a dialogue
scene here on YouTube and analyse the scene regarding the axis of
action and 180 degree rule. So what I did is I wrote
dialogue scene clip, and this is what
the YouTube found. So as it's like a fifth choice was to
the Devil Wears Prada. And when I saw Meryl Streep
here on the thumbnail, I decided to analyze this scene. So we're going to go
ahead and play this. I'm also playing this without the sound. It doesn't matter. We are analyzing it
regarding 180 degree rule. So let's begin. Anne Hathaway is
coming into the space, we see Meryl Streep. Oh, interesting thing that they did because they made a
little editing error, because you're not supposed
to jump into the axis. It's a minor mistake, but let's just, I'm going
to draw it for you. So this is Meryl Streep
and this is Anne Hathaway. So the, this is the
axis of action, right? And we've begun by filming Anne Hathaway
walking into the room. So we begin somewhere here. And the camera moved a little
bit to show Meryl Streep. And at the moment where
Meryl Streep was revealed, the axis of action have
been created, right? And we are here. Now. We will see if they're going to respect
the axis of action. We don't know that yet. But what they did wrong was that from the shot of Meryl
Streep and Anne Hathaway, which was made somewhere from here because we
clearly you could see the over the shoulder of
of Anne Hathaway, Right? They conversed directly into the clean shot of Meryl Streep. And you're not
supposed to do that. The ideal situation
would be to cut on the other camera angle
from somewhere here. And if they are obeying
the rule of 180 degrees, they probably have
this kind of shot. But what they
decided to do is to show Meryl Streep
in a clean shot. It's a minor thing. I think that the,
in modern days, you can do it called jumping
through the axis of action, or jumping on the axis of action because you don't
change the direction. And it's considered a
little minor mistake. Anyway, let's move forward. We have a clean shot
of Meryl Streep. And what I would
add is that so far we are on the same side
of the axis of action. We are here. So Anne Hathaway is looking at Meryl Streep is looking
from right to left. And Meryl Streep is looking
from left to right. Everything is in order now. Again, after the shot,
it's still preserved. Meryl Streep is looking left to right and unhealthy way is
looking right, the left. Everything is in order. So let's look at the scene
and see what's going on. The power struggle
is very obvious because Meryl Streep
is sitting at her desk and Anne Hathaway
is standing in front of her. So far. They are very correct
about 180 degree rule. The app is a very simple
setup, yet very effective. We can see clearly that Hathaway is the least important one
in this power dynamic. You now n is basically two
very simple setups here. I've counted like four
different cameras setups. Okay, Now this is
interesting because the camera is on
Dali and they wanted to emphasize that she noticed something about n
hat ways behavior. So this Dali to the
character is an emphasis of this particular reaction that
was displayed by the actor. And this is how the director and cinematographer wanted to draw the attention of the audience for this
particular moment. So now, either this
is going to be played out in the later part of the scene and the scene
is going to change, or this scene is not
going to change. And this little moment will
have an impact on the future of Meryl Streep character and
Anne Hathaway is character. I don't know what's
going to happen. I never seen this movie, although I heard about
this movie is one of the favorite movies of the producer that I
used to work with. Okay, So they have
been interrupted. So regarding the axis, nothing really changed since
the beginning of the scene, the axis are exactly the same because Anne
Hathaway is looking at Meryl Streep from
right to left and Meryl Streep is looking at and half the way left to right, and it doesn't change till
the end of the scene. Also, the characters
don't switch places. So is the simplest setup
that you can imagine. I counted to camera angles. And in those two camera angles, you would have two shots
per each character. Which means that Anne
Hathaway got one wider shot. N1 close-up. And Meryl Streep also got one wider shot and one close-up. Although this wasn't
really a close up, it was a medium shot. Let's take a look
at these shots. We saw Anne Hathaway
and medium full shot, which was over the
shoulder of Meryl Streep. Anne Hathaway also
got a close-up. By the way, if you're
interested in short sizes, I also have a course about that. It's called Fundamentals
of cinematography. Every shot size explained. Summarizing the whole scene. I would say that we have two
shots for each character. They both got one
establishing shot, which is the wider one. And it's also over the shoulder. And then Anne Hathaway got a 3D close-up and Meryl
Streep got a medium shot. So to finish up my project, I'm going to copy the address of the clip
that I've watched. That way you can find this
clip without a problem. And now I'm going
to add another text where I'm going to
write one rule. Rule. And then I'm going saying, yes, this is all you have
to do to complete this project and have other
people watch it as well. If you're going to complete it, I'm also going to
give you feedback. Just don't forget about this. Actually. If the example is
going to be interesting, I'm going to make
another lesson just by analyzing your setups. That way we can all
learn and benefit from this community of
teachers and students.
8. Whats next?: This is an another update. I'm thrilled to let
you know that I've managed to create the
course I was talking about. I expanded on the
topic of this course in my new class titled
cinematography, the Subtle Art of
camera placement. If you're interested in a more nuanced take
on 180 degree rule, I think you should check it out. I explain there how to change the axis of action or
switch the side of axis of action without causing any confusion to the viewer
how to do it properly. I highly recommend it
because it's much more detailed and it has
more examples, scenes. And now, if you're interested in how this course fits into
the whole curriculum, please visit my website,
cinema explained. There you can find the whole proposed
order in which you can watch all of my classes. Thank you for watching
and see you soon. Bye bye.