180° rule

During any filming process, the 180° rule is a guideline that states 2 characters/objects should always be on the same side of the screen. In order to do this, there is an imaginary line that the camera should never cross. If the camera does cross the axis then its called 'crossing the line'. A new shot from the opposite side of the line is called a 'reverse angle'.

Using this picture as an example, I can explain the rule visually. The camera is placed on the green side of the image. This means the orange man is facing right, and the blue guy is facing left. Now for the duration of this shot the camera should never cross the dotted line and enter the red section. If this happened then as you can see on the picture, it would appear to switch the two around making the blue man face right, and the orange man face left. This would be the reverse angle. If this happened it would disorientate the viewer and break the flow of the scene.

An example where the 180° rule has come in to play is the 1925 Drama, 'The Big Parade'. In a few scenes leading up to the big battle, the American troops are shown marching from left to right and the Germans are shown marching from right to left. However, after the battle when all the troops are staggering back home, the Americans are staggering home right to left whilst the Germans are going left to right. As you can imagine, this would cause confusion for the audience as the troops appear to be going home, in the opposite direction from where they first came. This is all because the camera crossed the line and it became a reverse angle.

Our Media group had come across this problem before in the thriller we made. Without realising we accidentally crossed the line by an inch or two. Luckily for us this wasn't a major issue as the shot didn't last long and as it wasn't too far in to the reverse angle, it wasn't all that noticable. We were worried as we were doing a running scene at that point so we didn't want it to appear he was running from right to left, and then in one shot, left to right. As the shot wasn't to far in to the reverse angle and it was a high angle, you really didn't notice it unless it was point out to you. Although we got away with it the first time round, we learnt that we have to take extra care and plan out all shots down to the exact detail as this time we might not get as lucky with our shot.