Wikipedia has a long explanation of this: ?url? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180_degree_rule?/url?

It's bad to break because it confuses the audience.

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180 in a nutshell. You shoot a scene so that Jack and Jill are talking. Jack is always looking to the right towards Jill. Jill is looking to the left towards Jack. If you suddenly shoot a shot that shows only Jack and he's looking to the right in that shot it will look like he's not looking at Jill and will disorient the audience (even if he really is still looking at her). The Audience can't see Jill and we see him looking in what looks like a different direction. If that same shot included Jill as well we wouldn't be confused.

Breaking the 180 is common these days because camera movement is the big thing and if the camera is moving the audience will not instantly think a new framing means anything other than a fast cut. Audiences are getting more sophisticated and reality tv doesn't follow these rules anyway. I suspect in 10 years we'll only hear about 180 in film history classes.

So depending upon the style the director is going for the 180 can be very important or tossed aside.

RJSchwarz

hello

im still a little confused.
is it, that in brave heart, the goodie army charges from the left side of the screen and the badie army charges from the right side of the screen, so with quick shots we can immidiatly tell who is who.

OR

is it that the camera never looks at where it just was

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Jack is always looking to the right towards Jill. Jill is looking to the left towards Jack. If you suddenly shoot a shot that shows only Jack and he's looking to the right in that shot it will look like he's not looking at Jill and will disorient the audience (even if he really is still looking at her).

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That makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

If you ever find out you've done this... You may be able to utilize a cutaway to ease the confusion.

Go here: www.filmmakingstuff.com

Pondweed, I can't speak specifically to Braveheart. I would assume they did it that way but the fact that half the fighters were wearing kilts and blue-facepaint really helped prevent confusion once the two sides mixed up into one big melee.

If you read old screenplays. like the SEAHAWK or ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD they specifically state screen directions to help prevent the confusion.

RJSchwarz

Shameless self-promotion, but I made a little short video that explains the 180 degree rule: http://www.beta.thesubstream.com/node/112

I went to film school for seven years and worked as a grip after that, and I still end up going "wait, crap, what... crap" on set half the time trying to keep the line straight. Good luck!

www.thesubstream.com

A little off topic, but I tend to storyboard my work pretty hard because I don't have the discipline or available thought process on set to think about conforming to all these rules (there are dozens of them.) I went to film school, so I work on eye-line matches and stuff like that, but I also like to have someone who is untrained read my storyboards before I get on set.

My drawings are terrible, so if they are able to identify what is going on from panel-to-panel without me explaining too much, I am relatively satisfied (same goes for treatments, scripts, outlines; if an average movie-goer can keep up with your pre-prod materials, even without fully understanding the format of the material, odds are they will get your movie.) In truth, these rules of thumb allow the audience to follow the action and dialogue without having to constantly think, "wait, who was that? Where did that come from?" That way they can absorb as much story as possible without using their brains.

Also, a quick out for the 180 degree rule is to move your camera across the line between your two subjects, probably outside them, so the audience can see the screen direction change.

http://mitchmclachlan.blogspot.com/

180 is a very confusing topic, and it gets even trickier when you start thinking about z-depth and multiple eyelines.

I prefer to think of it in terms of framing: if you're cutting for continuity between two shots, all the characters (or cars, or pretty much anything else with a front and back) should be facing to the same side of the frame in both shots (if Bob is facing frame left in shot A, he should also be facing frame left in shot B). This rule is especially important to keep in mind when working with objects or people in continuous forward motion. It is also acceptable for the character to be directly on-axis with the camera. Characters can change frame orientation if they actually physically move themselves, or if indicated by a camera movement rather than a cut. This can be cheated a bit if you are using a match-action cut, which will distract from the change in frame orientation.

There are, of course, exceptions.

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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com

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180 is a very confusing topic, and it gets even trickier when you start thinking about z-depth and multiple eyelines.

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Okay, Now you've thrown a completly new term at me. What "z-depth"?

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

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Okay, Now you've thrown a completly new term at me. What "z-depth"?

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z-depth just refers to the distance between the subject and the lens. Interesting shots often have multiple subjects with varying z-depth, so you might have one character close to the lens and one farther away, for instance.

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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com