From the course: 2D Animation: Tips and Tricks

Line of action

From the course: 2D Animation: Tips and Tricks

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Line of action

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- [Instructor] I'm always amazed when I see one of the most basic mistakes made in major Hollywood movies and TV shows that a person could make and that's crossing the line, sometimes called the line of action or the line of the camera. Let me show you what that is. So, if we have a character moving toward a direction or speaking to another character we imagine an imaginary line connecting them. So, in this case the figure is moving from left to right along this imaginary red line. So, that's the line of action, or sometimes called the line of a camera. So, you do not, unless there's a very good reason to cross that line, you set up your cameras or your storyboard panels on one side or the other. Lets show you what happens when we break this rule. This is the character shot from the A camera and this is him shot from the B camera. Now imagine that I cut from one to the other and back again this is the kind of effect you're going to get. Which way is he running? You can't even tell. When this is done often enough you simply lose track of the action. You can't follow who is moving where or who is talking to whom. So, the solution is pick a side. Just pick one side and stick to it, and you can get a vast number of camera angles from one side or the other. So here's a more complex example. This is from my storyboard course, which if you want to follow this kind of thing in more detail there's plenty of material there on this. But, what I did was, I set up a robot and our hero and again, the red line is the line of action, the A side is the flat side, which is the crated landscape, on the B side is the city. On the left collum you see what the green frames. Four different shots taken from the A camera or the right side, four different shots taken from the B camera. Were I to cut between these different shots I would just choose one or the other. Pick one and live with it. So, whichever one you think looks best. I think the one with the ruined city looks best because it's got a ruined city in it. But, these are all really great choices of shots I mean, you have so many choices you can cut between from this side here, again you have all these different angles from low to high, down shots, over the shoulder shots. It's not as though you're limited in anyway by being stuck on one side or the other of the line. And again, a good example. If you stay on one side of the line, then your character will be on one side of the screen from shot to shot. The hero will be on the left, the robot on the right, and from cut to cut to cut we can follow easily what's going on. These are all great transitions from here, to here, to there. They're easy to follow. If I crossed the line look what happens. Look at the human on the left, and now he turns into a robot. And if we go back again and do that often enough it will really confuse the audience. Now we're on one side of the line and as you can see eight different shots, great variety of camera angles, we can just have the hero by himself, we have the robot by himself talking to the hero, we can have these dramatic upshots So again, pick a side and stick to and then as we cut from one to the other these look great.

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