From the course: Creating a Short Film: 08 Editing

Understanding the 180-degree line - Premiere Pro Tutorial

From the course: Creating a Short Film: 08 Editing

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Understanding the 180-degree line

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- [Instructor] So now that we understand screen direction and eyelines, it's time to talk about the real underlying principle that makes all these other principles work, and that's the 180 degree line. Now, we previously talked about this concept extensively in both the course on directing and in the previous course on cinematography, so consult those courses for further explanation. But essentially, this concept says that when a character interacts with an object or another character, an imaginary line is drawn between them. And once you film on one side of this line, you kinda have to stay on that side of the line. This is to help viewers maintain the sense of the world that they're only seeing bits and pieces of. So looking at an example from the cinematography course, if we have two characters talking, and we put a camera on each character on the same side of the line, then when we cut to their reverses, their eyelines match and all is right with the world. But if we take one of the cameras and cross the line, then when we cut back and forth between these cameras, the characters look like they're both talking in the same direction, or at least looking in the same direction, and that's not good. Now, respecting the 180 degree line is definitely a job for the cinematographer, of course. And for a simple scene that was shot by a decent cinematographer, this probably isn't something you have to worry about. But as characters move around the scene, there might be times where the line is crossed, and you can't use certain shots without things feeling a little weird. And as we've talked about a lot in this chapter, sometimes pieces are removed and editors have to surgically remove scenes or lines of dialogue, and do so seamlessly. So understanding and respecting the line is critically important for an editor. Remember that the line is created when characters interact with or even look at other objects or characters. So this is a constant issue in film editing. Next we'll look at ways to tactfully cross the 180 line without causing problems.

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