What I learnt in my first Film Studies lesson

My first lesson

For our first Film Studies lesson, my class was essentially thrown into the deep end when it came to the introduction to film making as we had to write a 30 second script then film it with little prompt or direction. In many ways this was a good thing to start with as this allowed us to use our creative flair to make something interesting, or in my case I struggled to get any ideas and resorted to Googling terrible joke and trying to find one that didn't want to make me die from cringing and use it as my punchline to try and build a script around that. During the lesson we learnt 2 key things that helped us to make our terribly improvised scripts look somewhat decent from the viewer's perspective, these were: The 180-degree rule and Match on action.

180-degree rule:

File:180_degree_rule.svg
In film making, the 180-degree rule is a basic guideline that is used in conversations between a character and another character or object within a scene. This is used to make the scene look believable and to show the viewer that the two characters are having a genuine conversation and it hasn't been filmed multiple times or edited to make it perfect.

An imaginary line called the axis connects the characters, and by keeping the camera on one side of line for every shot, it shows that the characters are opposite each other instead of next to each other. The first character is always frame right of the second character, who then is always frame left of the first. If the camera was to pass the axis it would be called crossing the line or jumping the line; breaking the 180-degree rule and possibly confusing the viewer as it could be seen as both the characters in the scene are talking to someone else instead of each other. The 180-degree rule enables the audience to visually connect with the characters on-screen as the can understand the scene and relate it to their lives.

Match on action:                                                                  

Match on action or cutting on action refers to the film editing and video editing techniques where once and scene has been filmed, the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches the initial shot's first action. The most common example of this in film making is when a character is walking to a door and is reaching for the door handle, the scene would cut to a shot of the door opening from the other side and the character walking through. Although the two different shots may have been shot a long time after each other, the use of clever editing makes the whole sequence appear to be continuous when watching the edited version of the film. 

By having the actor repeat the movement multiple times the editor is able to create a visual bridge, which distracts the viewer from noticing the cut between both of the scenes or any slight continuity error between the two shots for example the actor using different hands to open the door or walking in on a different foot from the initial shot, however it is crucial to have the actor match the screen direction in the first shot as the second to avoid any scrutiny from anyone who is a very vigilant viewer or general film enthusiast. If any simple mistakes but the actor or the editor are noticed, it can potentially ruin someones film watching experience.

This is an example of match on action: TeQt3o.gif 

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