The 180-Degree Rule (Filmmaking 101 - Boot Camp)
Task: Research and understand the 180-degree rule and put together a scene that uses this rule to maximum effect.
The 180-degree rule is a basic guideline, in cinematography, that states the spatial relationship between two characters in a scene. This is done by keeping a camera on one side of an imaginary axis between the two characters, the first character is always on the right-side of the frame of the second character.
The scene me and my group created, using this rule, is a serious conversation between a headmaster and a student named 'A Degree of Trouble'. What actually happens in the scene is Sarah Mitchell, a student, has been called to the headmaster's office as she is in trouble for something, that we do not know yet. Sarah is actually very much innocent and the headmaster has wrongfully accused her of disobeying school rules and misbehaving. It is very much a simple scene but takes the 180-degree rule to its maximum effect, we have set the scene in our studio but have made it look as if it's the headmasters office.
Once we got the initial idea for the scene we then started on a script. What me and my group mainly wanted to do in the scene was make it a comedy rather than a very serious chat between the student and headmaster. The script has many references to classic films that have to do with school, most of the references are John Hughes (1950-2009) films (The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off (all part of The Brat-Pack)) as he popularised coming-of-age teen comedies that had to do with very serious social issues in the '80s era and were usually set in a school environment. We do also reference Harry Potter, as the main setting in those stories is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The comedy definitely bounces off both characters in the scene as the headmaster is a very loud and obnoxious type, as the student is just very confused and questions him for his false, and stolen, information.
Script for 180-Degree Rule Scene
Pages 1 & 2
Pages 3 & 4
Pages 5 & 6
Pages 7 & 8
Roles on Set (First Two Attempts at the 180-Degree Rule)
Cast:
In my opinion, I felt our re-shoot of the film was much better than the original. The original didn't really use the 180-degree rule to its maximum effect and the whole scene was very chaotic and was in quite poor taste. We had a whole part of the scene (as you can see above in the script) where the headmaster believes the student has a bag full of drugs (heroin), which was just plastic, sealable bags containing flour. This did get very messy, by accident, where Nathan, playing the headmaster, goes insane and chucks one of the plastic bags towards the door where the student has left. When the bag had landed on the floor, after smacking off of the door, the bag exploded causing flour to escape from the bag and covering a lot of the floor. This was a mistake that we did use to our advantage as the bag was now open and Nathan thought it would be a funny idea (as this was a comedy) that he should start consuming the bag of heroin once Sarah (Amiliyah) has left the room, as the headmaster has now lost his marbles. Nathan didn't consume any of the flour, but to make it look like he did we had a shot of him spreading the 'heroin' out on the table and putting his whole face into it. Now with flour covering the whole of his face, it looked like the headmaster now had a drug problem and had was dangerously putting this into his system. I was against having this idea in the scene from the beginning as I didn't particularly find it funny and and found it inappropriate. So, when we did our re-shoot we didn't include this into the final cut as we started to find it less humorous and didn't want to make a huge mess again with the flour.
I would say another problem when filming the scene for the first time was it took a while to film, roughly around 4-5 hours that spanned over three days. This was mainly due to problems with cameras, microphones not picking sound up well enough, not being able to get through a take without laughing and running out of time during our college timetable.
First Re-shoot (Second Attempt at 180-Degree Rule)
For the re-shoot, we still used the original script but cut it at Sarah's last line on page 6, just before the the drugs come into the mix. After she says that line, the headmaster then asks her why she was late to school that morning, we also decided to change the character of Sarah a little bit by making her more confident in talking back to the headmaster and correcting him. When the headmaster asks his question Sarah then starts to make up an excuse and end up getting expelled by the now furious headmaster. This starts to become very comedic as Sarah's leaving the room, the headmaster is still screaming at her and making references to Harry Potter (butchering them as he shouts at the student). He doesn't get the last word as Sarah keeps correcting him on his incorrect terminology of pop culture and questioning his odd outbursts. Our group decided this was much better than our original idea as it simplified the scene and made it a very funny ending for both of the characters.
It had always been from the beginning of this task that Joe was in charge of positioning the camera, as camera operator, and showing us how to do the 180-degree rule as he said he knew how to do it and had also done it before. The way the 180-degree rule works is if two characters are having a conversation and if the camera is going to be on the person speaking, the camera is then positioned behind the person they are talking to and creates an over the shoulder shot from the listener to the speaker. Joe didn't understand that was the way it needed to be and instead filmed from the side of the person that the speaker is talking to instead of over their shoulder. As you can see in the picture on the left the camera is positioned much further away then where Nathan is sitting, when it should have just been behind him and by his right shoulder.
During the re-shoot Joe came up with an idea, to try and use the rule to its maximum effect, in the scene where the headmaster is listing off the bad behaviour in the school by an unidentified student, thinking it's Sarah, Joe thought it would be good to do a tracking shot behind Nathan's head from the right to the left side of the room and then having the 180-degree rule still working from the opposing side. This did look good, but it broke the rule as we had crossed the camera over the imaginary axis that it's not allowed to crossover. We also had an issue with the sound, the microphone was picking up the sound effectively and was hardly audible through the headphones. Although when Joe started to edit the scene he was able to find a way to turn up the volume of the sound a little bit, it still didn't sound the best but it was better than before.
I did also like this film much better than the original as we didn't make as much of a mess this time round and it was creative due to its shots. Again, the only problem with it now is that we didn't actually do what the task told us to do, breaking the 180-degree rule and then had to film it all over again.
Joe did edit some shots into the wrong places, but thats fine.
Second Re-shoot (Third Attempt at 180-Degree Rule)
During the final re-shoot for this rule I actually wasn't in attendance as I was helping with casting for The Christmas Carol film that the Year 2's on the course are doing. My job on set of that is a casting assistant where I had to watch the performing arts students audition for the roles that they would like to play, which I enjoyed very much as the acting part in films is what I enjoy a lot. So during my time in these auditions I didn't know about the issue of the 180-degree rule until some of the members of my group came into the studio and were getting a camera ready to film. Once I had finished helping with auditions, I was then back in the classroom and operating the camera to do a quick conversation between Joe and Nathan. I think the scene was an interview for a job as Nathan was the applicant and Joe was the interviewer, this was very short and simple and was all we needed to do to show our understanding of the 180-degree rule. I would say it wasn't great as they both had to come up with something on the spot and just improvise and then had to edit it straight away, as we didn't have much time left.
The 180-degree rule is a basic guideline, in cinematography, that states the spatial relationship between two characters in a scene. This is done by keeping a camera on one side of an imaginary axis between the two characters, the first character is always on the right-side of the frame of the second character.
The scene me and my group created, using this rule, is a serious conversation between a headmaster and a student named 'A Degree of Trouble'. What actually happens in the scene is Sarah Mitchell, a student, has been called to the headmaster's office as she is in trouble for something, that we do not know yet. Sarah is actually very much innocent and the headmaster has wrongfully accused her of disobeying school rules and misbehaving. It is very much a simple scene but takes the 180-degree rule to its maximum effect, we have set the scene in our studio but have made it look as if it's the headmasters office. Script for 180-Degree Rule Scene
Pages 1 & 2
Pages 3 & 4
Pages 5 & 6
Pages 7 & 8
Roles on Set (First Two Attempts at the 180-Degree Rule)
Cast:
- Sarah Mitchell - Amiliyah Ashraf
- Headmaster - Nathan Appleby
Crew:
- Director - Harriet Parvin (me)
- Script Writers - Harriet Parvin (me), Nathan Appleby and Amiliyah Ashraf
- Camera Operator - Joe Mitchell
- Editor - Joe Mitchell
Filming (First Attempt at 180-Degree Rule)
My group and I ran into quite a big problem when we went to edit the scene, causing us to have to re-shoot the whole film. Our issue was that we used an SD card that had been used by many students on the course, having footage put on and taken off it, and the SD card blocked itself when we tried putting it into the computer and in many card readers. What we learnt from this, for when we filmed it the second time round, was to use our own SD cards as they are new and our own property, as well as bring a backup SD card, as the camera is able to hold two SD cards inside of it, so if one stops working the rest of the footage that we would film next would go onto the backup SD card.
In my opinion, I felt our re-shoot of the film was much better than the original. The original didn't really use the 180-degree rule to its maximum effect and the whole scene was very chaotic and was in quite poor taste. We had a whole part of the scene (as you can see above in the script) where the headmaster believes the student has a bag full of drugs (heroin), which was just plastic, sealable bags containing flour. This did get very messy, by accident, where Nathan, playing the headmaster, goes insane and chucks one of the plastic bags towards the door where the student has left. When the bag had landed on the floor, after smacking off of the door, the bag exploded causing flour to escape from the bag and covering a lot of the floor. This was a mistake that we did use to our advantage as the bag was now open and Nathan thought it would be a funny idea (as this was a comedy) that he should start consuming the bag of heroin once Sarah (Amiliyah) has left the room, as the headmaster has now lost his marbles. Nathan didn't consume any of the flour, but to make it look like he did we had a shot of him spreading the 'heroin' out on the table and putting his whole face into it. Now with flour covering the whole of his face, it looked like the headmaster now had a drug problem and had was dangerously putting this into his system. I was against having this idea in the scene from the beginning as I didn't particularly find it funny and and found it inappropriate. So, when we did our re-shoot we didn't include this into the final cut as we started to find it less humorous and didn't want to make a huge mess again with the flour.I would say another problem when filming the scene for the first time was it took a while to film, roughly around 4-5 hours that spanned over three days. This was mainly due to problems with cameras, microphones not picking sound up well enough, not being able to get through a take without laughing and running out of time during our college timetable.
First Re-shoot (Second Attempt at 180-Degree Rule)
For the re-shoot, we still used the original script but cut it at Sarah's last line on page 6, just before the the drugs come into the mix. After she says that line, the headmaster then asks her why she was late to school that morning, we also decided to change the character of Sarah a little bit by making her more confident in talking back to the headmaster and correcting him. When the headmaster asks his question Sarah then starts to make up an excuse and end up getting expelled by the now furious headmaster. This starts to become very comedic as Sarah's leaving the room, the headmaster is still screaming at her and making references to Harry Potter (butchering them as he shouts at the student). He doesn't get the last word as Sarah keeps correcting him on his incorrect terminology of pop culture and questioning his odd outbursts. Our group decided this was much better than our original idea as it simplified the scene and made it a very funny ending for both of the characters. 
It had always been from the beginning of this task that Joe was in charge of positioning the camera, as camera operator, and showing us how to do the 180-degree rule as he said he knew how to do it and had also done it before. The way the 180-degree rule works is if two characters are having a conversation and if the camera is going to be on the person speaking, the camera is then positioned behind the person they are talking to and creates an over the shoulder shot from the listener to the speaker. Joe didn't understand that was the way it needed to be and instead filmed from the side of the person that the speaker is talking to instead of over their shoulder. As you can see in the picture on the left the camera is positioned much further away then where Nathan is sitting, when it should have just been behind him and by his right shoulder.
During the re-shoot Joe came up with an idea, to try and use the rule to its maximum effect, in the scene where the headmaster is listing off the bad behaviour in the school by an unidentified student, thinking it's Sarah, Joe thought it would be good to do a tracking shot behind Nathan's head from the right to the left side of the room and then having the 180-degree rule still working from the opposing side. This did look good, but it broke the rule as we had crossed the camera over the imaginary axis that it's not allowed to crossover. We also had an issue with the sound, the microphone was picking up the sound effectively and was hardly audible through the headphones. Although when Joe started to edit the scene he was able to find a way to turn up the volume of the sound a little bit, it still didn't sound the best but it was better than before. I did also like this film much better than the original as we didn't make as much of a mess this time round and it was creative due to its shots. Again, the only problem with it now is that we didn't actually do what the task told us to do, breaking the 180-degree rule and then had to film it all over again.
Joe did edit some shots into the wrong places, but thats fine.
During the final re-shoot for this rule I actually wasn't in attendance as I was helping with casting for The Christmas Carol film that the Year 2's on the course are doing. My job on set of that is a casting assistant where I had to watch the performing arts students audition for the roles that they would like to play, which I enjoyed very much as the acting part in films is what I enjoy a lot. So during my time in these auditions I didn't know about the issue of the 180-degree rule until some of the members of my group came into the studio and were getting a camera ready to film. Once I had finished helping with auditions, I was then back in the classroom and operating the camera to do a quick conversation between Joe and Nathan. I think the scene was an interview for a job as Nathan was the applicant and Joe was the interviewer, this was very short and simple and was all we needed to do to show our understanding of the 180-degree rule. I would say it wasn't great as they both had to come up with something on the spot and just improvise and then had to edit it straight away, as we didn't have much time left. 
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