The Movie Making

Today we learned a little bit more about how to shoot a movie sequence. Our task was to do a Preliminary Practical Preparation and we were supposed to shoot 20 seconds. The story should be very basic, for example just picking something up from a table, but it was important to understand “how” to use the camera properly. The camera is on a still focus and lets the action play through so no matter what kind of shot you take the camera is always still and the action is taking part in front of it. We also learned about the 180° Rule. It says that if you for example have a two shot you draw an imaginative line between the two people and you can either shoot from the one side or the other but always in 180° and you are never allowed to cross that line because otherwise it will look as if they have changed positions and that would be a movie mistake. For example if you have a car driving through the desert and you let it start on the right side of the picture, then you can’t switch positions, or cross the line, because then it will look as if the car is driving in the other direction and maybe some people would interpret this as two cars crashing in each other which isn’t the intention. So you always have to film from one side and use the whole 180° but NEVER cross the line.