The water seems to be getting a little muddy (or just hard to explain) here, so I whipped out a little drawing that hopefully will make it clearer...
Here you see the two actors sitting on the bench and a bunch of camera positions, seen from above...
Tradition and usual blocking theory would dictate that the "line" goes between the actors (shown by the dashed line)... and that you should keep all the camera positions on one side or the other. That is, you can shoot from any of the blue camera positions, or the red positions... but not mix-n-match. You
can move from the blue area to the red area if you have a physical camera move (such as a dolly from the blue area to the red) which re-establishes the camera position, and then you would stay on the
new side of the line until you have some other visual device to get you back to the other side.
But then again, rules are made to be broken... and the lines can constantly move... you see this a lot in big dinner table scenes where you have a bunch of actors in a circle... the lines are constantly being re-established. You'll also sometimes see scenes in movies where the director pays no attention to the lines at all... sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Those usually work best in scenes with lots of action, lots of camera moves, and lots of general movement going on.
Other dramatic changes can allow you to cross the line as well. Lets say you started with a wide establishing shot from behind the actors (in the blue area). You
could then cut to a closeup of one of the actors from the red area, and that would be fine, even though technically it is "crossing the line." But you would probably want to establish a "temporary" line that is perpendicular to the other one and stay on that side of the camera line for that particular cut.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
