see also Director training.
Alec Bray
We’ve discussed the issue of “crossing the line” (in my 1960s speak it was a “reverse cut”) before in these conversations.
I have thought that if the camera was tracking back with a front view of people walking towards the camera, it was legitimate to cut to a camera tracking forward showing the back view of the people walking away from the camera (that is, the camera views are completely 180 degrees apart but because of “context” there is no real jarring of the relative positions of the principals.)
But a clip of “The Dressmaker” (as shown on the Graham Norton Show Friday 04 November 2015) used this same device:
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The mother (right hand figure in this view) turns and directly addresses the fourth wall (camera) and the next cut is this:
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that is, the male character has replaced the camera.
Whilst this is no different in principal to the “walking down the street” shot sequence (and a “line” had not actually (technically) been crossed), I found this jarring, especially as the pair of shots continued (back to male viewpoint, back to fireplace viewpoint etc). Once would have been OK. The first cut on its own was not bothersome. It was the subsequent repeat cutting “across the line” that was jarring.
Albert Barber
Very interesting.
Acting as a POV it seems legitimate, but framing should be different in order not to cause a jump. After the original wide shot POV, a single should have been used of the person whose POV it was that had been used, with corresponding separate singles if required.
Peter Cook
It always bugs me when characters switch from one side of the screen to the other or their head spins 180 degrees. It jars. The line here is between the two women so it is crossed and a reverse cut has been made.
Sadly sloppy direction like this will only increase as the number of ‘professionals’ who have not had the benefit of thorough training increases. I fear that there are fewer with the experience to notice mistakes and also more reluctance to speak out when they are noticed.
Peter Leverick
It all depends on where her eyeline was at the point of cutting. If it was TO the camera or to the (camera) LEFT of camera, then the line would not have been crossed at all. If she was looking to (camera) right, then the line was crossed.
However, the line may be crossed with minimum disorientation or jarring if one or both of the shots cut between are wide. It’s when it is done in closer shots or is repeated that creates disorientation.
Remember that the director may want to disorientate the viewer deliberately, so crossing the line is appropriate in those circumstances. I did not see the original moving footage, but if the main relationship was between the 2 women and the man was somehow intruding or interrupting that relationship, then repeatedly crossing the line would be appropriate.
Roger Bunce
I didn’t see this one on transmission, so I don’t know whether they crossed the line. It would depend who was looking at whom at the exact moment of the cut. However, they have certainly broken two other conventions.
Firstly, the two female characters have “Jumped Frame”, i.e. they have made an instantaneous leap from one side of the shot to the other – something that would certainly make the viewers flinch. You’d normally try to avoid this, even with a single character, let alone two. If they had been completely back view, and peripheral to the frame (the ‘walking down the street’ convention) you could get away with it, but they’re not.
Secondly, the two shots are very similar in size, both Loosish Mid-Shots. Normally, you wouldn’t cut between two shots containing the same people, unless there was a significant change in shot size (e.g. L.S. to MCU) to motivate the cut. If the first shot was intended to be the man’s point of view, it would have made sense to cut to a single of the man, but not a reverse three shot.
The advantage of live or ‘as live’ tele is that you can see the cut as it happens, and change things if it doesn’t look right (whether of not it breaks any rules). These days, the editor has to work with what he’s given. There again, maybe the editor was a 12-year old with a computer in his bedroom!
Keith Wicks
I’m normally very fussy about this sort of thing. However, I wasn’t unduly disturbed on this occasion. It’s hard to judge from the stills… (you need to view the clip)
The woman in the cardigan (the mother) is talking loudly, and with few pauses, so she holds my attention. The first cut that shows the man is done deliberately part-way through a sentence, which helps us through the change. And we needed to see the man whom the women were talking to. After that, the room had become more familiar, so the next cut did not bother me.
Of course, if this has bothered anyone, then it has not been entirely satisfactory. What I don’t know is how I would have reacted if I had watched before it had been pointed out.
Roger Bunce
(after viewing the film clip)
It doesn’t look too bad, really. The first couple of cuts are the ones that jar most. The eyeline IS crossed. She’s looking R to L in the 2s, and L to R in the 3S. If only she’d looked the other side of camera. Would not help the frame jump, of course. Later the 3S is tightened up, which helps the cuts. But standing three people in a triangle is a fairly sure way of creating editing problems for yourself.
Tony Crake
As a mere ex Boom Op ,that cut didn’t really jar on me at all. The young man suddenly appears… this is interesting… and then you notice the women are ‘transposed’, which accentuates something unusual has happened or is about to happen…..
In general, camerawork or ‘cutting’ should not detract from the acting or storyline etc. If you start to notice it, its wrong. Like that handheld “camera under the shoulder” style so prevalent a few years back, or that other weird thing where we are asked to look at a ‘side on shot’ (often in monochrome) of the presenters ear! Not sure what that was supposed to convey….?
Alasdair Lawrance
I find that kind of thing upsetting and annoying, and it does produce some ’tutting’ and breath exhaling on my part. I would suggest that instead of the reverse cut, (for that is what it is), there should be a track back to reveal the man on the left of frame, the next shot should be a mid-shot of the man (while he speaks, perhaps) and track back to reveal the two women, or just the 3-shot. If the two stills are contiguous, there’s a continuity glitch, anyway!
[Ed: the stills were not exactly either side of the cut]
Pat Heigham
I would agree that it’s more of a reverse cut, to show the geography of the man’s position, and that it wasn’t realised he was there. That being established, the ‘line’ effectively becomes from the man to between the two women. Cross that, and it would look odd. It didn’t worry me, when I saw the motion version.
Another way of shooting it, would be to see the two women, and track round behind them to reveal the man, but that wouldn’t have worked with the speed of the dialogue.
There has been some dire line-crossing on the “Death in Paradise” series, presumably with a experienced director and crew?
Albert Barber
This is all slightly academic.
There are perverse directors and those that don’t know and those that do. But who hasn’t crossed the line? Even the most experienced Directors can make mistakes, others may ‘tut’ after the event but almost all have been there and quietly hoped to get away with it.
As they say; you should have been there to know the reasons. There’s not much you can do about it whoever you are except ‘tut’. The case being discussed is someone trying to do something and get away with it, so whatever the reason, he or she, obviously didn’t.
Roger Bunce
Surely, this clip demonstrates the problems with single-camera shooting! If this scene had been shot multi-camera, the two cameras would have been in each other’s shots! They would have been forced to back off – which would also have cured the crossing-the-line and frame-jumping problems. Any cuts that didn’t work would have been noticed on rehearsal, and would have been corrected before the take. It’s when you shoot single camera that you don’t necessarily know whether a cut will look right until the edit – when it’s all too late!
Dave Plowman
That’s where you need an experienced camera operator – as with everything else. He/she will advise a perhaps not too experienced director that he doesn’t have enough coverage.
Roger Bunce
True enough, but if the experienced Cameraman points out the potential problem, and the Director promises him/her that, “I won’t cut, until the Mother turns her head and looks at the other person. So, we won’t cross the line. Promise, Promise, Promise.” But, in the edit, the Director changes his mind and cuts before the Mother turns her head, so the line is crossed. There’s nothing the experienced Cameraman can do about it.
Experienced Cameramen are also pretty important when it comes to multi-camera shooting.
Peter Cook
Having now seen the clip, the first cut was not so bad because the subject on right was moving her head a lot and therefore the eyeline was less established. However the subsequent cuts provided the unsettling result of subjects swapping places on screen, right becomes left and vice versa. Ladies may have been distracted by the man taking his shirt off.
I agree that the result was not such a disaster as “Death in Paradise”, where geography of who was sitting where round a table was totally destroyed when bad cuts created multiple changes of relative position. Even worse was the Rob Brydon/Steve Coogan Trip to Italy where there was a reverse angle shot which was randomly edited into the 2 operated shots.
It seems to me that directors are concentrating too much on performance and forgetting the edit. Our craft was handed down to us through decades of the moving picture industry which mostly provided the viewer with the illusion that he/she was in the scene. anything which breaks that illusion should be avoided. Reverse cuts are disruptive as is change of direction of travel in adjacent shots; exiting a screen to enter another should be carefully planned. Whatever happened to the Storyboard?
Technology used to be invisible, now cameras and cranes and steadycams are everywhere. The news room shows that cameramen are no longer valued – how many unmanned cameras are there? Today (07 November 2015) there was a down the line interview on breakfast news and the inject man was set in front of a busy news room in another city with people milling about in the background; this was made even more distracting by high level fx of news room chatter which swamped the interview. The Manchester presenter back announced a sound problem.
Dave Plowman
I worked with a very good cameraman on a different series who has just finished shooting “Death in Paradise”, and shot at least some of the earlier ones. And he certainly wouldn’t have allowed a sequence like that to be shot without all the required angles. So must have been down to editing.
I follow him on Facebook. And learned there he had to have a kidney removed while working on “Death in Paradise”, and followed his progress back to full health.
Bill Jenkin
In my experience courtrooms are a nightmare in terms of crossing the line(s). Defendant / Judge / Counsel /Jury.
Roger Bunce
In my experience courtrooms were a nightmare because they’d cut to you, expecting an MCU of someone who was leaping out of his seat to shout. “I object, M’Lud!” and sitting straight back down again. Impossible to hold a well-framed, steady shot.
“Kilroy” was a nightmare for eyelines – circular set with presenter wandering freely between guests. He could glance from the guest on his right, to the guest on his left, and send all the cameras that weren’t on shot scuttling 180 degrees around the set to find the new eyeline. But, at least, that was ‘as live’ multi-camera, so you could look at the positions of the other cameras on the floor and gauge what their eyelines were going to look like. I remember once realising that I was completely doomed, and that whichever side of his head I shot the guest from, it was certain to cross the line, either from the shot before mine, or the shot after mine. So, I ended up shooting directly over his head, i.e. exact ON the line, as the only way of making the cuts on either side of my shot work(ish).
See also http://tech-ops.co.uk/next/the-art-of-direction/
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