Preliminary Exercise

180 Degree Rule
The 180 Degree Rule states that two characters in a scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If you don’t follow the 180 Degree Rule, or break it intentionally, it disrupts the scene disorients the audience. When you break the 180 line, a person who was originally facing left in a scene is all of the sudden facing right, leaving the audience confused questioning when they switched places.

When you shoot a scene with actors imagine a line extending out between them. You can move your camera anywhere along that line, as long as you don’t cross over the line to the other side.

This is shown in the diagram below.