Style
In professional productions, the applied 180-degree rule is an essential element for a style of film editing called continuity editing. The rule is not always obeyed. Sometimes a filmmaker will purposely break the line of action in order to create disorientation. Stanley Kubrick was known to do this, an example being the bathroom scene in The Shining. The Wachowski Siblings and directors Tinto Brass, Yasujiro Ozu, Wong Kar-wai, and Jacques Tati sometimes ignored this rule also, as has Lars von Trier in Antichrist. In the seminal film of the French New Wave, À bout de souffle ("Breathless"), Jean-Luc Godard breaks the rule in the first five minutes in a car scene that jumps between the front and back seats, improvising an "aesthetic rebellion" for which the New Wave would become known.
English television presenters Ant & Dec extend this continuity to almost all their appearances, with Ant almost always on the left and Dec on the right, as does the Japanese pop duo Puffy, with Yumi Yoshimura on the left and Ami Onuki on the right. The same follows with Irish twin brothers John and Edward Grimes, better known as Jedward, with John on the left and Edward on the right.
Another "rule" concerning the axis is that the closer a camera is placed to the axis, the more emotionally involved the audience will be.
In the Japanese animated picture Paprika, two of the main characters discuss crossing the line and demonstrate the disorienting effect of actually performing the action.
In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Gollum has a conversation with himself or with his other personality. Because the filmmakers use the 180-degree rule, and have the "good" Gollum looking left as he speaks while the "evil" Gollum looking right, the audience perceives Gollum as two different characters talking to each other. This effect builds gradually during the scene: the first few times Gollum shifts between personalities, he is shown starting to turn his head, though the camera changes angles mid-turn. As the argument between the split-personalities intensifies, the editing gradually changes to using jump cuts, not showing Gollum turning his head.
Read more about this topic: 180-degree Rule
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the calibre of a bullet, teething beads.... One’s style holds one, thankfully, at bay from the enemies of it but not from the stupid crucifixions by those who must willfully misunderstand it.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1994)