Practising the 180° Rule and Shot Reverse Shot

In the task below, I will be displaying an example of the 180° rule and Shot Reverse Shot.

The 180° rule is an editing technique used to maintain continuity to the audience.

This rule requires that when filming one person facing another, you should imagine that there is a line of vision in between them, as shown in the diagram above (taken from http://alystyr.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/srs.jpg?w=656&h=468), and you are not allowed to cross this line. This is so that when editing, it doesn't become confusing for the audience as the people denoted will be looking in the right direction.

Shot reverse shot is an editing technique to show one point of view and then the following shot will show the opposite point of view. For example, when filming two people having a conversation, the first shot would show person A, then the next shot would show person B. This technique is used in editing to eliminate transitioning in one shot and to create a faster pace.


In class, we worked in small groups to create our own example of how the 180° rule and Shot Reverse Shot are used.

The picture above displays the placement of our camera, and how one character stands on the left and another on the right. We made sure that we kept the camera within an imaginary semi-circle and didn't move the camera to behind where the characters are standing. This was to ensure that the characters appear to be facing in one direction and don't look they're switching positions, as this would be confusing to the audience.

The video above shows how I edited together the clips to show both techniques. The shots go back and forth between each character so that the audience can see who's speaking in the conversation. Moreover the use of the 180° rule shows that each characters stay on the desired side of the screen so that it doesn't appear confusing to the audience.

Additionally, we decided to use a tripod to control the steadiness of the camera. We filmed one character all the way through, then the other all the way through, then I edited it so that the Shot Reverse shot effect was created. We decided to do this to ensure continuity was kept and to eliminate confusion between placement of characters. Furthermore, the editing shows a seamless conversation between two characters.

In the future I will make sure I watch out for the lighting in each shots, because the lighting is different on each camera. This might look like the characters are in different places even though they're not. In the future, I will look out for how the lighting appears in each shot.