Crossing the line

[Tim Kolb]

I think often the rule is tossed out as either a law or an outdated rule that should be broken in the name of rebellion…

I almost never see anyone talking about why the hell these guidelines exist…

Whatever it is you are making in our business…indie film…detergent commercial…whatever…we are making it so someone will watch it on a flat surface of some sort and be able to have an intuitive 3d sense of where things are and how they are interacting. “Intuitive” in this case implying that they do not have to spend conscious thought trying to figure out what direction things are moving, who is chasing whom, etc.

Once the direction of action or the context of who is ‘acting’ and who is being ‘acted upon’ (action/reaction sequences with obvious cause/effect visual juxtaposition) takes conscious thought to figure out, the viewer has disengaged with the message to figure out if it’s the cops or the bad guys doing the chasing, etc.

These guidelines have little to do with old filmmakers sitting in a room developing ways to limit the creative license of their successors, but has everything to do with the fact that we make our work product for consumption by human brains…and the vast majority of human brains work in well-known ways in the area of visual perception. Every time we work in a way that presents a counter-intuitive visual flow to our viewer, our insistence on being a maverick by breaking some rule may have just broken our viewer’s concentration…and while it may be part of the plan to disorient or confuse the viewer to forward a story of some sort, most of the oddly executed “line crossing” that I see simply points to poor planning or an inexperienced editor.

I always tell my commercial clients that I have to tell a story in three seconds with any shot and I’ll use any stereotype I can to move as much ‘context’ (where, when, etc.) of any shot to the realm of being intuitive, so I can keep 100% of the conscious perception of the viewer working on the ‘content’ or message.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

CPO, Digieffects