Crossing the Line - Basic Staging

Here is a perfect example of what not to do. Here I broke one of the most fundamental rules in visual storytelling.

CROSSING THE LINE

In film making, storyboarding, and any form of sequential storytelling there is a rule called "Crossing the Line" or "The 180 degree rule." It's a little hard to find good examples because even though it's the most common mistake made among storyboarders it is always fixed before the story hits the final edit. I always wanted to have an example of how confusing it is to the viewer when you cross the line to show an angle on the characters that should not be shown. I ran into the problem in my first attempt at the above strip.

Staging Lesson

Let me explain the rule in case you've never heard of it. First of all I'll give the technical explanation -- the one you usually find in books. If you have a hard time following don't worry, my strip at the beginning and end of this post should help you understand... If two characters' are talking then you draw an imaginary line from one character's body to the other character's body. You may now place your camera in any place on one side of that line. You can change to any angle on that side of the characters but you CANNOT show the characters from their other side. If you do then the characters will suddenly switch sides on the screen. For example character A might be on the left side of the screen and character B would be on the right side of the screen. As long as you stay on one side of the imaginary line character A will remain screen left and character B screen right. But as soon as you choose to show them from the other side Character B will suddenly jump to screen left and Character A screen right. This is confusing to the viewer. It also shows an entirely different background. This confusion takes place in the subconscience of the viewer and they get confused real quick. They have no ideas why they are getting confused and it kills their viewing experience. The background and the items contained within it has a way of telling the viewer where he is in the scene. But when you move the camera too far all the background's elements that the viewer has gotten used to seeing disappear and a whole new set of background items appear. There are many tempations to cross the line. Whether you just love showing a certain angle or you've already done a drawing you already like and don't want to discard it. No matter what the case, please, Do not cross that Line!

Is the character A, character B a little too confusing? Take a look at the comic strip I drew at the top of this post. There you will see my first attempt to make a readable layout. In the second panel I crossed the line in order to show the characters from behind. Then Josue, who in the first panel is screen left, suddenly jumps to screen right placing him on Jacob's opposite screen direction. Then in panel 3 he jumps back to his original position. It's confusing to the viewer.

At times you may need the characters to switch screen direction. The easiest fix is to have one character walk from one side of the screen to the other crossing in front of or behind the other character. This is also good because it gives you a chance to do some acting as you move the characters. As long as the characters just sit around talking your scene can quickly become flat and borring. Actions allow them to act and become dynamic. Avoid Talking Heads.

Another tool that may help you is you can cut from a shot of two character to a shot that gets more close up on one of the characters. By doing this you are showing the point of view of the other character. If you switch to a closeup on the other character then you are rotating the camera 180 degrees. The other common angle is use an, "Over the Shoulder" shot which you could also switch 180 degrees. But be careful which shoulder you show. Make sure the screen right character stays screen right. Do not spin the camera more than 180 degrees!

Don't do what I did. They say that all rules are meant to be broken but don't break it for no reason. They say there are times when you can break the rule but I havn't come across any good examples. Some people like to break the rules just to break them, but that's retarded because the rule is there to help improve the visual readability of your work.

Every choice you make should be motivated by the story. I could argue that breaking the rule in the above example is motivated by the story and even helps express the story. The argument would be that by confusing the viewer I make the smack on the back of Jake's head more unexpected. The viewer then feels the same way as the character. I also tried to make it work by staging Jake at a certain height vertically and Josue on a different plane. Josue remains further down in both panel 1 and 2. But as you can see the strip still doesn't read well. It could read better which is the point. To fix the problem I drew in a closeup on Jacob and then cut to a two shot of Josue and Jacob, and finally in panel 4 I pulled out to reveal Samuel hitting Jake upside the head.

There is another common problem truly unique to comic strips in that you usually want to show the character who speaks first in a panel to be on the left side. Especially if both of the characters have something to say in that panel. Otherwise you have to cross their speech balloons. I also ran into this problem on this particuliar strip. You can see how I resolved the issues by taking a look at my final version of the strip.