Evening star., 1951-01-21

Then let your subject continue
on across the lawn in his original
direction. Now it will be obvious
that, although the subject has
continued in his original direc-
ton, he is now moving toward
your right and the right OF the
camera and that, if you had been
filming two scenes. one immedi-
ately following the other. q
screening of the film would have
the subject walking in one direc-
ton to the middle of the lawn
and then suddenly finishing tho
journey in the opposite direction.
Fortunately there are several
ways that we can get our subjects
to reverse an original screen
direction without utterly confus-
ing the audience as would be the
case if the above outlined pro-
cedure were followed. The easiest
method. if the action is under
your control, is to simply have
the person turn around and go
the other way while you are
shooting away with your camera.
The important thing is to show
the turning of the subject so that
the audience will not have to stop
and wonder why the flow Of
action was. from right to left one
moment and from left to right
the next.
Insert the Turns Later.
Uncontrolled action presents q
different problem. Most of us run
into uncontrolled action when
taking movies of very young chill
den. You can't tell them what to
do so the next best thing is to
prepare yourself for any eventu-
ality. Suppose that you are shoot
ing story of baby who is rapid
ly crawling around-this way one
moment and that way the next.
Under conditions like this it may
well nigh be impossible for you
to show these changes in direction
and still maintain other stand
ards of good cinematography. II
this happens you can take a few
scenes of baby making his turns.
some from left to right and others
from right to left. Then when
you are splicing your picture to-
gether you can insert these turns
at the appropriate places and the
continuity of your picture will
flow evenly along.
In many instances, however, you
will want the subject to continue
to his original destination but find
it necessary for one reason or an
other to move your camera over
to the other side. Now we have
pointed out that any sudden
change like this will reverse the
screen direction of the subject.
We can still accomplish our pur-
pose and move the camera to the
other side of the subject but it
must be done in such a way as to
keep the audience on an even
keel. Let's take another example
that will show how this is done.
The subject can be moving from
right to left of the camera posi-
ton. Start the scene this way.
Then move the camera so that it
is directly in front of the subject
and allow the subject to approach
the camera for second scene; at
this point the camera can be
moved once more to the opposite
from the first scene and while the
screen direction is now changed
with the subject moving from left
to right the audience is oriented
by the intervening shot so that it
is aware that the subject is mov-
ing in its original direction al
though the screen direction is not
the same. In effect you have
simply allowed the audience to
move completely around the sub
ject as he moves by degrees rather
than with a disconcerting swoop
that would be hard to digest.
Screen direction can also be
changed without this intermediate
scene if there is an established
object such as building that will
appear in both the first and sue
ceeding scenes to keep the audi
ence oriented. Use any one Of
these methods of changing screen
direction but never leave it up to
the audience to figure out how it
was possible for your subjects to
reverse themselves when no logical
explanation is forthcoming.