Judging by the title, it is apparent this is a reflection written in a very blunt style. Two things we need to address before we begin: First, though I mentioned the all power being in the title, I am not a Christian. Second, for the love of god, can we stop talking about the 180 degree rule?

When I first heard about the 180 degree rule four years ago, I couldn’t resist breaking it just like every boy whose parents set rules that are meant to be broken. And honestly, that did not go well. Four years later in this studio, I have come to terms with this rule; it can be broken, but in conditions.

I realized that there should not exist a specific method to cross this line, it happens naturally in a coverage. The point of this 180 degree rule is for audience not to be confused of the time and space of the scene, so I think once the full environment of the scene is demonstrated to the audience, shots of dialogue between characters can be covered freely as long as the continuity matches up.

In The Fire Within (1963), Louis Malle cuts from a medium two shot to a over the shoulder, after he has covered the whole café where the two characters are. Another example from My Golden Days (2015), is more fluent and more sophisticated. There are several factors that make it not disturbing to cut back and forth across the line. First, lots of the shots in this scene are big close ups and shallow depth of field. The sense of space is obscured. Second, the eye-line is stated very clearly by camera, hence can be used as the reference of orientation. The shots in this coverage are often ‘dirty’. The audience is always aware of where the character is facing at and who they are talking to. What’s more, the editing of the scene has a advanced pacing. Every time it gets to the cut that crosses the line, the editing picks up a faster pace so that the audience won’t have time to think before the next cut happens. Any disbelief will be immediately disrupted.

But I’ve started to grow tired of it as it’s brought up by people again and again. “I think I found a way to break the 180 degree rule” or “I wanted to break the rule in my video.” It all sounds so artificial. So deliberate. And childish. This rule is not to be purposely challenged, it is a convention that summarized by practitioners to be a reference. When one feels the need not to follow it, it should not become an obstacle. However, if someone cover a scene based on the intention of breaking 180 degree rule, the motivation of the scene becomes impure. The main focus will shift to ‘crossing the line’ from ‘finding the most suitable coverage of the scene’. The quality of the coverage will be compromised.

So my take on this, drawing from my own mistakes and the obsession of the others, is not to force any technique on a coverage. No matter how advanced that technique is or how tempted you are. Shooting a scene is always about finding the most suitable, but not the most challenging.

Not until I finished all three reflections I realized each requires minimum only 300, whatever.