I’ve always found the concept of eye-lines and the 180 degree rule an interesting point of discussion when dissecting film edits. As film is considered an art form, I guess there are technically minimal rules you must follow as a filmmaker. However, with that being said, many of the decisions made by a filmmaker will ultimately play a very big role in how work is understood or perceived. So when bringing forth the idea of audience and perception, there are many rules to be considered and followed if making a piece of work designed for audience understanding or the portrayal of stories and images. From a personal perspective, eye-lines are an element of filmmaking that I find an integral part of shot execution and even assembly. Though, going back to the earlier point I made about filmmaking’s ability to be a very much subjective art form, where rules do not necessarily need to be followed, I would strongly argue that something as important as eye-lines are something that can lower the quality of work, if incorrectly executed. Unless a clear creative decision is made eye-line matching, for me, is a very important aspect of making quality work. 

In this link above, it is explained why eye-line matching is important and how its relation to concepts such as ‘the line of action’ and ‘the 180 degree rule’. It also explained how the establishment of character eye-lines can allow the line of action to be broken. It also explains that matching eye-lines can be important when actors are in the same scene but are not on set at the same time. While it works best to have actors in a scene with heavy dialogue on location together, in a lot of cases it isn’t the end of the world if that isn’t the case. As long as a matching of actor eye lines are considered, the scene can still work. This is also an important aspect of creating work via online formats. For example, for a class exercise we recreated the 3rd scene from the Lenny script on Zoom. My group and I made an attempt to match eye lines as best as possible, while being in completely different locations. Unfortunately due to a perspective issue, footage was flipped which made the eye line completely off, however I was able to edit it together by flipping one of the takes. This helped a lot and allowed a closer match. Below is the finished product attached.

I was watching this video about the 180  degree rule and examples of it being broken in some well known films. I really enjoy seeing this rule broken if it’s done with intent, it can really bring an audience closer into the world which is displayed on screen. At times this can be very disorientating, however that can be great when a point of a film needs to be emphasised and like I said before, elements of stories are often aided if this rule breakage is performed with strong intention.