Writers spend most of their time worrying about the words that the characters on the screen will say; sound engineers worry about how to make sure the words can be heard and how to mix them with music and background noises; lighting designers spend their days figuring out how to make sure the people, places and things can best be seen; directors of photography figure out what lens, camera angle and camera movement will make things look most attractive. Then it's up to the director to figure out how to bring all of this together. In this overwhelming collection of things that need to be overseen, one thing that is often overlooked by beginning directors is blocking - the movement of actors from place to place in a scene. This involves things like where do characters sit or stand? Why do they sit or stand there? How do they move from one place to another? How to track screen direction? This is where directors work very closely with the director of photography and the lighting designer.

Blocking

Take the opening scene of Steven Spielberg's 1981 adventure masterpiece Raiders of the Lost Ark. Henchmen follow a shadowy adventurer through the woods - his face obscured in darkness. As the adventurer produces a treasure map, one of the henchmen draws a gun, the shadowy adventurer pulls out a bullwhip and knocks the gun from the assailant's hand. The craven skulks off while the adventurer takes three steps forward and pauses as his face hits a beam of light. In movie terms this is called a "reveal" and it's how we first meet daring archaeologist Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford. Without careful blocking so that the beam of light strikes "Indy's" right eye you don't have the shot.

This is blocking done right with careful collaboration and forethought. If you're working alone, as many video directors do, you'll need to think of all these things yourself. Let's look at some common types of blocking difficulties and how to deal with them.

Cheating is Allowed!

When people sit around a table, or meet in a group on the street, they tend to sit or stand equidistant from one another, like pizza wedges. Three people will typically occupy 33% each of a round table. This creates a problem for movie makers because they'll always have someone's back in the shot, which isn't the best option. If you have people line up or sit on the same side of the table it can look false. Try it - next time you go to a restaurant sit next to your meal-mate rather than across from one another. Feel weird? It looks weird too. So directors will try to think of ways to make it believable that characters sit next to one another by doing things like having them sit at a counter, or have people on the street meet while traveling in the same direction, so they can walk side by side.

Often, when a director has to position people - say around a breakfast table, they'll have them sit in more of a semi-circle opposite the camera. This is called "cheating." Instead of camera at 9:00, with the characters sitting at 12:00, 3:00, and 6:00, they'll have the camera at the 9 position on the clock with the characters at 1, 3 and 5, so they're looking enough at one another for it to be believable. The director may say "Tony, cheat out a little", meaning turn your body more towards the camera or "cheat in a little" meaning to turn your body slightly away from the camera.

A great example of this is from another Steven Speilberg classic, the 1976 film JAWS. During the dinner scene we have police chief Brody, played by Roy Scheider, exiled to one corner of the cabin on the boat while crusty old sea captain Quint (Robert Shaw) and the young ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) sit at the table and compare scars. Quint is able to cheat out towards the camera by facing Brody and these shots show us how isolated and out of his element the police chief is. As the scene progresses and they begin to bond, Brody goes to sit down at the table, importantly, not sitting across from Hooper, in the obvious place where you can clearly see his dinner plate, but next to him. Quint remains cheated out, rather than turning to face the others. This gives us three actors facing the camera which Spielberg can now cover with a single camera to show us their individual reactions to the shark attack which is about to occur. This is very clever blocking which not only solves the problem of capturing three people at a table, but pushes the story along too - the blocking follows the real internal motivations of the characters.

Woody Allen also deals with this problem in a very clever manner in his new film Midnight in Paris. He picks up the end of a dinner conversation between Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents, played by Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy. Inez excuses herself after only a few moments, leaving her parents seated in a single two shot. They finish the scene on the same side of the table without their positioning seeming strange.