Edit Suite: The Mysteries of Screen Direction (page 2)

It's obviously impractical to keep action going one way indefinitely, so you need ways of altering screen direction without breaking continuity.

The most obvious way to reverse direction is right on screen so that the audience watches and follows the change. Here, as always, you're dependent on the scenes that the director shot, so you may not have any footage that includes the change in direction.

When this happens, the next best alternative is a neutral angle. By cutting in a buffer shot of the person or object headed directly toward "6 o'clock" (or "12 o'clock') you smooth the transition between the different screen directions.

What if you don't have a neutral angle either? Then look for a shot in which your actor leaves the frame. Hold the empty frame for a beat before cutting to the next shot with its reversed screen direction. That moment of empty frame allows the old screen direction to fade slightly before the new one is introduced. This method works just as well the other way: cut to an empty frame and let the actor enter it.

But what if the director failed to deliver an on-screen reverse or neutral angle or an exit from the outgoing shot? Resort to the editor's sovereign remedy: the cutaway. For example, a shot of something in the environment or another person between the two screen directions distracts the viewer's eye enough to conceal the switch.

And don't forget the old Titanic ploy: if you edit with nonlinear software or with a digital switcher, you can sometimes save the day by not switching screen direction at all. Instead, reverse the next shot horizontally, to match. Of course, this ploy doesn't work if you have something like a car steering wheel in the frame. And a street sign proclaiming eunevA tsriF is a dead giveaway.

All these techniques are just swell, of course, but why bother with them in the first place? What's so important about screen direction anyway?

Continuous screen direction helps conceal where you've edited two shots, and it also keeps the audience oriented as to who's where and what they're doing. But screen direction does more for an editor: it allows you to avoid monotony by using several different types of continuity.

In parallel cutting, for instance, you intercut two or more different actions. If A is chasing B (or both are racing toward the same goal), you might cut back and forth between them. In this situation, you keep both A and B moving in the same screen direction. But if A and B are coming from different start points, you would maintain one screen direction for A and the opposite direction for B. (To see four different actions intercut in almost delirious complexity, look again at the climactic battles in Star Wars, Episode One.)

On the other hand, suppose you want to condense Andy Hardy's preparation for a big date into a few brief shots: buying flowers, showering, splashing on cologne, adjusting his bow tie, driving off in his flivver. To show that there are time lapses throughout the sequence, you might want to eliminate screen direction altogether.

And after all's said and done, can you violate screen direction? Sure, as long as it works on screen, it's fine.

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