Is The 180 rule and other continuity techniques dumbing down the collective audience?

[skicoak]

Personally I don't think trying to follow the 180 degree rule in my work or making my characters easily differentiated is pandering to some kind of lazy audience.

If it's not that...then you're saying your audience is possibly incapable of interpreting characters moving in space without a fixed camera.

It's a very strange position to take as a creator.

It goes hand and hand with the other elements ...if all the characters are distinct and the dialogue is unique to each character ...why do we worry about the reader/viewers ability to follow spatial changes ?

sub-note: Crossing word ballons isn't a 180 issue, it's script to image management problem .

[ratscout]

Hmmm... It depends on the move/TV show. There are some moveis/TV shows that I feel should really dedicate time and attention to interesting camera angles, interesting lighting, interesting blocking, etc. And then there are others that I think work fine with the 180 degree rule. I feel like action/fantasy/sci-fi movies with a higher budget should be more creative with the camera while I feel like movies like dramas or plain ole fiction stories can be a little more conventional with the camera. I also feel like lower-budget movies should be allowed to have simpler camera techniques due to having a smaller budget.

I also don't necessarily think that movies/TV shows that utilize the 180 degree rule need to treat the audience like they're morons. One of my favorite movies, for example, 'Night, Mother, is a very intelligent movie. It has simple camera angles and all takes place in one house between two characters, but it's a movie that expects you to pay attention so you can absorb all the rich details of the characters' lives. It has amazing dialogue and amazing acting, too, and the characters feel completely real. It also utilizes a lot of creative blocking so that the viewer doesn't get visually tired of watching it since it does utilize very simple camera techniques and is essentially a dialogue-driven movie. This is a good example of some of the great blocking the movie has:

I do understand what you're saying about audiences not liking to be pushed, however. Audiences will always be attracted to the most crowd-pleasing, simplest movies because humans are creatures of habit and they don't like to expend too much brain power on complex movies/forms of art because they would rather spend that brain power on work/other activities. XD

[HGohwell]

Thing like the 180 rule seem like common sense though. I mean, my understanding of the 180 rule is if you have 2 characters in a scene they stay on their separate sides unless you move the camera 180 degrees. Now, I don't know about you guys, but when I'm having a conversation with someone I'm not constantly moving around the room and changing my position. And honestly, I often think never knock a simple job done well, especially given how many people do it wrong. And making your characters distinct is no different to how you're supposed to make your characters in your comic different looking. I don't want to spend five minutes going "which on is she?" that completely distracts from the plot and other important things.

I think the probably is more a culture that hates failure and is afraid of failure rather than dumbing down. Reboots and remakes are a symptom of companies going "well it was popular the first time it can't fail a second". To be different you have to be afraid not to fail, but different doesn't always work. You need a lot of money and/or confidence to go "I'm going to try and be challenging and different and I don't mind if it fails".

Anyone looking for something that pushes the boundaries (particularly as an anime) Occultic;Nine tries some really interesting things with camera and spacing, throws out basic rules of composition in places and honestly made me feel dizzy the way they moved the camera in places, but that was the goal, to make you feel uncomfortable. And tbh, it bombed. But it was allowed to try all this stuff, because it's from the same creator as Steins;Gate and Chaos;Child. Not every creator is so lucky to have that backing to try something different and take that chance.

[skicoak]

Basically what I'm saying is, if simple, "dumbed-down" techniques are proliferating through out the media landscape, it's probably more the fault of the media producers who choose to use them than the consumers who probably aren't even aware of those choices.

I don't agree.

Most of these techniques started as crutches to cover other issues but now the legs are atrophied from using the crutches too long.

Content is being prepared now to reach the maximum consumption levels and therefore it's aimed at the lowest common denominators.

[skicoak]

To clarify about the actress statement, I meant instead of allowing the actresses or the character's dialogue create distinctive differences between the characters. Instead the show treated the hair colors as the PRIMARY distinction.

Sorry if that was unclear.

[JRHoch]

If your wife is watching the CW, you need to divorce her.

[LCT_m_a_d]

I think it's a bit of both. I always feel like change is a marriage of producers and consumers taking a chance on exiting the status quo. If either party doesnt really support ideas that challenge or expand the convention, safe hard and fast rules will just monopolize content till the dark ages.

[skicoak]

If your wife is watching the CW, you need to divorce her.

[JRHoch]

You're an educated man of culture, insightful and wise, so...if...she's...the CW...no, no, no.

Please tell me she's 15 years younger than you. I'll give allowances for that.

[Eightfish]

I don't like the idea that it's somehow bad to watch simple entertainment.

Soap operas and the like were historically made for housewives to play in the background while doing chores. Their repetitiveness and simplicity is on purpose, because the target audience is only supposed to be half paying attention to them, just like you were doing when watching them while drawing. They have a different purpose from, say, a Great American Novel, and it's possible for someone to enjoy both.

It's also not a bad thing if someone wants to only consume simple entertainment, because it's not a bad thing to want to relax. Maybe she's challenged enough by her daily life and doesn't need it in her entertainment.

When you're with your friends, do you always talk about deep philosophical questions and hard scientific problems? I don't, and if I had a friend that did I would find them obnoxious. I want to sometimes talk about complicated issues and sometimes talk about our lives and make dumb jokes. That doesn't make me a "dumbed down" person.

[JRHoch]

Yes @skicoak always has those kinds of conversations, and his friends do find him obnoxious.

[Kura]

I think the 180 rule for sitcoms and a lot of tv shows actually have to do with the set construction and equipment set up more than that 180 rule.

[skicoak]

I don't like the idea that it's somehow bad to watch simple entertainment.

Inherently isn't there a difference in simple entertainment and the poorest execution of it handicapping other types of entertainment?

My wife is not an unintelligent woman but a diet of dumbed down TV has left her unable to follow the higher end productions because they don't do enough hand holding. She's trained to expect if something is important ...they'll repeat it over and over.

[skicoak]

I think the 180 rule for sitcoms and a lot of tv shows actually have to do with the set construction and equipment set up more than that 180 rule.

This is inherently true.

But there are sub categories on even how those scenes are staged. A classic like FRAZIER was very kinetic in how it set scenes.. Frequently centering the character Frazier himself and having other characters "orbit" him in the scene. It let the dialogue bounce in other directions than just stage left or stage right.

[skicoak]

Please tell me she's 15 years younger than you. I'll give allowances for that.

If she WAS 15 years younger than me when we first hooked up, the only allowance I would be getting is a Prison allowance

and his friends do find him obnoxious.

I can not argue with this factual statement .

[JRHoch]

Oh, so you're still just a baby. I thought you were up there in years like yours truly.

[skicoak]

Oh, so you're still just a baby.

Nope, I'm a white beard.

I have just known my wife a long time​

[rajillustration]

I once heard a boarder say that one of the weirdest things to let go from, when going animation to comics, was to let go of the 180 degree rule.

Some things are pretty important for film, and some things just...don't matter as much in comics. You can break 180 in comics, you can have people talk off the panel. It's fine. But in TV where you have to make a whole season of episodes every single year--that would never get through all of the hundreds of people that touch every episode. They have some people who are hired just to fix inconsistencies like hats facing the wrong side, or the 180 degree rule, or etc. Even if it was the storyboarders dream to fight the 180 rule, it would just correct itself by the time the show was done.

That being said--CW does have some pretty impressive shots. Not all of them, but sometimes. I was watching Arrow, which is pretty not great as far as story goes but they did this fight scene in a prison where the camera never cut away--it was actually really fabulous. Usually fight scenes have so many cuts, but instead it panned all the way around this room, never cutting. So, I think they just put their time and energy into certain things where they can.

[ChristodeBoyet]

I was a fan of The Tudors because it didn't follow this rule (although I just realized what it was called due to this thread, knew it was a thing, just didn't know what it was called). It is what you would call a drama and partial soap opera. The director did a great job with interesting camera shots and something was always going on in the shadows, you didn't have to be completely aware of what was going on, in the beginning you as the viewer were drop fed hints here and there and eventually you figured out what was going down. It really made me feel like I could get into the plot and history of our young Henry. Albeit I wasn't much a fan of all the sex, but not my point, haha.

To be specific with the camera shots, I remember this one scene where a handmaiden comes into a room to speak to one of his mistresses, three mirrors were there, you could see the mistress calmly looking at the handmaiden through the first mirror as she got ready while you could also see the handmaiden looking at the mistress through a second mirror while she spoke. Towards the end of the convo, you see Henry enter calling for his mistress through the third mirror on the wall reflected by the other two mirrors. Giving him two reflections. It really made for an interesting shot.

My point is a show can pull off amazing feats that pull in the audience without dumbing it down.

[Iris-Grimoire]

Oh, I just interpreted the 180 rule as "the camera never moves from this wide spot until necessary", I think I'm out of the loop with this topic, whoops.

At first I was going to criticize the interpretation because the comics from people that posted here actually changes angles, body language, and everything very often, but now I get that it's talking about something else entirely. What I see with a lot of shows is, quite literally, the camera stays on that spot the whole scene, not even zooming in on objects they're interacting or having the actors gesture a lot. It's like you're literally sitting on the sofa as they talk in the real world, which is just so boring.