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

rajillustration 2020-01-06 18:40:43 UTC #41

I feel like I'm in a small minority where I appreciated the technical aspects of the show, but I felt like it's sort of like watching 3 different shows smushed together, if that makes sense? Like it's tone was just alllll over the place. So, I wouldn't say that the first episode is a good example of the rest of the show because the rest of the show is so different, sometimes getting just downright silly, but I wouldn't say that if you didn't like it, then you'll suddenly like it. I felt like it was a 5/10 overall. It was fine but the longer you watch the more it's like...more and more silly.

JRHoch 2020-01-06 18:50:44 UTC #42

I gave the first episode a 3. Too much talking in the forest, too much waiting around to be slaughtered by enemies. Too much character behavior that made no sense.

rajillustration 2020-01-06 18:59:41 UTC #43

Oh yeah the first episode was real awful. Like...so boring. It gets a little better, and then it gets a lot worse. Geralt gets horny a couple times in the middle, says some good jokes, but overall our main character does everything he can do to stay away from the plot at hand so it's like...two completely different shows and then Yennifer's there, for some reason. We get this random Yennifer plot from something that happened like 60 years ago and it's way more interesting than anything happening in the current timeline.

JRHoch 2020-01-06 19:21:33 UTC #44

Okay...I will skip this one. Thanks!

TAMAnnoying 2020-01-06 19:33:34 UTC #45

You remind me of something.

Reading OPM really put into perspective to me the amount of rule breaking you can- and even should- do. The artist for the comic makes a lot of ongoing shots as if it where a moving picture book or anime and not a comic book, actually redrawing scenes as the “camera” Zooms out and taking up multiple pages to do this. It really creates its own sense of flow and personality that can stand out from other comics-

And hey, drawing it like it was an anime rather then a comic seems to have helped cause it’s an anime now.

LordVincent 2020-01-07 02:10:57 UTC #46

"Breaking" these rules (more like guidelines really) isn't inheritly progressive nor intellectual. Neither is following the rules "dumbing down" the audience. The rules you speak of are methods that have been developed to better align with how our brains process certain information, so that the visualization of the story forms a better bridge for the narrative to walk upon.

This doesn't mean that every scenario or narrative calls for these methods to be used. Of course there are countless cases in which you could use different methods (i wouldn't say "break the rules" because quite frankly, there are no stern rules in art. Other than maybe don't kill people to achieve it. That would be pretty bad.) or invent your own, but even then understanding the most commonly used methods will help you. By understanding why those methods are used, and what effect they have, you can better figure out what effect a different path will produce.

As for why mainstream media so strictly refuses to stray from these methods most of the time, I'd say that sadly we live in a world where money decides. If an investor or company is presented with two well written narratives, of which one follows methods that are proven to work whereas the other may appear to be a gamble, they will pick the safe card most of the time. This is a sad tendency for many reasons, but honestly I don't think this reason is the most urgent. I'd say the lost visibility for minorities is worse. Luckily that one is slowly improving as of late.

Regardless of how closely you follow the common methods, you need to be a good writer to pull it off. And regardless of which methods you choose, your work could be just as mindless and unchallenging. I would place my priorities on the narrative firsthand.

For people who think these rules are an absolute must, I would suggest starting with a look at poetry. I think there you can make the most clear distinction between methods that abide by rules (rhymes, specific setup rules such as haiku, etc) vs free verse. Now apply that to a narrative. Some people can take a rather poetic approach to narrative, painting in vague surreal strokes until the reader forms the full clarity at the drop of a single word.

Does that make it more intellectual? Not really. The author needs to be experienced and clever about it for it to be. Just as they would need to be for a more traditionally produced narrative to be intellectual. At the end of the day it just comes down to choice and preference.

Also like someone else said... not everything needs to be mentally challenging. Producing a good show to keep in the background takes a different type of skill and effort, and has its place in the industry too. Looking at that as "dumbing down" is rather disrespectful to the groups of people who may turn to that type of media. I think anyone who works from home or is a stay at home parent can confirm the need for these things.

skicoak 2020-01-07 05:18:43 UTC #47

The majority of these rules/guidelines were NOT designed to be aligned with any recognizable concept of how our brains process information. That's straight poppycock.

They were designed to replicate the stage experience in relationship to the technologies of the time. And in an increasingly simplistic way based on mass entertainment.

The human brain does not have constant confusion tracking people and objects that move outside of our cone of vision or if they exist outside of a tight focus of interest. It does not have issues assigning/identifying speakers to voices not in our cone of vision. It does not require the "rules" be reduced to an assumption that we're barely evolved beyond the peakaboo stage of information processing.

You even acknowledge in the body of your post that these visual and narrative constructs are simply "guidelines" and don't require a strict adherence. That flexibility wouldn't be possible if they were really based on true cognitive biases.

And as I've repeatedly retorted, this isn't question of categorizing low or high art or the enjoyment of either. It's about the repetitious and simplistic use of rules/guidelines/techniques in mass produced entertainment to "dumb down" the viewers ability to accept anything that skews away from that repetitive/simplified approach.

For an example, it's not judging the quality of the genre, or bodies of work, within TV police procedurals' to point out the unrealistic proportion of crimes on them that are confessed to. It's pointing out a narrative crutch that's been leaned on so long that works that don't repeat that pattern are often seen as ambiguous by some of those not used to being asked to flex that mental muscle.

It's dumbing down the audience's potential to enjoy content like THE WIRE or THE FALL...and not because they're inherently more "challenging " but in that they don't follow a simplified and repeated narrative pattern.

LordVincent 2020-01-07 12:34:08 UTC #48

By overlooking and ignoring parts of my post you have either completely misunderstood what I was trying to say, or created a strawman so it would be easier to throw it out. With that I cannot help you. I do find it peculiar, however, that this is how you respond to being challenged, considering the point you're trying to make.

TAMAnnoying 2020-01-07 13:12:44 UTC #49

Ski wants to talk about directing a camera, not the writing, I think that’s where your disconnect is coming from. Writing is important but is a different beast from directing the audience’s eyes to show important or valuable information, rather then just say, a character holding up the wrench and saying “this is important”

skicoak 2020-01-07 13:20:09 UTC #50

Are you upset I didn't feel the need to go through and address your previous post line by line? Or that I didn't really care that you were compelled to clumsily try to insult me personally all throughout it?

I refuted your primary claim that any of these medium rules were established based on cognitive basis's.

And I responded to your OWN efforts to overlook/ignore/misunderstand what I've repeatedly elaborated on in multiple posts in this thread by you focusing on the language of "dumbing down" to try and paint it as emotional triggering barb you can rally behind.

You're not familiar with our history @TAMAnnoying.

This is a repeated pattern for Vincent to show up and ignore the content of a debate and just focus on whatever they can "white knight" about. Give it a couple more refrains and they'll start tossing out a list of -phobe accusations as well.

LordVincent 2020-01-07 13:38:17 UTC #51

I didn't try to insult you at all, my original post was moreso in response to the conversation at large. I wanted to provide my viewpoint. Quite frankly I was more interested in what some other people in this thread would have to say in response than you, seeing as you've made your opinion pretty clear multiple times (and in that made it equally clear you're sticking to it). There are other people in this thread!

If you think the times I spoke about creators needing to be clever/skilled to pull off an intellectual narrative regardless of the methods they choose was me trying to insult you (literally the only thing I can think of that you may have misread as an insult...) then that was not pointed at you. You shouldn't assume that it is. I said creators need to be clever when applying these things if they want a clever result because they do. There are other creators in this industry!

I will ignore your comment about white knighting because you're obviously trying to spark conflict here, and I'm not interested. I came here for a giving conversation with other creatives, and I guess for that I will have to either wait and hope someone else will be up for it, or just leave this thread and seek it elsewhere.

TAMAnnoying 2020-01-07 14:12:33 UTC #52

As much as I want to agree with you that your not trying to insult anyone, you are being a bit passive aggressive with your later statements, the fact is we’re talking about directing and your talking about writing, instead of participating in the slap fight we can always just.... you know, redirect the conversation in your opinion on directing- cause if you see directing and writing as the same beast then that’s just incorrect- there are reasons why they are different job descriptions, they accomplish very different goals.

JRHoch 2020-01-07 15:22:07 UTC #53

@skicoak hasn't had someone to really argue with in a long time. You are doing him and us a public service.

JRHoch 2020-01-07 15:41:22 UTC #54

This is a parallel point, but you can see a variation of what I think @skicoak is talking about in a lot of Webtoon comics where they start with long, wordy, dull preludes. Somehow this became the norm, and a whole bunch of new creators started to mimic the behavior, thinking that's what good comics were about, when it's just a lazy way to impart information.

AVXP 2020-01-07 17:30:22 UTC #55

You guys are confusing me. lol
I thought the Topic's title was more like....

Since people have been eating fast food so much, they can't stomach or properly enjoy a well-cooked meal.

Fast food is quick and simple and cheap. Satisfies a CRAVING and is not very filling or nutritious.
We know that -you can't have it all.

If I've eaten a good steak, I don't know if I suddenly lose the ability to discern or rate the taste of a cheap burger patty.
If I've NEVER had a good steak, I don't know that I would STILL prefer junk food after the FIRST time I tried one.

I think the angle in this is....
We are CHEFS and we (for the most part) spend a lot of time and effort preparing our meals. And when someone chooses a quicker or "dumbed down" meal, it's almost an offense. In turn we insult their palette. Almost literally, in a way.

82% (Oh, I love percents this week) of this forum's (more serious) posts are about being smarter or wiser as creatives - passing off our collective judgement as guides - hence all the What You Should Do and Not Do themes.

I say don't insult the customers and accept what kind of eatery you are.

The restaurant owner doesn't get mad when the lunchtime line doesn't go around the corner.
And the fast food joint understands why they need a drive through and why no one calls for reservations.

ratique 2020-01-07 18:55:05 UTC #56

Let's calm it down a bit or I'll be forced to close down this topic simply because someone wants to start an argument.

Jenny-Toons 2020-01-07 19:06:34 UTC #57

Isn't all of this no more different than using cliches and tropes within our stories? I'm always of the opinion that it's the execution, not the method, that makes a show/movie enjoyable.

Take for example, this scene from The Thing (always my favorite example to use~):

Now, this it the scene where Windows found Bennings being absorbed by the creature. He dropped the keys and ran. In a future scene, the doctor suggests doing blood samples to see who's been changed. But someone ruined those samples:

Now, people are pointing the fingers at Gary and the Doctor, but remember the first scene? WINDOWS was the last person to HAVE the key -- and he dropped them.

But the camera never panned down to those missing keys. They never showed them. You just hear them being dropped. The camera never wandered because if it did, the execution wouldn't have worked and the feel of suspense wouldn't have been the same.

Sometimes, it's all about the execution that plays out rather than the way the camera zooms in.

skicoak 2020-01-07 20:14:16 UTC #58

It is a parallel point but it can still apply in the same way.

When that variation gets repeated enough, irregardless of the quality of the execution, then it becomes a crutch for some of the readers as well. They've become dependent on that initial word dump to explain everything versus an approach where things unfold more slowly.

I follow what your saying and conclusions you draw from this metaphor but that's still derived from quality and preferences in some ways. My point is more about if the repetition of a daily diet of fast food flat grilled hamburgers numbs your palate to even the possibility of a flame grilled fast food hamburger. And an implied rational of palate limitations and traditional fast food production was used to justify that.

Yes, More like THIS in terms of not using multiple camera shots to the keys and ominous music to establish their importance in a sequence of events.

The repetition of other directors and productions to spotlight important objects can create an inability to recognize a more subtle variation. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts to justify planting "flags" besides all your important items/events/conversations in a narrative so viewers don't get lost...because you're training them to look for the flags not the important parts themselves.

nathanKmcwilliams 2020-01-07 20:18:53 UTC #59

I kind of see it as the various TV\media corporations using these "dumbing down methods" to keep people returning to an easy source of mindless entertainment.
More money in their pockets as the people line up for their daily intake of factory churned drudgery.

Croik 2020-01-08 02:19:51 UTC #60

Pushed in what way?

I think it needs to be pointed out that following the 180 rule is not the same as boring cinematography. You can absolutely change angle and depth without confusing the spatial positioning of characters within a set. If the shows you watched were boring to watch, that's not the fault of right vs left, that's a different problem.

The 180 rule exists so that it's easy for the audience to identify characters and props within a space. Characters are cast and dressed in a way so they're easy for the audience to tell apart. Presumably, the point of the show--the message the writers/directors/actors etc are trying to convey--has to do with plot, and emotion, and character arcs. If they shot it in a less structured way, presumably those things would remain the same, the viewer would just need to devote a few nanoseconds of brain time to figuring out where people are in the space whenever the camera shifts, because the person who was looking right a second ago is now looking left.

Because you're right, audiences are smart enough to figure it out. But that's the thing--there is still something there that needs figuring. You're giving the brain a little extra work. And that sounds like a good thing, but all recent science has shown that multi-tasking HARMS intelligence. The more things your brain has to focus on, the less it's able to focus on any one thing. It dampens comprehension.

So when someone talks off screen, and my animal brain has a fraction of a second pause of "wait who was standing there a second ago?" that's focus taken away from the part of the show that matters. Does that really benefit the viewer? What argument is there in favor of making it harder for the viewer to follow, unless the point is for the viewer to feel disoriented? (Which is totally valid, too, and people are still making those kinds of stories.)

As for the rest of the stuff I can't comment, because endlessly repeating exposition is something I also hate. But I can't say it's dumbing audiences down, because all of these things have existed since the beginning of storytelling as we know it, and yet people still ARE creating unique, challenging media alongside it. There's plenty of room for all kinds of stories, and the ratio of "fast food media" to "high art" really hasn't changed over time, as much as it seems otherwise.

If more challenge is needed, I'd much prefer if people told complex stories with clear, effective tools, than trying to tell a simple procedural story with artsy ones.