camera movement for western audience.

V

Victor Nhat Nguyen

Well-known member
So I just learn this today and it does make a lot of sense. Western audience read from left to right so camera movement from left to right seems more natural while camera movement in the opposite directions seems unnatural. What is your opinion on this?
 
I know Peter Jackson carefully made Frodo etc walk from left of screen to right of screen as much as possible in the LotR movies.

Of course, some of this theory is self-fulfilling prophecy - if most films show characters moving from left of screen to right of screen (regardless of any connection to reading direction), then by definition we'll get used to that and consider it 'normal', just as with many arbitary conventions.
 
To create some controversy, I would say that this conventions isn't as important as say the rule of thirds or 180 degree line. I have seen many many films that have break this. When you're reading a book, you HAVE to read from left to right. However, a movie is a series of an image. The job of the DP is to direct where the audience will look using composition, lighting, and the frame before it. Only in some instances like "strangers on a train" does it work, but in most films, camera movement showing character move from right to left will not create a sense of unease.

Would love to hear more opinions on this.
 
clang said:
I know Peter Jackson carefully made Frodo etc walk from left of screen to right of screen as much as possible in the LotR movies.

Of course, some of this theory is self-fulfilling prophecy - if most films show characters moving from left of screen to right of screen (regardless of any connection to reading direction), then by definition we'll get used to that and consider it 'normal', just as with many arbitary conventions.
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Seriously ! FFS.

This is fundamental 101 of the most basic "screen direction" principles of a subject travelling on a journey ( ie. in a direction, seeking... a goal or a target...establishing geography...)

Left = West. Right = East.

Walk subject toward the setting sun is West in any "language" Conversely the rising sun is eastwards.

Caveat.. may differ if your audience lives at he north or south poles.

:grin:
 
Egg Born Son said:
Your theory goes arse over tit when you turn your map around the right way

View attachment 66495
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That's why we call it The Orient... if standing straddling the Bosphorus, and facing North, that is the star Polaris, that is 'orient one's self'... then the Orient is to the right, and the Occident is to the left.

Now if you've hooked up with some tazmanian she-devil, and can't recall which way is up (or north/south)... then perhaps you'd just better look for the nearest pub and not worry about these things...

But for the 'left-right' script writing...

The scripts of Western Indo-European languages have traditionally been written in left to right, horizontally. There are a few early exceptions, but the 'classical' era languages Greek and Latin, conformed to Left-Right. Germanic Runes 'Furthark', was more used for inscriptions and had various 'conventions'.

Sanskrit was written Left-Right, and those peoples who used Sanskrit 'script' as a beginning point for their languages, also used Left-Right horizontal direction.

The languages of Thailand and Cambodia are derived at some ancient time from Indian scripts, and as such 'read' left-right horizontally.

China... traditional Chinese is written in columns starting from right and moving to left. However, The People's Republic of China legislated that the columns would begin on the left and move to the right, in 1955. Taiwan made that move in 2004 according to the wiki.

The only major group of languages that are Right-Left horizontally, are the Semitic languages of Arabic and Hebrew, with a few exceptions for Farsi, Urdu, and other language groups that were heavily influenced by Islam and the use of Arabic script for the Koran. Turkey formerly used a script based on the Arabic symbols, but in a modernization process in the early 20th century converted to a Latin based alphabet, and used the left-right convention.

Update note that...

Egyptian Hieroglyphics could be written right-left, left-right, up/down, but 'right-left' tended to be more prevalent...

Cuneiform one of the most ancient writing systems, and used for 1000's of years in the Middle East, 'standardized' on left-right horizontal at about 3000 BCE...
 
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On a more 'on topic' note...

I believe there is a convention that if there is travel involved, and say it is a round trip, that scenes of the 'going out' phase match up as the journey out progresses in terms of motion on the screen... and that the return journey follow the opposite convention.

If the action takes place in a city, and I've never really watched this closely... perhaps there is a directionalness to scenes. For example, a film set in New York... going from Upper Manhattan to Lower may be depicted in 'left to right'. But travel from Lower to Upper may be 'right to left'...

Perhaps this is a detail that film makers typically don't pay attention to, but just get the 'local' directions the same... chase scene, lead car goes from left to right, pursuers follow suit... then make a turn, and follow the apparently left/rightness as indicated by the 180 rule...
 
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