Film Blocking (It's easier than you think)

[Music] oh shoot i stepped on my glasses crap before i talk more about this cute little diorama i made i want you to watch this on my phone movies have lots of cool scenes with like guns and fighting and stuff and more guns and knives and explosions but every single time i watch a movie i notice that most of the movie is just two people talking to each other if you watch a lot of movies like me chances are you've spent a good part of your life watching two people talking so let's talk about how directors take a boring thing like two people talking to each other and make it interesting [Music] where an actor is and what they're doing and where they're moving this is called blocking staging involves a camera in relation to where the characters are moving so blocking and staging are important to understand the simplest way to film a scene so you can edit it together later is with the triangle method so there's two people talking to each other and you film the wide shot then you go to one side and you film an over-the-shoulder shot and then you go around the other side and you get another over-the-shoulder shot and now you filmed in a triangle so we call it the triangle method and that's how you film a scene now this is not a very creative way to do it some directors say that this is how they film when they're not feeling extra creative or they're not really sure how to cover a scene they just remember the triangle method and they're done now if you actually want to do blocking and staging that has anything to do with the story you need to understand the scene that you're filming and specifically power dynamics in the scene usually in a scene there's going to be a winner and a loser understanding these power dynamics can help us film a scene in a more cinematic way if the person is winning they can be standing and looming over another character if they're losing they can be sulking or sitting low in a seat something that great directors do is they show the power dynamics in a scene but they also create shapes with the actors you can see here a triangle shape what these shapes are doing is they're controlling where the audience is looking it's saying hey look at me look at me it's creating these lines so an experienced filmmaker will use lines to draw the audience's attention to what is most important in the shot now if two actors are sitting and talking to each other for like two or three or four minutes it can get kind of boring so a great rule of thumb is to move the actors every like 20 to 30 seconds have somebody stand up and move to the other side of the room this is happening all the time in movies actors are moving and what this is doing is making a more interesting scene it's showing the power dynamics in a scene and it's keeping you interested making the scene not boring that's our number one goal not boring is better than boring in a lot of tv shows you'll notice that characters are always walking for no reason well this makes the conversation a lot more interesting because the characters are doing something and it drives the story forward in a visual way now when you're shooting coverage for a scene it's really smart to start with a moving master now a moving master is a wide shot that's moving and this movement is creating interest so you film your moving master and then you go in and you get your coverage you get your medium shots you get your close-ups let's take a look at some fantastic blocking from one of my favorite movies back to the future starts with doc sitting down now they both stand by the fireplace for a moment now doc sits back down and marty sits back down as well now we go in for some coverage marty stands up he gets his close-up docks in the background we go back and forth for some more coverage doc realizes something now he's the one standing up and marty is sitting in his chair they've both switched places now doc's standing up talking him we go back and forth with more coverage and now we're on that wide shot again this is such effective filmmaking because they've used this wide shot so many times and made it look so different just by blocking the actors effectively now marty comes in for his close-up they look at a picture with nice lighting by the lamp they realize something and it's on to the next scene here's some very simple staging tips now if you're filming two people just sitting talking one common way to make the shot look a little bit more interesting is to film behind the action this is actually really great for lighting because then the shadow side of the face is closest to the camera and the shot usually appears more dynamic this shot from 500 days of summer is not behind the action this is straight on that's normal framing and this shot from napoleon dynamite is also very standard framing very standard coverage i call this the walk and stop this is when two actors are walking and then they stop because the cameras probably reached the end of the track then you go in for the coverage pretty simple i call this the stop and walk this is when two actors are stopped and then they start walking one common mistake that beginners make is they break the 180 degree rule now this can actually get pretty complicated when there's multiple characters but when there's two people talking you just draw a line between them and you make sure you don't cross it because if you cross the line and you film two people talking to each other when you cut it together later it won't look like they're talking to each other it'll look like they're looking the same direction the audience will get confused and the edit won't work if you can't split the screen like this and make it look like they're looking at each other you did something wrong i've got something to tell you though i've never filmed a movie before but i make tv commercials good blocking is so important with short 30 second tv commercials because the audience has to have a very clear idea of what's going on in the scene something that we have to take into account with every tv commercial that we shoot is the 180 degree rule we watch those eye lines and we make sure we're not crossing the line with the camera sometimes visually you want to sometimes you want to go to the other side of an actor because it would actually look better but that's not the possibility you can't do that especially with a short thing that needs to be cut together you can't be moving the camera around all over the place and visually confusing the audience another mistake the beginners make is they stack actors this is when somebody is standing or sitting halfway behind somebody else it's important to remember that each actor needs to own their own space so let's talk about this a lot of people know what blocking is but they don't know when to do it everyone comes on set and everyone's just starts doing things willy-nilly without knowing the proper order so this is the order first you block the scene this involves the director the director of photography sometimes the gaffer and some other key people sometimes the producer during this process no one else is around no one else is invited to the room and it's quiet this is a special working time for these creative people then the actors go away to make up and they're gone if it's a big budget movie they've got stand-ins at this point and the stand-ins come in and now the director of photography takes over and the scene is lit they use lights and and they have to keep in mind each one of these points where the actor is the lighting needs to look good throughout the whole scene right so this can be a complicated process that can take a long time then when the lighting is done the actors come back and now they rehearse the scene together they make sure the scene is flowing in a proper way once the scene is rehearsed tweaks are made inevitably the lighting needs to be tweaked some of the blocking is tweaked at this point and it's really honed in now it's time to film in the end it's important to learn all these rules about blocking and staging but it's also important to break the rules find a reason to break a rule and if the reason is good enough then you can break the rule if you want to learn more about filmmaking and stuff watch more videos by epic light media but don't subscribe to our channel because we don't need any more subscribers subscribe to another channel there's a lot of other awesome filmmaking channels out there goodbye

Channel: Epic Light Media

Views: 263,717

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Id: qInISYUHzXk

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021