180° Rule

Today I learned about the 180° Rule in class. This was the first time I had ever heard of such a rule, and it turned out to be an incredibly important one to follow in film-making. Essentially, in every scene, there is an imaginary "line of action" or an axis.

Throughout the scene, the camera should only stay on one side of this axis to avoid disorientating the audience. Otherwise, the audience will become confused about the spatial position of the subject.

I watched a video by my favourite film-making tutorial channel on YouTube, Cinecom.net, to get a better idea of this rule/convention.