This is a split-screen shot of the opening thirty seconds of Jiang Wen’s Let the Bullets Fly, which I drew. I’m not very good at drawing so please forgive me.
I think the teacher gave us this assignment because he wanted us to understand how to achieve a smooth narrative style through camera transitions and cuts.
I bought a book on lenses to study. I learned that when two people are having a conversation, there is an axis in the middle. We can mark six points around this axis clockwise as 123456. It’s best if the transformation of the camera does not cross this axis during the conversation. That is to say, we can transform in 1, 3, 2 like this, but not 1, 4, 2 like this, which creates a sense of stripping. Of course, if we rotate 1,3, we can also say that it is a kind of “riding the axis” change, which is also very smooth.
Of course, it is not absolute, if you want to show some sense of confrontation, cross-axis shooting is also an option. It all depends on the effect you want.
I also felt this when I was drawing the split-screen, and none of the shots in Jiang Wen’s “Let the Bullets Fly” were off-axis. At the same time, he shifted from close-ups to distant shots to create a sense of slowly introducing the background.