Staging Dialogue

The book Shot by Shot: Visualizing From Concept to Screen by Steven D. Katz has some good pointers on staging dialogue.

He says that there are two goals for the director:

The honest expression of human relationships and the presentation of these relationships to the viewer.

The issue at stake here is how to predict in three-dimensional space what will work on a two dimensional screen.

Remember the following:

• Cinematic "vision" relies on spatial memory and recognition skills.
• Five areas to staging: staging stationary actors, staging moving actors, using depth of frame, staging camera movement, staging camera movement and actor movement together.
• Most standing arrangements in the movies are basically frontal; subjects tend to face the camera instead of each other.
• If an actor is turned away from the camera (partially or completely) more than one camera angle is necessary to see both actors' faces.
• The master shot is wide enough to include all the actors in the scene.
• A sequence shot is a moving shot where the camera is repositioned with a dolly throughout the course of the scene as opposed to using separate shots at different angles. It respects frontally more because editing links shots that are opposed by as much as 180 degrees and this change of angle would be near impossible to do quickly within one long shot.
• The shot, reverse shot pattern allows us to see the subjects isolated reaction to the dialogue, lets us see the point of view changes in the scene and it establishes and eye-line match between one character and another for spacial unity.
• The closer the sight line is to the camera the more intimate our contact with the actor will be.
• There are three basic patterns for figure placing in a frame: "A", "I" and "L". These are the letters that grouped players resemble when viewed from above. They are the simplest form of arrangement of actors to the line of action.
• The pattern for two players is pretty much the basic building block of any conversation scene.

Below are some examples of basic staging. Different examples will of course be used for different types of conversation scenes. Examples 8.a and 8.b would be good to show two players who are at this point emotionally quite distanced from each other, whilst 2.c is good for making the viewer have a more intimate relationship with the viewer and the dialogue

1: Simple face to face.

2.a,b,c: over the shoulder shots and over the shoulder close up (c).

3.a,b: low angle, like over the shoulder but at the hip.

4.a, b: shoulder to shoulder.

5.a, b: subjects are facing 90 degrees from each other.

6.a,b,c: subject in foreground faces away from other subject. Other subject faces the foreground subject's back. Cutting to close ups of both.

7. Both subjects facing in same direction, one behind the other.

8. Both subjects facing away.