I did a bad thing. And I'm not sorry.

Last week, I shot a commercial in New Brunswick. The cast included a 7-year-old and if you know anything about New Brunswick, you know it's 4,000 miles from Hollywood. Which means you're not likely to find a lot of professional 7-year-old actors there.

That's okay, actually, because at seven what you want from an actor is enthusiasm more than experience. The kid we cast was actually great. Totally adorable, totally enthusiastic. But even the most enthusiastic, adorable kid can only perform so much. And thanks to common sense and child labor laws, we were limited in the amount of time we could spend with him.

So when we had two more critical shots with the kid and I could tell he wasn't quite getting the meaning of the line he had to say, I did something I normally never do. I gave him a line reading.

In case you're not familiar with the term, a line reading is when you say a line the way you want your actor to say it. And it's usually a bad thing to do because a) unless you're an actor yourself, you don't really know what you sound like when you say something, b) even if you're an actor yourself, how somebody else says something is going to be different from the way you say it, and c) even if you're an actor yourself and you can get somebody else to say something the way you would, it demeans their talent. It's like you're saying they don't know how to communicate when that's fundamentally what actors do.

But like I say, I had limited time and an inexperienced actor. And very little hope that taking him aside –– one more time –– and explaining what the line meant was going to improve his understanding of it.

I like to think I handled it fairly well. For one thing, I didn't go to the line reading until I was sure we weren't going to get what we needed any other way. And for another, I enlisted the help of another actor to deliver the line reading.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Brian, if you can't know how you sound to an actor, why would you make things worse by playing telephone with the information?" Well, I'll tell you.

Because I wanted there to be a bit of a cognitive gap. If the kid were to parrot me, I'd be evaluating his readings based on my delivery. But if I ask someone else to deliver the lines, I have no preconception about how the line sounds before it comes out. So I can disregard the older actor's delivery and concentrate on the kid's as if it's fresh.

As it turns out, I happened to have a really talented, generous, helpful actor on set, who was not only willing to give the kid line readings, but did so with enthusiasm and variety.

We got the line we needed, delivered a bunch of different ways. And we had time to set up, light, and shoot the other shot we needed of the kid. Best of all, nobody's feelings got hurt.

Okay, best of all, we got a really lovely performance.

Sometimes it pays to work with amateurs.

I just finished shooting a job in New Brunswick.

A lot of people I work with couldn't find New Brunswick on a map, which isn't to say anything negative about the place, just that it's not exactly giving Hollywood a run for its money as a hotbed of film production. Let's just put it this way: Ambitious filmmakers in New Brunswick generally move to the big city, and by that I mean Halifax.

I've worked in New Brunswick before, so I know how to adjust. The crews are great. But most of the people who come in for an audition don't bother putting together an acting resume because the only experience on it would be 'Football Player 3' in their high school production of 'Grease' twenty years ago. 

If that.

The spot I was working on called for four roles: a father, mother, son, and daughter.

The father I cast was an absolute pro. He'd worked in larger markets and moved back to New Brunswick because he preferred the lifestyle. But the rest? Two of them hadn't even been to an audition before.

For the son I cast a brash 11-year-old who tagged along to his brother's audition. He talked the casting director into letting him read –– sold her, really –– telling her that even though he was too young for the part, he'd work really hard and do a great job. Our mom had been on one shoot as an extra and thought acting might be fun. And the daughter had taken a few acting classes at the community theater.

Not that there weren't plenty of other, more "qualified" people. Actors with a ton of professional experience, some of it in huge markets like New York and LA. But what I saw in these three was magic. The boy's confidence; the girl's awkward innocence; the sparkle in the mom's eye. Of course, I'd have to work that much harder –– not just in directing each of them, but in educating them to the process.

But I was creating a family and a family –– at least a family of my creation –– is made up individuals who have personality.

Sure, there are times when a line needs to be delivered in 3.2 seconds or a mark hit precisely. But if I have a choice between personality and perfection, I'll take personality, thank you very much.

As it turns out, I got lots of both.

Casting trick #8. Treat your actors like professionals.

I read somewhere that the average cost to make a television commercial is well over $400,000.

I don't know about you, but I think that's a lot of money. Although it goes pretty quickly when you have to scout locations, build sets, get permits, hire crews, rent equipment, and all the other stuff that goes into a shoot.

But when you think about it, most commercials come down to actors interacting. All the other stuff is there to support the interaction. And putting it that way, you'd think the actors would be the most important factor.

Only they're not treated that way.

It's not unusual for actors to get a phone call or email at midnight telling them they have an audition the next morning. They're given a scheduled time for their audition that's totally arbitrary, without any regard for the fact that they might have jobs or children, and even when they show up on time, they're often forced to wait for an hour or more for a chance to read for a part.

That waiting time is usually a good thing because many casting directors don't feel the need to provide any information the actors can use to prepare for the audition.

What's remarkable is that the same people who give the actors no notice, no information, and no time to prepare are often the ones who deride the actors as flaky when they don't show up and talentless when they don't have the script memorized. And not just behind their backs, either.

It never occurs to them that acting, by its very nature, requires an incredible ability to compartmentalize: Actors need to be able to respond with full emotion while performing, yet deal with the daily rejection that comes with the pursuit of work.

You want to be a better director? Of course you do. Well, take some acting classes. Go on some auditions. If you're lucky enough to land a gig, pay attention to the way you're treated. Walk a mile in your actors' shoes.

Trust me, you'll never take your actors for granted again. And your work will be much, much better.

Another reason it matters what order you see people in.

Remember, oh, about three weeks ago when I went on about how actors who come in early in the day are at a disadvantage, while those that come in toward the end have an advantage? (If you don't, click here.)

There's a mitigating factor, but before I get to it I have to talk a little bit about what you're looking at when you're evaluating an actor's audition.

There are two parts to an actor. There's who the actor is. And there's what the actor does.

Who an actor is involves not just his looks, but the way he carries himself, how he connects, how he moves, and that weird, undefinable thing, charisma. Who an actor is comes from genetics and habit and upbringing and instinct and while some actors actually work on developing this stuff a bit, you can only make yourself so tall, thin, good-looking, or charismatic.

What an actor does means the choices he makes. Is he angry or sad? Interested or bored? Turned on or turned off? A lot of actors give less thought to these decisions than they really should, trusting that their instincts will lead them to the most interesting performances, but I like the actors who take apart a scene and figure out what's really going on. These are the people who can perform a conversation with their mothers about where to park the car, but make you understand that what's really going on is a seething resentment over Mom's not intervening when Dad molested Sis twenty years ago.

In actor-speak, what an actor does is called making a choice. And when the Academy gives out awards, a lot of the praise you'll hear is about the "interesting," "brave," or "powerful" choices made by the nominees.

You don't have to see an Oscar-nominated film, though, to see choices. Actors make them in auditions. Sometimes, you'll see a really neat choice in an audition. Even in, yes, commercial auditions. Auditions where the housewife has to decide which paper towel will clean up the spill or the pizza delivery guy gets a door slammed in his face.

Which brings me back to the point I started this blog to make:

Sometimes, two actors will make the same unusual choice in an audition. When that happens, it's easy to give the first person you see doing it more credit than the second. The first time you see it, it's new. The second time, your tendency is to feel that the actor is copying somebody else's good idea.

But remember, each actor made the choice independent of the other. If what the actors do is more or less equal, then you can always make your decision based on who the actor is.

When your actor is talking to the camera, don't use a dolly move.

When a character is talking to the camera, the camera is meant to be me, the viewer. So if you go and put a move on the camera, it gets freaky. Like I'm sliding across the living room or something.

Don't do that.

I'm serious. It makes me uncomfortable.

Not to mention how hard you make it for the actor, talking to a moving target.

Casting trick #5: Look at one person at a time.

Funny thing about dialogue: you need two people to have one. That means if you're shooting a conversation of any kind, you're going to have to cast more than one person.

This sounds terribly remedial, I know, but it's important.

So let's say you're running a casting session for a scene that requires dialogue and you have two actors come into the room together. They slate –– one at a time, of course –– and then they go through the action.

Which one are you looking at?

See where I'm headed with this?

If one of them sucks and the other one's great, what do you do?

I'll tell you what you do. You go back in time. Before you even begin working with your actors, you take your video camera and point it at one of them –– doesn't matter which. Frame the other person completely out. Then as you're watching the performance, you make notes only about that one. And since you're a conscientious person and don't want to give one of the actors the impression that you're ignoring him, you tell him that once you're done working with the one guy, you're going to concentrate on him.

When you've got the first person's performance to a place you like, tell your first actor to keep things right there and turn the camera on the second actor. Then work with him.

There are a couple of benefits to doing things this way. First, you only have to keep your mind on one performance at a time. More critical, if you're like most directors you don't get the final say on casting. Other people are going to have to discuss your choices, and they can't discuss what they don't see.

Which brings me to a rule I try to apply, not just with casting, but with every aspect of production: Never submit anybody or anything you wouldn't be 100% happy to work with. I guarantee you that if you give somebody a choice, they're going to choose the one you don't like.

Casting trick #4. Look at the resumes.

There's a story kicking around about Steven Spielberg which might be true, but even if it's not, it's pretty informative. The way I heard it, a woman approached him in a restaurant and told him he should audition her kids for his next film. He asked if they'd ever been in movies, and she said no. And he said, "I don't put people in their first movie, but I might put them in their second."

Welcome to Hollywood. You can't get work unless you have experience and you can't get experience unless you get work.

There's so much at stake when it comes to making any kind of production that most people are reluctant to take a chance with an unknown. This is true in every department, but today we're talking about actors.

I guess my standards aren't as high as Mr. Spielberg's because I will actually hire actors for their first job. But only on a couple of conditions. One is that they really do their homework, meaning they need to know how to act. The other is that they don't lie about it.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. Insist on your actors submitting resumes. And read them. Even if your actor doesn't have a ton of experience, a resume can tell you a lot about how to work with him or her.

So how do you read a resume?

First, I give it an overview. Just a glance will tell you not only how experienced your actor is, but what kind of acting he or she tends to do. There's a huge difference between the grammar of the stage and the grammar of a film, and stage actors generally need a little special care to make the adjustment to film. People with improv experience can usually improvise, but those who do it almost exclusively might not be as comfortable following a script verbatim. I don't care –– in fact, I prefer that my actors find the line that makes the most sense to them –– but there are some situations where a script has been through so many revisions, tests, animatics, and levels of approval that you can't change a single syllable.

Then I read. Usually from the bottom up.

The bottom is where actors put special skills. Someone who has a black belt in taekwando is probably pretty dedicated, whereas listing "likes cats" might mean he or she doesn't really commit to much. If I see a special skill that I know something about, it gives me an opportunity feel them out, to see how much their resume might be padded.

Just above special skills, most actors put their training. There are a lot of acting schools, each of which has a slightly different take on both the business and the appropriate approach to acting. I like seeing actors who have attended a variety of schools because it means they're probably looking for what works best for them. Call me a cynic, but I think finding the perfect acting school right off the bat is about as likely has finding true love with your high school sweetheart.

Of course, once an actor has done enough work to fill out a resume, he or she has probably learned the rhythms of an actual set and the shorthand we use to communicate, so that stuff is a little less critical.

Right above training, actors put their experience. They usually break it up into film, television, stage, and commercial, with the more experienced actors (or the ones who want to appear more experienced –– remember what I said about using special skills to see how much they might be padding their resumes?) putting the line "conflicts available upon request," which means, "I've done too many to list here."

It also means, "I'll audition for your Burger King commercial even though I shot a McDonald's commercial last month and if you want me I'm going to hope that nobody notices." This, by the way, is a really bad move.

One of the things I look for in the experience section is anything that might be interesting or relevant. Believe it or not, there are some directors whose work I really admire. If someone's worked for one of them, it means that he or she impressed that director enough to get the job. I give points for that.

I never take off points for working for a director whose work I loathe, by the way. Work is work, and it's certainly not the actor's fault if the director who hires him or her happens to suck.

All this takes me maybe a minute, by the way.

And what if your actor has absolutely no experience and absolutely no training? Well, unless you're dealing with a kid –– and I'm talking a kid under five or six –– that person has been up to something, right? Whatever that something is can tell you a lot about how to work with him or her.

A lawyer can't be a lawyer without learning to think a certain way. Just as a mother can't be a mother without learning how to deal with kids. Those things are relevant because they tell you how to communicate with them. If I find the perfect person for the role, I'm not going to make a silly detail like lack of acting experience keep me from working with them.

Spielberg has every right to hire only people who have worked before. But if we all did that, he would never have been hired for his first job.

Casting trick #1. First impressions count.

Now that I've given an overview of the casting process (http://tinyurl.com/knnno6) and told you how I write a casting breakdown (http://tinyurl.com/ld7dyx), let me give you a trick I use to help make casting go smoother: The first thing I do when I review my submissions is watch each actor slate and jot down my first impression of him or her.

This isn't stuff like "Yuck!" or "Hottie." It's the first thing that comes to mind about the person. On the job I just finished, some of my notes are "Irish cop," "1950s news anchor," and "Al's friend from that New Year's thing."

These aren't judgments. They're impressions. And it doesn't matter if anybody else can make sense of them.

So what's the point?

Most commercials have more than one role and your first submission can be as many as 300 people. So you have to be able to keep them straight, especially when you need to discuss actors with art directors, copywriters, creative directors, and producers. Jotting down a first impression is a way of crystalizing it for me, kind of like a mnemonic device that helps me recall which actor made which impression later.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Brian, how come you do this with the slate and not the head shot?"

Excellent question.

Actors put a lot of effort into head shots, for the simple reason that it's the thing that makes the difference between being called in for an audition or not. That's good, at least in theory. The problem comes when the photograph goes beyond presenting an actor in a favorable light, which a lot of them do.

There's a talent agency in LA that requires its actors to use the same incredible photographer for their head shots. I love getting submissions from them because every single photo is beautiful. But I also hate getting submissions from them because a lot of the actors who come in only bear a passing resemblance to the person in the photo.

Besides, an impression isn’t necessarily based on how someone looks. It could be based on how they move, how they speak, or the way their clothes hang.

This is the blog I should have written before I wrote the last one.

You know how actors complain that they're treated like cattle? Well, there's a good reason.

Actors are to film what meat is to cooking.

Really.

Does that mean it's okay to treat actors like cattle? That's not where I'm going with this. The point I want to make is that if you find the best meat, you don't need to throw as many sauces, seasonings, and fancy cooking gadgets at it to make something tasty.

Which means that everything starts with casting.

Over the years I've developed a few really good tricks that help me not only find really great casts, but also work with the copywriters, art directors, creative directors, and producers who hire me. I already gave you one of my tricks in my last blog. I'm not going to give you any more, though, until I give you an overview of how casting works.

How casting works.

If you've never worked with a casting director before, here's how it usually goes down. You send out a breakdown, which is a description of the roles you hope to fill.

The casting director puts out a casting call, which is just a fancy way of saying that they let people know about the role. Depending on the casting director, the budget, the specifics of the role, and the time available, that could mean pulling head shots from their files, calling agents and asking them to submit people that fit the bill, putting a listing up on Craigslist or one of the online casting services, or trolling the comedy clubs, looking for new talent. If there's something particularly unusual about the role –– say you need a paraplegic rodeo clown –– they might contact the rodeo, the VA, local stables, and anybody else they could think of who might be able to connect them.

After a day or two (it used to be a week), the casting director filters through the submissions and asks the most likely candidates to audition.

At the audition, the casting director slates the talent –– which means asking them to state their name, then turn to face profile on both sides. The camera is then widened out to show the actor from head to toe and sometimes he or she will also be asked to turn completely around. If you're using a body part (for instance, if the actor is holding a can of soda), the casting director will shoot close-up shots of those body parts involved.

Then the casting director asks the actor to read the script. Usually a couple of times, with adjustments suggested by the casting director to make the performance more appropriate to what you're looking for.

There's a misapprehension that casting directors are cruel. And yeah, some are. But those are the stupid ones. A casting director is hired to help you find actors for your roles. Those that berate actors, make them uncomfortable, don't provide thoughtful direction, and are generally dismissive are going to have a harder time finding you the right people. Which means you're less likely to want to turn to them to help you find the right people.

On the other hand, the way budgets and timelines have shrunk, it's a wonder casting directors have time to say hello, much less work with the actors. And to be fair, actors have a responsibility to be prepared. I'm always astonished at the arrogance of some actresses in Hollywood who can't be bothered to change out of their yoga clothes or brush their hair when they're auditioning for a role that clearly requires someone attractive. Most of them do it because they want to be taken seriously as actors, not just as decoration. Which is fine. But if you're playing the role of a trophy wife, a love interest, or even a spokesperson shilling a product, you're going to have to accept that your appearance is integral to your effectiveness. Besides, you're going to have a better shot at impressing both me and the casting director with your acting ability if you come in looking the part.

Sorry. Where was I?

Oh right. Casting.

Picking your selects.

What you end up with is a stack of head shots, a log listing the names of the people auditioning, and a tape/DVD/link where you can see your hopeful candidates performing the role.

Up until this point, your involvement has been limited to waiting. But now you get to watch the magic unfold.

A lot of directors make a huge mistake at this point, which is to eliminate people who don't give them exactly what they’re looking for. They're looking for the exact performance they have in mind, but up until now they’ve been playing a game of telephone: They tell the casting director what they want, the casting director tells the actor what he thinks they want, the actor does a performance that he thinks the casting director thinks they want, and the director watches in horror as one person after another doesn't "get it."

If the project has a substantial budget, they either do another three days of casting,hire another casting director to see if they can do better, or go look in other places.

I've done jobs for ad agencies that are so caught up in this spiral of failure that right off the bat they'll hold casting in LA and New York and sometimes Chicago and Toronto. I'm not saying you can find exactly the right person anywhere. Especially if there's something really critical aobut the role, it makes sense to look in more than one place. It also makes sense to look in the most appropriate place.

I once worked on a commercial involving two Swedish speed skaters. Speaking Swedish. The agency and production company automatically held casting in New York and LA (we were going to shoot in Calgary, so we would have to travel our talent, regardless). It was only after we came up completely dry on both coasts that we were able to hold a casting in Sweden.

I know, duh!

Sorry. Where was I?

Oh right. Casting.

The callback auditions.

So you’ve got your casting tapes/link and your log. Now you get to choose who you bring in for a callback audition.

A callback audition is where you, Aspiring Director, get to direct your talent yourself. It’s an exhausting process because you invariably see more people than you have time for and because you have to develop at least a bit of a relationship with each one before you start working on the part.

Actors often complain that they didn’t get much time in the callback. The alternative would be to bring in fewer people, possibly missing the one who gives you gold.

The copywriter, art director, agency producer, and creative director are often –– usually –– at the callback audition, which creates several other problems and opportunities. One is the dynamic between the agency and the director. Do the agency people defer to the director? Or do they expect him to execute their vision? A lot of agency people aspire to directing themselves, and have no compunction about jumping in and directing the talent themselves.

Another is the tendency for copywriters and art directors in particular to focus in on one aspect of a performer. I’ve had ten minute discussions about an actor’s eyebrows.

But there’s also an opportunity to set the tone for the way in which the actors are treated. I make it a point never to talk disparagingly about actors, or to make fun of any physical characteristics they might have. Sure, if the announcer has a lisp, he’s probably not the guy you want to choose to sell Listerine, but you make the point and move on.

I also don’t allow any discussion of one actor in front of another. It’s just not nice. And there really is no upside.

The biggest benefit is that you get to discover just what the copywriter and art director had in mind when they came up with the spot. Often, they won’t even see eye-to-eye with each other, so having a chance to talk about the broadness of the performances, the physicality of the humor, or the subtextual stuff that deserves to be emphasized will help them see the potential in what they’ve done. And hopefully convince them that you’re working hard to add value.

Making your recommendations.

Once you’ve seen all the people, it’s time to decide on your recommendations. Again, the dynamic with the ad agency is going to have a huge effect on who gets what he or she wants. But I’ve figured out a couple of things that help keep the discussion on relevant points. (I’ll get to those in a later blog.)

What a lot of aspiring directors find disappointing is how little power a director actually wields. You have to come to consensus with the copywriter, art director, creative director, and agency producer. And then you present your recommendations to the clients, who not only have their interpretations of the spot, but generally get veto power on every aspect of its production.

I’ll get to things you can do to help streamline that process later, but in general, you present a first choice with at least one back up choice for each role. If all goes well, you have a cast. If not, you find yourself scrambling, trying to figure out how you’re going to satisfy a client and/or agency person and still create something the way you know it ought to be done.

By the way, that last sentence pretty well sums up the entire process of commercial directing. It’s fun as crap, but it’s also a lot of work that has very little to do directly with putting images on film.

Casting is like dating. Or should be.

Okay, stop it, you perv. This is not about the casting couch.

Get your mind out of the gutter and think about the person you want to be with. (If you're lucky enough to be happily married or in a long-term relationship, think about what you love about your partner.)

What came to mind? Age, height, weight, and ethnicity?

Didn't think so. And you know why? Because those things don't describe a person, they describe arm candy.

Guess what. Same goes for casting.

I'm sure you've heard it a million times –– story comes from character. I know I have. Well, creating a character is not just the writer's responsibility. It's the actor's, too. But mostly it's the director's.

So when you're casting, don't just put a call out for a "Male, 50s to 60s, caucasian." Fill in the details.

Here's the casting spec for one of the roles in the spot I'm casting right now:

CEO: Preston Beardsley III was born to be the CEO of a company like General Specifics. He has silver hair and a silver tongue, both cultivated deliberately over his 50-65 years. He wears expensive, conservative suits well and he’s generally serious –– some would say contemplative –– but he would tell you that his best features are his winning smile and firm handshake. They’ve done more than their share to close a lot of important deals.

See what I did there? I told the casting director and the actors who I'm looking for, not what the person I'm looking for looks like.

If you don't know who you're looking for, then don't waste your time (or your actors' or your casting agent's) bringing people in. Sure, somebody might walk in and hand it to you.

Somebody might walk in and hand you a chicken enchilada, too. But that doesn't mean you cooked it.

Never underestimate some of the things actors will do to get a role.

I once had to cast a commercial that involved a comic misdirection: The spot featured an older man, and based on what he was saying on the phone, his kids imagined he had found a new love. The "reality" was that he'd gotten a dog.

There could be no misunderstanding what was required by the script. The stage directions explicitly stated that the man would call the dog over to him. Still, in order to find the best possible actor, I decided to eliminate non-dog people. Rather than ask whether each actor liked dogs--when you ask a question like that, there's only one answer you ever get--I figured out a more oblique approach: I asked each of the men auditioning the name of the first dog he owned. And just to be safe, whether he was allergic to dogs.

The man we eventually cast was great in the audition. His first dog was named Jerry and no, he wasn't allergic. But when he showed up on set and had to interact with the puppy, he froze. The poor man was terrified.

Silly me. It didn't occur to me to ask the actors whether they were afraid of dogs.

The puppy wasn't stupid. She figured out pretty quickly that even though the man was calling her over, he really didn't want her anywhere near him. Ultimately, I had to take the man through deep breathing exercises to help him deal with his fear. Then I had to smear his pant leg with bacon grease in order to coax the puppy to come over. The performance we finally settled for was disappointing, both on the part of the man and the puppy.

Why am I telling you this? Because some actors will do just about anything to land a role.

It would have been best all around if the actor had declined to audition when he realized he'd have to work with a dog. But I'm sure the allure of starring in a regional phone commercial was just too great. He convinced himself that he'd be able to overcome his fear, just as the woman who landed the role of the cowboy in another commercial I directed figured she'd have time to learn how to ride a horse like an expert between the time she was cast and the day we started shooting.

Over the years, I've developed some techniques that help flush out the liars. I've learned to bring a dog to the audition for roles that require interacting with them. And when it's impractical to have a horse at the casting session, I'll ask questions that only an experienced rider should be able to answer--for instance, about the his or her favorite type of saddle.

But there's another form of duplicity that in some ways is more insidious than claiming you can speak French, rappel down a mountain, or swallow fire.

Flirting.

I can't tell you how many actresses (and actors, too) have come on to me in the hopes of landing a part. Some have gone so far as to... well, I'll let you use your imagination. Let's just say that for an average-looking, kind of scrawny, balding, middle-aged guy, I'm incredibly sexy.

Only I know better.

I know that some actors will do whatever it takes to land a role. And I know that once they've landed it, it falls to me to get the most authentic performance I can from them.

Someday, I'll write a blog about the particular system I've developed for casting. For now, though, suffice it to say that as much as I love to believe that the Victoria's Secret model really would love to meet me for drinks afterward (and yes, this really happened on a beer commercial I directed), the reason I'm in the room is to determine whether she's going to create the most convincing portrayal for the role.

If she is, sure I'll go meet her for a drink. I mean, I'm not an idiot.

Everything you need to know about crossing the line. Mostly.

Back when I was in film school, a lot of breath was expended on something called "the line." For those of you who have a better use for $80,000 than shoveling it at blowhards like me who are happy to tell you how to do what a lot of them can't seem to make a decent living doing themselves, here's a quick recap:

The line is an invisible boundary, beyond which the camera is never to venture. If it does, all sorts of bad things will happen, most of which involve an editor shaking his or head sadly and claiming there's no way to save your film.

There are a lot of complicated explanations for what the line is and where to draw it, but as with a lot of things, I find the simpler explanations better. So here's how I think of it.

Most scenes involve an interaction, and most interactions are conversations. Two people talking. That's your line.

If the camera is looking at Bob and Jeff in the wide shot, with Bob on the left and Jeff on the right, then when you get to the medium shot, guess what? Bob stays on the left and Jeff stays on the right.

When you go in for a close up, even if Jeff isn't in the shot, he's kept spatially consistent. So if Bob is looking at him, he's looking to the right.

What messes up a lot of people is that they misunderstand the concept of interaction. The apes in at the beginning of '2001, A Space Odyssey' are interacting primarily with the black monolith. So the line is between them and it.

Where this gets tricky is when there are multiple interactions in a scene. The thing to figure out is where the main interaction is and let that drive the line.

Let's say Miss Rutkowski is confronting a room of unruly third-graders. One end of the line goes straight through Miss Rutkowski, while the other end goes through the room of 8-year-olds. When Billy and Steffie pass a note, their line is between them. But you know how the line falls between them because you've established their screen relationship in the wide shot with Miss Rutkowski. So if Steffie is on the right of Billy in the wide shot, you keep her on the right when you come into the two-shot.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But Brian, I want to cross the line. I want to shoot Steffie and Billy passing the note from behind, with the note in the foreground and Miss Rutkowski in the background."

So do it.

This whole line thing is just a way to keep from jarring your viewers. Keeping the main interaction consistent makes it easier for your audience to follow the story when you make a cut. If you have someone looking to the right in one shot and then to the left in another, your viewers are going to have a harder time following what's being said.

So if you want to shoot the note close up in the foreground, it's probably because you want to emphasize the note. You instinctively feel that the image of the note being passed is more important than the dialogue being said.

I'm okay with that.