Left or Right? Directing Lateral Movement in Film

Book excerpt: ‘Left or Right? Directing Lateral Movement in Film’ offers an in-depth analysis of film, television, and new media directing from a perspective of clearly articulated directorial concept linked to the placement and movement of performers in shot design. This book strives to demonstrate the mechanism of directional bias and how the effects of perceptual mechanisms can help film directors and image-makers to control, regulate, and modify the viewer’s perception of characters and story movement, ultimately leading to higher quality creations. This highly hands-on, practical book provides novel insights into the significance of laterality effects, equipping film directors, and image-makers who want to create aesthetically valuable and well-crafted visual products with functional tools to employ. The book also examines lateral organization in regard to biological sex, gender identity, class, races, ethnicity, religions, and age in LGBTQ+ films and porn cinema. ‘Left or Right? Directing Lateral Movement in Film’ holds broad appeal from experiences directors or cinematographers with an established body of work to students working to understand the language of cinema. It will also appeal to film and media theorists, as well as teachers of visual arts education.