Understanding Movies 101 -- The Two-Shot

What is the two-shot? You've seen a thousand, or a million, two-shots. And this video will teach you and help you learn what a two shot is.

We'll talk about the meanings of two shots and why they are so widely used.

This video is part of my series on film grammar, film criticism, and movie viewing, called Understanding Movies 101.

All reasonable comments welcome, including reasoned disagreements. I ban foolish talk on sight; it's a tremendous waste of life.

[mimicrybypravesh]

This is the best thing I've ever seen this whole day. Very entertaining and informative.

[Crosland_Hill]

Thank you, I can't wait to watch the rest in the series. That Rashomon clip. I get that two characters facing the same way, apparently looking at a point out of shot, and unable to meet each other's gaze, can be taken to indicate despondency. But how significant is it that they are facing left?

In a documentary on Japanese art I watched recently, it said that in the West people instinctively read an image from left to right, whereas in Japan people read an image from right to left. So, from my point of view as a Westerner, the way the shot is set up makes the two men look even more despondent because they seem to be looking to the past, unable to face the future. But might it have a slightly different impact on a Japanese viewer? More generally, to what extent would you say that left-right polarity in character positioning is part of the grammar of movies?

[cinematographe]

which is that film @5:19 after Citizen Kane?

[zalanahara]

something I notice in your examples and I am not sure if this is an actual thing but, and this is especially for a scene romantic scene, the male is always on the left and the female is always on the right. Why is that?