CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS (Wesley Barry, 1962)

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Although there are many errors in the four minute clip of Creation of the Humanoids, I have chosen to focus on the rule broken when Captain Cragis and his colleague see the woman and ask for her task card.

When first seeing the two men, they are filmed at an angle, as they watch the humanoids, or “clickers,” walk off (Fig. 1). The camera angle moves to straight in front of the two men in a medium shot. The characters are looking off in the distance, seemingly to their right (Fig. 3). The camera angle cuts to the woman as an Eye Line Match. The woman begins to walk straight at them (Fig. 3). When the camera angle returns to where the two men are diagonal to the camera, the woman walks past them as if she were behind their right shoulders (Fig. 4). This obviously breaks the 180° rule. The audience immediately feels as if they were blind-folded, spun around, and let go to each take swing at a piñata. The camera must have crossed the axis of action to make the woman look as if she were squared up to them, walking in their direction. The director violates the 180° again immediately after the shot. The camera crosses the axis of action in order to film Captain Cragis following the woman (Fig. 5). When Captain Cragis finally catches up with the woman, the camera is behind the axis of action, where it should be.

In this certain shot of Creation of the Humanoids, we have two figures from the Order of the Flesh and Blood facing each other and discussing the situation with the Clickers. Cragis, the taller man, appears to look to the left and see a woman standing in the distance. The other man then follows his gaze. The camera then switches to the woman in an eyeline match shot where she appears to be looking at the men. The woman then begins to walk towards camera B . The viewers expect the woman to be walking towards the men and enter from the left side of the screen, but the shot cuts back to the men on camera A and shows her entering behind them from right. It seems at that point that she had been standing in the opposite direction the men were first looking towards. It appears that the editor made a 180-degree error causing the viewers to be confused about the woman's actual position on the set. The impression is given that the woman somehow jumped through the air and is approaching the men from the opposite direction which would be quite a trick indeed.

In the clip from Creation of the Humanoids, a very noticeable error in continuity occurs soon after the soldiers' confrontation with the clicker people. We see a medium shot of the soldiers. In the middle of their dialogue, Cragis looks over Soldier 2's shoulder, staring at something that is unidentifiable by the viewer. Soldier 2 then turns 180° in order to see what Cragis is looking at and we are presented with a long shot of a woman standing near a wall. This eye-line match shot causes the viewer to assume that the woman is, in fact, what Cragis and Soldier 2 are looking at. At this point we are still unaware of the existence of any type of continuity error but then the lady walks past the two soldiers from behind, the opposite of the direction the soldiers were looking. This is an easily noticed error in continuity, because it had just been established that the woman was in the direction that Cragis was looking with the eye-line match shot, yet she walks by them from behind. The placement of the camera for the long shot of the woman is in clear violation of the 180° Rule, thus creating a very confusing situation for viewers. If the lady was behind the soldiers, just what was Cragis looking at then?

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Last update: 9/29/2004