Screen direction
Also known as: direction of travel, screen left and right
Which way a subject appears to move across the frame, a property that has to stay consistent between shots or a sequence reads as confused.
Updated
What it means
Screen direction is the apparent direction of travel. A rider moving left to right keeps that direction across cuts, or a viewer reads the next shot as a different run rather than a continuation.
It is the property; the 180-degree line is the rule that protects it. One describes what a viewer sees, the other describes where to put a camera. Both are about the same mistake.
Action footage breaks it constantly because the cameras are wherever they fit. A mounted angle and a trailside tripod rarely agree about which side of the action they happen to be on.
How it works in practice
One camera side per session is the discipline. Deciding before the first run is easier than reconciling angles afterwards, and better light is a worse reason to cross than it looks. The edit pays for it.
Neutral shots reset it. A head-on angle, an overhead or a Cutaway belongs to neither direction, so it can sit between two shots that disagree with each other.
Aerials are the usual offender. A drone crossing a rider changes direction mid-shot, which is why a Tracking shot from above sits between sections rather than inside a run.
What to watch out for
Mirrored output breaks it silently. A clip flipped for a Vertical video (9:16) crop or a front-facing phone recording reverses direction without anybody deciding to. The reversal is invisible until the cut.
Automatic assembly cannot see it. Shot scoring ranks clips on what happens inside them, so two shots of the same rider travelling opposite ways can end up adjacent.
It matters less than people fear in a montage. A Supercut of unrelated riders has no single direction to maintain, and knowing when the rule applies is half of using it.
How RawClip handles it
Selection works from what each clip contains rather than from the geometry between clips, so direction is worth checking in the result. Filming from one side of the action is what makes an assembled sequence read cleanly without any intervention. One decision on location removes a problem that has no fix in post.