So we would proceed with the shooting and Philip said, now this and now that, and now that, and now we're here. I said, 'But Philip, you've crossed the line'. He said, 'Oh well, never mind'. I said, 'Well, we better have a... there are ways of tackling this problem. Well known ways. We can't just sort of say, never mind'. So that was a little bit of a problem from time to time. But the number of times where I've seen these enormous discussions with people going round the back of the sets and drawing little diagrams on the flats where... for instance, a classic example is where you have a table with four people round it, in the middle you have a vase of flowers, and you sooner or later you get to a position, and say, well, should the vase of flowers be on the left or should it be on the right, and they can never agree about that. But the important thing about crossing the line is you shouldn't do it unwittingly. You should be aware of... This is a... this is a convention and it's a convention which has a reason behind it. Which is regularly broken by people like Ozu, particularly Ozu in Japan.

Whenever I discuss this with students, the problem of the line, why the line is there, why you shouldn't cross it, how to cross it if you need to cross it, and then I point to Ozu. I said, if you see any picture by Ozu, you'll find that people are always looking... if there's two people in a room and they're having a conversation, both of them are always looking somewhere close to the camera, but usually on the same side'. And at first you, kind of, say... something a bit funny going on, and then, of course, you accept it. Because there's two people in the room, there's nobody else there and they're talking to each other, so obviously they're talking to each other. But in the West and generally speaking, we have this convention and it needs to be followed, and there are ways of dealing with it. But you shouldn't... you shouldn't cross it unwittingly.