Page "History of film" Paragraph 139

Cutting to different angles within a scene now became well-established as a technique for dissecting a scene into shots in American films.

This approach had appeared a few times in earlier years, but in general cuts to or from a closer shot within a scene were still being made more or less down the lens axis as established in the Long Shot of the scene in question.

The particular form of cutting to different angles within a scene in which the direction changes by more than ninety degrees is called reverse-angle cutting by film-makers.

The leading figure in the full development of reverse-angle cutting was Ralph Ince.

Films that he made at Vitagraph in 1915 such as The Right Girl and His Phantom Sweetheart have a large number of reverse-angle cuts in interior, as well as exterior, scenes.

Other directors were also just starting to take up this style in 1915, for instance William S. Hart in Bad Buck of Santa Ynez.