I hate to contradict James, but every POV is NOT an eyeline match.



>*POV shot*: a cut from a person looking to what he sees.



This definition is incorrect. A POV shot is just that, a shot, not an

edit. A POV shot represents a character's vision, or so called

subjective camera. Sometimes such shots occur after a shot of the

character, as a sort of reverse shot. But in their most stereotypic

use -- representing the vision of the psycho in a slasher film --

they just appear, unconnected to shots of the character. There are

other examples of this, not in horror films, including (at least

according to film history books-- I've never seen it) the entirety of

Lady in the Lake, and also (have seen it) Russian Ark. Also, when POV

shots ARE edited together with shots of the character whose

subjectivity they represent, the character is not necessarily looking

off screen.



A conventional eyeline match is a cut from a shot of a character

looking off-screen -- viewed from an omniscient 3rd person camera

position, to a shot of what the character is looking at -- often also

viewed from an omniscient 3rd person camera position. This omniscient

position may be distant from the character - as if the camera is in

the audience of a proscenium theater and cuts from left to right of

the stage to follow an eyeline - or more closely aligned with the

character: an over the shoulder position. The two techniques can be

combined of course, as we can cut from an eyeline going off screen to

the character's point of view, e.g. looking-out-the-window shots.



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It says something (I don't know what) about the contested nature of

our concepts of 'realism' that so many people responded to my

long-take query with examples from films I would consider to be

anything but realistic -- especially Touch of Evil, Kane, Weekend...



Rope is a good example of one of the problems here, as the film is

very 'stagey'. In one context, with improvised scenes, long takes may

appear more spontaneous, but if the director has any specific ideas

in mind, the long take can become more theatrical, more rehearsed,

more presentational...



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