The three second center:
Inspired by a classmate here (@patrycja.lerch), I watched "The last Mohican" on Sunday (the 1992 version). I did it not for pleasure but to observe how the production constructed the visual (camera work, setting and so on).
You can pause this movie at practically any point and the freeze frame would show an almost perfectly constructed image. I thought, this is a film after all, people move in it. So not every scene can be perfect.
In any case, I didn't catch the film delivering a moment that didn't conform to the artistic rules of image composition.
This film avoided the middle like the devil avoids holy water. Sometimes I saw a flagpole in it or a plane house wall, intended to distract from the center.
Of course, there are occasions in a movie where a character moves from side to side and then they sort of cross the middle. In The last Mohican this usually happened in a blink of an eye. No person or anything else of importance ever stayed in the center for more than three seconds.
The center was used very sparingly as a dramaturgical device. When Nathaniel shoots from the fort to give the messenger a free corridor, he is exceptionally allowed to do it from the center. This scene was of course accompanied by appropriately dramatic music.
That was my experience with film observing. Are there any of you who occasionally watch a film for educational reasons and not just as a consumer?