Cinema tends to show armies lining up, firing a volley or two of arrows and then charging in the infantry. Obviously there is more than one issue with this portrayal but my question is regarding the frequency of friendly fire. We're arrow volleys as organized as this or were archers given leeway to fire as they saw fit? Also if it was the latter would an archer even be able to distinguish friend from foe?
I provided a lengthy response to a similar question here.
To extend further, movies show a cinematic version of archery with epic volleys, partly due for artistic license, but also due to safety and limitations of equipment. In many cases, the "archers" are pneumatic launchers, or bowmen using low draw weights. More often, archers were deployed in a way that they were only barrage sparingly for the purposes of harassment, or have a clear line of sight to shoot directly. There were, of course, exceptions where archers had to shoot over their own soldiers and fall short, but in most cases archers were shooting at other archers or at exposed flanks.