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The Art of Composition

10 Techniques of framing your subject

by Frank Swanson

The information you'll be reading has been accumulated over the past several years from various videography magazines and my personal experience as a videographer for the past twenty years.

Framing

That is, what to place in your viewfinder screen to get those great shots that will set your videos apart from other amateur videographers.

1. The Rule of Thirds:

Imagine a tic-tac-toe grid superimposed on your frame. In composing images, align the important elements - horizons, people, buildings, trees, etc. - with one or more lines on the grid. Try to get the most important element(s) at or very near at least one of the four intersections (e.g. for people center middle of head on left or right vertical line, eyes on the top horizontal line). This rule is simple and almost always works.

2. Look-room and Lead-room:

Let the viewer see what's ahead and let the subject move into it.

You can either keep your camera pointing at the location where the subject originally stood and let them walk out of the frame, or follow the subject but keeping them in the same relative position of the frame.

Either technique makes for a good cut-away to what the subject sees ahead, followed by the subject moving into the picture again along the same directional vector (e.g. left-to-right movement).

3. Provide a Center of Interest:

Spark the viewer's interest by giving every shot a clearly identifiable subject.

Even the grandest vistas such as mountains, oceans, skies, forests, and cities look less interesting without a foreground subject such as a tree, rocks, building, person or animal.

4. Show the Scale:

Include a 'yardstick' in wide shots of natural vistas and urban settings such as people, autos, animals, park bench, etc.

Use anything that is familiar to the audience as a reference object to show the scale of the shot.

5. Screen Real Estate:

Be very careful how you use every inch of the screen. You don't want to clutter it, but you don't want to keep it devoid of information either. Decide what you're trying to convey to the viewer and select a camera angle that shows that.

Pick a composition and stick with it with a steady shot (don't constantly wag, wave, pan, and zoom). If you need to change from a wide shot to a tight one, make sure you can cover the zoom in the edit with a cut-away. Pretend that every shot you frame is going to be a still photograph and you want someone to hang on the wall. Spend the time to view the image as a still until you think it's a keeper.

6. Camera Angle:

If the camera is tilted sideways or at an angle that causes people to appear that they should slide out of the frame, the viewer psychologically knows something is wrong.

Give the frame a level horizon by using the bubble level on your tripod (or eyeball it if you don't have one). Most scenes will have either a horizontal or vertical object in the background, so use it to align your camera angle. A slight cant of 5 or 6 degrees is more unsettling than a large one of, say, 45 degrees.

7. People Cropping:

When getting a closeup of a person's head, don't cut-off one of their ears (i.e. don't leave it out of the frame view), or worse yet cut-off one of their eyes - they go in pairs you know!

Maybe it's 100 years of film convention, but it's acceptable to crop the top of someone's head, but not lopping off the chin.

It's acceptable to cut-off someone at the knees, but not just above the foot.

8. Room to Move:

From a static position of a person, anticipate all possible movements whether it's a sudden lean forward (or backward), a turn their head or shift of their weight. Will critical parts of them be out of the frame?

Give a comfortable border around people to allow for slight motions without having to re-frame the shot.

9. Up Close and Personal:

One of the biggest mistakes of beginning videography is not getting close enough.

The general rule is that the viewer should be able to see the subject's eyes to be drawn into what he or she is saying. Unless you're showing the vastness of Death Valley and how insignificant people are in relation to nature, fill the frame with the action and focus of the scene.

Don't fill your frames with unimportant or diversionary information. Help your viewer focus on what you want them to see and remember.

10. Plan for Your Background:

Bad backgrounds can be "busy" - filled with complicated and confusing elements that distract from your subject.

For example, make certain that a light pole isn't growing from someone's head. Backgrounds can also be too bright, causing your subject to be backlit and making them nothing but black silhouettes. Focus on your subject, but take the time to look at the background and make adjustments to rectify any problems. Sometimes just adjusting the depth-of-field will help blur the background enough to do the trick.

Now you have read my comments, pay attention to the next several videos that you see at your club meetings, and even the movies on TV, and see if you can find all ten techniques used (or violated) at one time or another.