Do you need to practice your film composition and framing? Learn how to present the elements in your frame to create visually appealing shots, evoke emotion, and let your audience know what’s going on in your scene. Apply these framing basics: rule of thirds, eyelines, 180-degree rule, headroom, depth, symmetry, and lines to guide your audience on the story and theme of your scene. Follow our tips and guidelines for the basics of framing and composition in this clip from our video content course.
Framing Basics
How do you convey a professionally creative scene in a shot? Position the camera in a way that guides the viewer where you want them to be. Follow these framing basics and techniques to create a clean shot and help the viewer understand your scene better. In this clip from our video content course, we explain and provide useful tips in implementing the Rule of Thirds, eye lines, 180-degree rule, headroom, depth, and symmetry framing techniques.
The Rule of Thirds
Heard about the Rule of Thirds and are wondering how you can apply it to your videos and photos? Implementing the Rule of Thirds into your artwork will help create balanced and interesting photography and videography. Our informative video on the artistic technique provides examples from movies and photography that should be helpful for you.
Sometimes when shooting a production, it’s hard to decide how to frame things. After you’ve gone through all the work of pre-production, you’ll want everything to be perfect, and this includes composition. It’s not always easy to achieve these, but there are certain framing principles that help a lot. The most well-known of these is the rule of thirds.
So what exactly is the rule of thirds? Essentially, its imaginary lines, 2 vertical and 2 horizontal, that are placed in the frame. These 4 lines create 3 rows and 3 columns, for a grand total of 9 sections. It may sound complicated, but it's really anything but. What these imaginary lines have to do is essentially help make frames more balanced. When shooting, you can imagine these lines, or even many cameras have the option to put them up on the display. Then, you place objects, people, etc. on either the intersections between the lines, or just on the lines themselves. This creates a more balanced frame than just putting a subject directly in the middle of the frame, which is a common mistake of many new videographers. The rule of thirds is a great tool for both new and veteran videographers alike.