Lesson 2 of 9 · 10 min
Composition
Composition is where you put things inside the frame. The same person, in the same shot size, can look calm, trapped, confident or lost. The only change is where she sits in the rectangle.
In this lesson
- Use the rule of thirds to place a face.
- Give a subject the right headroom and lead room.
- Know four more tools: balance, symmetry, leading lines and depth.
Try it Frame her well
Drag the picture (or use the sliders) to pan and tilt the camera. The blue arrow shows where she looks. Find a frame that feels right. The lab tells you what it sees. Then turn her the other way and do it again.
- She looks right: get eyes, headroom and lead room all good.
- Turn her to look left, and frame her well again.
- Break the rule on purpose: short-side her. How does it feel?
The name for it The basic rules
- Rule of thirds
- Two lines across and two lines down cut the frame into nine parts. Put important things on the lines or where they cross. In a close shot, put the eyes on the top line.
- Headroom
- The space between the top of the head and the top of the frame. Too much makes the person sink. In very close shots, crews often cut the top of the head on purpose, but keep the eyes high.
- Lead room Look room
- Space in the frame on the side a person looks to, or moves to. It gives the look somewhere to go.
- Short-siding
- Putting a person on the side they look to, with empty space behind them. It breaks the lead room rule. It can feel tense, trapped or wrong, so directors use it for those moments.
These are rules of thumb, not laws. They describe what most audiences find "normal". The power comes from knowing the normal, so that you can break it with a reason.
Four more tools
- Balance
- Big, bright or close things feel heavy. A face on the left third can be balanced by a lamp, a window or another person on the right.
- Symmetry
- A centred, mirrored frame feels formal, controlled or strange. Wes Anderson and Stanley Kubrick use it often.
- Leading lines
- Roads, walls, rails and shadows pull the eye along them. In the lab, the street lines lead into the distance behind her.
- Depth
- A foreground, a middle ground and a background make a flat screen feel deep. Put something close to the lens, the subject in the middle, and the world behind.
Check Three questions
A character looks to screen left. Where do you usually put her?
Lead room goes on the side of the look. She sits on the right third and looks into the open space on the left.
In a close-up, where do the eyes usually go?
The eyes are the centre of attention, and the top third line is a strong position.
Why would a director short-side a character on purpose?
Breaking the normal rule makes the audience feel that something is not right.
Field exercise Pause and draw the grid
Pause a film on five random frames. Imagine the thirds grid. Where are the eyes? Which side has the space? Find one frame that breaks the rules and say why the film might want that.