Camera Composition and Movement- Blog #10

 

Welcome Back!

Camera Composition and Movement controls the narrative and pushes the audience to pay attention to certain characters or important points in a scene. In film, directors deliberately compose the frame in a way that attracts viewers to pay attention to the main point or subject of the scene.  

In this blog, two main aspects that make up the composition of a shot will be mentioned:

• Framing
• Depth

Framing

Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds is when an image is divided into thirds using two horizontal and two vertical lines, this creates the grid you see on the image above. In film, this grid is imaginary and not seen. Technically, there are 9 boxes and 4 intersection points created by the grid, the most important element of the image/scene is positioned at these intersections, it generates more attention and focus towards it. However, visually, the rule of thirds helps creatively use up the blank space. 

Open Frame

Open frame exposes the audience to everything in the scene. This type of framing gives the scene the purpose of showing the audience what the subject is looking at or where it will go. Open frame limits the audience to what the filmmaker wants them to see, however it doesn’t require any background context because it frames the scene in a way where the audience can see enough of what’s happening to understand. 

Closed Frame

Closed frame is is when the audience is limited to seeing mostly the subject or subjects in one frame without exposing a lot of the environment around them. This is to limit what the audience knows based off of what they can see, in closed frame, the audience would need more context to explain what they see. In the photo above, the frame is closed in on the subject and you can’t see their surrounding environment. You can see that the girl has a cake in front of her but you can’t see who she is looking at. 

Depth of field

Shallow Focus 

Shallow focus is when the camera focuses on one part of the picture and the rest is blurry. This technique is used to make the audience only focus on what is in focus and completely ignore the background because it’s too hard to see. For example, the photo above shows the candle as the main subject because its focused and the background is out of focus because it’s not the main subject.

 Standard Focus

Standard Focus is when the main subject is focused but you can see see things in the background. This technique is used to make the audience focus on the main subject but still have background subjects visible. Standard Focus would allow the background to remain visible but not too visible that it would take focus from the main subject. For example, the photo above shows a girl and the camera is focused on her but the background is blurry and out of focus but still visible. 

Deep Focus

Deep Focus is is when all subjects in an image are in sharp focus. This technique is used to capture key background, main activities and subjects all at once by keeping them in sharp focus. This is to allow the whole scene to tell the story. For example, in the photo above, you can see two people taking and in the background, you can see two other people talking. This can create context for the audience by showing what setting they are in and who the main subjects are around. 

* Graphic created by Canva 

* All original photos

That’s wrap for this series of camera shots, angles, composition, and movements. Next, we will go over my first drafts of the start of my magazine project. 

See you then!