When preparing to capture a video the idea of composing your shots is very simple, however it does require some thought when getting your camera equipment set up. In this blog I will be covering several techniques which will help you frame a far more professional and visually pleasing video.
Camera position
Firstly, let’s think about the camera’s position. The placement of your camera relative to the object or person that you are capturing is critically important in terms of how your audience will interpret what you are displaying on the screen. Most often you will see that the camera is placed at theeye level of the person you are capturing. This is the neutral position. If you place the camera below eye level it will make the person seem far bigger and much more dominant to the viewer. Placing the camera above eye level will make the person appear smaller or less powerful to the viewer. Camera placement in terms of height can have a great impact on how your audience interpret that footage.
Rule of thirds
Next, let’s talk about the Rule of Thirds. When playing with the settings on your phones camera or on a digital camera you may have spotted the Rule of Thirds setting before, but maybe didn’t understand what it is for.
The idea behind it is in fact fairly simple. What this setting does is segment the viewable area into thirds both vertically and horizontally using straight lines. You will see that the four lines visible on the screen will intersect at 4 points. These intersection points are the reason this setting is important when setting up your shot, as when capturing a video of a person or an object, you want the main focus of the shot, i.e. their face, to be placed on one of these intersection points.
When setting up a camera, initially the first thought is usually to place the main object of the shot right in the centre of the viewable area, but doing this can result in footage that becomes uninteresting and repetitive. By using the rule of thirds, you are creating footage that will be far more interesting to the viewer.
Illusion of continuity
You will want to keep an element of continuity when capturing various footage of one object or person. The key to this is keeping relatively the same composition between each of those shots, so that when we edit them together it is clear to the viewer that the location, time and object are the same. As an example, if we use three separate clips of one person, we would maintain their eye line in each of the shots. It is a good idea to use the rule of thirds tool to do this by keeping their eyes roughly a third of the way down the shot.
Framing
One of the problems many come across when capturing video of a person is where you place their head inside of the frame. If you have a close shot of someone’s face, then it is often the tendency to cut them off very close to the bottom of their chin or even cut their chin out of the shot all together and show their hairline instead. However, it is best practice and is far more tolerable to your audience to show their entire face by cutting off their hairline instead if this is what you need to do.
Lead room
The person being videoed won’t always be looking directly into the camera. In fact, a lot of the time having the person look into the camera can look entirely wrong. If you are videoing someone that is facing either the left or right hand side of the room, then one thing to consider is lead room or nose room. Lead room is the distance in the frame between the subject’s nose and the edge of the frame and what you want to do is leave a reasonable amount of space in this area. This works psychologically to the viewer because it creates a space for the person in the shot to look to. If there is no lead room then the person will seem like they are looking straight into a brick wall which can make the viewer feel uncomfortable.
Practice
Composition is highly important if you are keen to capture and share your videos. Without the correct composition, you will find that your video footage will become instantly unusable when arriving at the editing stage. One of the biggest challenges is that you will be capturing ordinary people doing ordinary things. To engage your audience you want to use great composition to change something ordinary to extraordinary. And the best part? It doesn’t cost you a penny.
If you need any support with your video content requirements, please do not hesitate to contact us.