Learning From Classic Films

Part 2: Composition

There are many ways to film the same scene. The director’s decisions depend on what experience they want the audience to have. Knowing what shot composition is and how to use it is vital to visual storytelling. Shot composition is more than arranging scene elements in a camera frame. It is an art that combines those elements to advance the story, reveal character and create emotion. Knowing the rules of shot composition and using them well can keep your audience engaged from beginning to end, to keep the viewer connected to an otherwise, disconnected character.

First, just like any "rules" in photography or cinematography, the rules of composition are made to be broken. As much as we rely on these rules in most cases, the elements of composition are most exciting when they go against the grain. Before we learn the rules of shot composition, it might be better to understand what is meant by composition.

The first assessment should always be, "what am I trying to visualize?" What feeling, thematic message, or experience do I need to create to make my point clear and effectual. Once we have this essential context, we can use shot composition to arrange all of our scene elements in the best possible way to drive our intention home. Knowing how to arrange specific shots for specific reasons, will have a greater impact on the audience, keeping them engaged for longer. And engaging your audience is a requirement of filmmaking. But lasting engagement can be difficult when the film deals with unlikeable characters. Complicated protagonists, such as anti-heroes, need camera framing and composition techniques to be relatable enough so the audience sticks around.

1. The Rule of Thirds

Firstly, the rule of thirds is one of the most common camera framing techniques used in film or photography. It's about positioning a character to show their relation to other elements in the scene. Imagine a tic-tac-toe board — two lines running vertical, and two more running horizontal. As the camera frames the shots, keep the image on the intersecting lines. It’s more pleasing to the eye. But also, different camera framing will tell a different story. It is an easy way to determine the character's place in the world. Mastering frame composition and framing in film also allows you to break some of the rules of composition.

2. Balance and symmetry ( Center)

Understanding frame composition rules is invaluable knowledge for directors and cinematographers. And so is knowing when to break them. Shooting a perfectly symmetrical shot, breaking the rule of thirds, is used for very specific reasons. Artists use this technique to direct the viewer’s eye to a specific place. And leading the eye to the center of the screen might end up serving your story better, and garner more emotion. Past films have done this well. Balance and symmetry in a shot can be very effective.

Or they create a place so perfectly symmetrical, the audience feels instantly overwhelmed. If you know anything about Wes Anderson, you know he loves a symmetrical frame.

Note that leading the eye of the viewer should be your priority in every scene you frame. Blocking often uses leading lines to control what the audience sees, and how they see it. This affects how they interpret it.

3. Leading lines

Leading lines are actual lines (or sometimes imaginary ones) in a shot, that lead the eye to key elements in the scene. Artists use this technique to direct the viewer’s eye but they also use it to connect the character to essential objects, situations, or secondary subjects. Whatever your eye is being drawn to in a scene, leading lines probably have something to do with it. It is a very useful type of shot composition as it conveys essential context to the audience. It is a leading line that interestingly enough, also represents what his camera is able to capture. Both the diagonal and straight line frame the crash as the focus. What's interesting is that his camera is also doing that inside of the scene. While this rule of composition helps lead us to our focus, other techniques help us connect to our focus.

4. Leading Space ( Lead room, lead nose)

In photography, filmography and other visual arts, lead room, or sometimes nose room, is the space in front, and in the direction of, moving or stationary subjects. Well-composed shots leave space in the direction the subject is facing or moving. When the human eye scans a photograph for the first time it will expect to see a bit in front of the subject.

5. Deep space 

Because there are so many nuances in shot composition, it's sometimes hard to keep track of all these techniques. I felt it best to create a separate section for deep space composition apart from depth of field. We will define deep space shots, as well as something called deep focus, and determine how they all relate to each other. We then will examine how they often work together to capture intentional (and incredible) moments in film.

6. Frame in Frame

This is my favorite! Let's see this video to understand this composition:

An integral aspect of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s mastery is his recurring use of frames within the film frame.

The below take, by Evan Puschak of The Nerdwriter, on Wong’s 2000 masterpiece In The Mood For Love dives into that motif. “Five minutes in,” Puschak notes, “and every shot is a frame within a frame—meaning that every single shot featured characters not only framed by the rectangle of the film itself, but by smaller, internal shapes as well.” The classic, lensed by Christopher Doyle, centers on two individuals, Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung), who, after becoming aware of the infidelity going on between their respective spouses, choose to try to understand their partners’ reasons for cheating. Unexpectedly, the two do this by acting out scenarios as each other’s spouses. As Puschak describes, Wong furthers the inherently voyeuristic practice of cinema during these scenes. How? It’s not always clear to the viewer when Chow and Chan are acting, which keeps us off-kilter, getting us to lean forward, hoping to more closely observe what is actually transpiring.

Another way of ramping up the intimacy: careful shot composition. “By placing objects in the foreground, the director enhances the feeling that the characters have—of being observed—not to mention, our own feelings, of being observers,” says Puschak. Wong also employs “erratic” time jumps that follow no traceable pattern, which according to Puschak, means “The viewer is often left initially confused as to how much time has passed between scenes.” It’s hard to imagine a Hollywood studio signing off on the process with which Wong operated back in 2000. Puschak notes, “There was little more than an outline when Wong Kar-wai and his crew began filming—a process that took a long 15 months, in which the script and the individual scenes were written on the fly by the director and the actors together. Which is surprising because watching the film you can’t help but feel that you’re in the hands of somebody in complete control. Visually and emotionally, In The Mood For Love is fully consistent.” This sparse outline approach to production is abetted by its small number of locations and camera shots. “The film is so self-contained that it only features a handful of locations, filmed from the same angle so that you experience a kind of circular effect, of returning again and again to the same thing.

This technique isolates, against fixed backgrounds, the things that actually are changing in the film—the inner lives of the two leads.” In The Mood For Love is a remarkable film, a perennial on everyone’s “greatest 21st-century films” list for good reason.

7. Shapes Blocking

So you know how far apart you want to block your actors, but how do you get the audience to pay attention to specific elements on screen? This filmmaking technique will allow you to point the audience's eyes through placement of the characters throughout the scene. Every camera angle can be focused through squares, circles, and triangles. Trust us, we did the research on film blocking. Shapes matter!

 - Circles: 

- Triangles: 

- Squares: