Frankie Ordoubadi - Film Composition Tips

 This article will discuss a number of different tips for adjusting the composition of your images, so that you produce the most attractive possible pictures and moving images. When composing an image, you should consider three important factors: the focus, eye movement and background structure.

 

Focus

 

The focus of an image is where you want your viewers to focus their eyes. In portraits, this is very straightforward. You want the person in the photograph to be the main focus of attention. However, when you have multiple people or no people at all, the focus becomes more difficult to establish.

 

First, consider what to do when you have multiple people. If you are filming a conversation, your frame actually has two points of focus, as the audience will be looking back and forth. However, if you are taking a photograph of a group of people, you should subtly choose one or more people in the center of the photograph to be the focus. Often, there is a "person of honor" who can serve as a very good focus.

 

Eye Movement

 

Once the focus is chosen, you should construct the rest of the frame such that the eye is drawn naturally to the focus. The easiest way to do this is to put the focus in the center of the image, but this can become very boring. Instead, there are three tricks you can use:

 

Eyes move from wide to narrow: The eye follows lines from the wide end of something to the narrow end. Frame objects around your focus that put your focus at the apex of a triangle:

Eyes move from dark to light: The eye naturally moves to lighter colored objects. So, make sure that your focus is more lightly colored than the area around it or, if that is impossible, that there are no distracting light objects where you don't want people to look.

Eyes follow motion: If you are making a moving image, you can bring attention to your focus simply be having it move or by having something else move toward it.

 

Background Structure

 

Once you're sure of where your viewers will be looking, you can focus on the overall structure of the background. It is usually best to think of it geometrically. What are the shapes of the overall background? Usually, you'll want to have one side of the image that is narrower than the other, so that the eye naturally moves from the wider end to the narrow end. Look to see where in the background your geometric shapes are, and set your frame so as to bring them out.