When I first started working as a filmmaker, I remember being a little obsessed with framing. At some point it occurred to me that if I knew how to compose my shot well, I could get out of tricky situations where I didn’t have the right lighting or where my camera movement was really limited. It amazes me how something as simple as changing focus or a slight pan/tilt can completely change the emotion of any shot.
I remember on one of my first projects I had difficulty shooting in a very drab looking room with no control over the lights and almost no room to move. I’m really backed into a corner and I have to figure out what to do to get out of this situation… How could I make a room that looked terrible to the naked eye feel inspired, even charming, on camera?
I eventually figured this out by shooting the entire scene in extreme close-up.
This obviously allowed me to hide any ugly background elements and minimize the impact of bad lighting conditions, while also enhancing the scene by maintaining a tight perspective. In the end, this claustrophobic look worked surprisingly well in the context of the film, and most importantly I learned something from the experience.
To this day, I still actively seek out these lessons, albeit perhaps through a more mature lens… Recently, I decided to analyze a bunch of my favorite images from film/personal photos I’ve taken to determine what makes They are special. I hand-picked about 150 – 200 images that I thought were the best and asked myself what they had in common. Why do these few images stand out from the rest, and how can I replicate this X factor again next time?
After just flipping through a dozen pictures, I got it. They all have one thing in common:
They make you feel like you are there.
I don’t mean that they look realistic, in fact many of them are quite stylized and even look surreal…but they each have at least one feature that adds another layer to the image that makes it It feels more human in a way – like you were actually there, experiencing that moment.
No two images achieve this effect in exactly the same way. In some cases, having a foreground element can create a surreal POV. In other cases, I use a lot of headroom to capture the enormity of the space, or deliberately place an unusual object somewhere in the shot to avoid an ordinary-looking frame.
That last point is actually something I struggled with early on. I used to spend a lot of time trying to perfect the science behind cinematography – lighting, exposure, color, etc. – but this often resulted in me capturing images that looked almost “stock”, or just plain average.
For example, if I’m photographing a landscape, I might technically do all the right things, but the final image still won’t work artistically. It’s not special or unique enough. It basically looks like a postcard. The reason is because I wasn’t looking for elements that would place the viewer in that environment.
I would probably be more satisfied with the photo if I had shot an over-the-shoulder view of the landscape, or used an ultra-wide angle to really mimic the feeling of being there. But without the extra polish, this is just another beautiful landscape painting.
So now, whenever I start composing a shot, I always ask myself:
What can I do to make the audience feel like they are really here?
I try to figure out what it is about the scene that I experience or interpret organically in real life, and then adjust my footage to capture it as best I can…it’s all about tapping into feeling and emotion from a textural perspective.
To put my point in a different context, consider the psychological impact of: Color grading. Sometimes we choose to color grade an image in a stylized way that isn’t technically accurate at all, but still ends up feeling more “right” from a contextual perspective. We might take a photo of a beach on a hot day, but the heat won’t register on the camera, so we’ll heat it intensely in post to make it look even hotter. In some ways it’s less accurate (technically), but in other ways it’s more accurate (emotionally).
I apply the same logic to almost everything I work on creatively – especially frameworks. The “reality” of a scene or environment is never what appears directly through the camera without any thought. There’s always something that can be added, tweaked, tweaked, or removed to more effectively convey the true nature of a scene.
While this is far from the only factor I consider when composing an image, it is the most important to my process and always at the forefront. But that’s just me –
And you?
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