Importance of Framing a Shot When Making a Movie

Framing a shot pertains to how you compose your main subject and the elements surrounding it to fit the rectangular space your camera provides. This plays a vital role in exploring the varying meanings, implications, and emotions of a scene. The composition of each shot allows specific elements on screen to be in focus or out of focus, highlighted or downplayed, or in the foreground or the background.

Framing Your Shot

Even a slight change in a shot's framing can significantly change its overall look, feel, and even its featured subject. For instance, when shooting the exterior of a house, you can frame it to have the door in the middle with the two identical windows in between. You can also frame it to simply include the door, one of the windows, and a small plant right below the window. You can even frame it in a way that only one window and the roof is shown in the house, then a small portion of the frame reveals the blue sky.

Aesthetics

As an audio-visual medium, filmmaking should be able to capture a certain visual flavor that can engage the viewer to continue watching the movie. On a surface level, the aethetic value of a shot keeps the audience occupied with what they see on screen. The shot's visual appeal allows the eyes to appreciate its various details, which are essentially composed of a scene's foreground and background elements. Characters and objects and their lighting design as

seen on frame also contribute to the overall visual composition of a shot.

Rule of Thirds

Although framing a shot is not bound by mathematical rules and calculations, filmmaking commonly practices the "Rule of Thirds." This divides the screen using certain lines to create smaller rectangular boxes where the significant elements of the shot are typically placed. To determine these parts, the screen is first divided using one set of equally sized and distanced vertical lines and another set of equally sized and distanced horizontal lines. These lines create nine identical parts made up of smaller rectangular boxes. Their intersecting lines are generally considered the ideal visual spots where the shot's main point of interest or its main subject should be placed.

Focus and Impact

Whether using the "Rule of Thirds" or not when composing a shot, the framing of a footage should lead the eyes toward the intended focal point or main subject. This is very important when visually communicating which elements on frame are more relevant than the others. Meanwhile, the lens used for a particular shot and how deep or shallow its focus is affect the depth, dimension, appeal, and impact of the shot to the audience.