Camera composition starts with how viewers see. David Lent explains framing, movement, zooming and storytelling rules every camera operator should know.
How to think about a camera is as important as knowing how to use it. Mastering camerawork begins with understanding the medium and the relationship between a camera and the viewer.
(1.) Think of the video camera as a microphone for your brain, transmitting what’s on your mind to other minds. Every shot becomes a statement about who you are, what you have to say and how well you can say it.
(2.) Think of the camera not only as your ‘microphone’, but as the viewer’s brain. Cradled in your hands, this brain wants order, clarity and meaning in an image. Composition – an operating procedure performed on the viewer’s mind – is as much a form of brain surgery, and no less invasive, as the kind performed with a scalpel.
According to Marshall McLuhan, “All media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical.” In this sense, the video camera is an extension of the brain, enhancing all of our senses. Think of it as a tactile medium rather than a visual one. Not “tactile” as in touching an object with your fingers, but the feeling we have when the senses are working in harmony—being in touch. By manipulating a video image, you are rearranging the order of another person’s perceptions. Viewers may be thousands of miles away and exist in the present or far into the future, but your work takes place as much in their brain as it does in your hands.
Beams of light are translated by the lens and camera and displayed as video images. These images are received by the eye and focused on the retina. There, millions of rods and cones translate these beams into neural impulses. Using dozens of processors, the brain interprets these impulses, allowing it to understand what it is seeing. The result of this blend of camerawork and brainwork are new perceptions, new emotions, new thoughts.
Rules of thumb.
The business end of a camera is the lens. The skill with which you use it to shape an image can set your work apart from the crowd. Get the best glass you can afford, find its strengths and weaknesses then use it to do what it does best.
Put the viewer on solid ground. Painters and photographers call it the Figure/Ground theory. The figure is the essential subject or object of the frame, such as a person’s face. The ground is what is behind or in front of the subject that allows perspective – the illusion of a third dimension. Suppose, for example, you’re shooting an interview with someone in the crowd at a political rally. If you place the subject – the figure – to the side of the frame, revealing the stage and part of the crowd – the ground, you give the viewer a sense of where they are and how it feels to be there. When interviewing someone on the street – the figure – you can provide the ground by revealing all or part of the person asking the questions.
Make some space. In an interview, the subject’s face is the center of interest – the “star” of the frame. Unless speaking directly to the camera, a human subject should rarely be in the center of the frame. Add logic (ground) to the frame by creating negative space – the side of the frame where the interviewer is positioned (if the interviewer is on your left side, frame the subject on the right) – or an object of interest that adds meaning to the content of their comments. Eliminate distractions at the edges and make sure nothing appears to be sprouting from the subject’s head. Experiment. Look at a wide, medium and close shot of a subject. What is unobtrusive or appealing in the wide shot may be distracting or confusing in the medium or close shot.
Use the lens as a telescope. Objects or people unremarkable at first glance can be captivating in close-up, or in composition with something else. The telephoto end of a lens allows you to privately explore your surroundings without pressure to shoot.
The rules for effective writing are as relevant to the video image as they are to a sentence, paragraph, drawing or machine.
Omit needless information. Composition is as much an eliminative process as a creative one. The less unnecessary work for the viewer’s brain, the more accessible is the image. What is essential in the frame? Emphasize or exaggerate it. What is obvious or irrelevant? Leave it out or make it vague.
Eliminate excess headroom. Unless the space above a subject’s head is essential, eliminate it. On a wide shot, consider including a grounding object in the foreground to create perspective and depth.
When in doubt, pull out. I usually stay wide when I’m handheld but I will zoom to various compositions – especially to shoot groups of people and faces without being noticed. Often I’ll walk in with the camera for close compositions or move away for wide ones. I’m steadier and more versatile this way and don’t have to think so much about focus or steadiness.
Include body language. When shooting the performance of an athlete or dancer, include the entire body, so the viewer won’t miss something that you might not have anticipated. Check out Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire dance scenes. Astaire understood this concept and insisted that no part of his body, during a dance scene, be excluded from the frame.
Apply the golden triangle. During an interview, a viewer’s eyes move between the subject’s eyes and lips. On a close shot, the triangle formed by the eyes and lips should be the horizontal center of the frame. It may sometimes be necessary and appropriate to cut off the top of the subject’s head.
Frame the master shot – the one you’ll stay with during most of the interview – no wider than head and shoulders, but not so close that the viewer feels forced into intimacy. We’ve all seen interview moments when the shooter zooms in to a tight shot of a weeping face. I turn away – not because I feel the subject’s personal space is violated, but because mine is.
When the destination of your video is a computer monitor, frame an object or interview subject more tightly than you would for a large screen.
Add tension to the frame by including something the viewer can identify but not see entirely. Suppose you’ve composed a 2-shot in which one person is doing most of the talking. Frame off part of the silent one. This composition will help focus the viewer’s attention on the person doing the talking and also provide visual context (ground). Conversely, widen out to reveal things in the environment that are relevant to the scene or the story.
Be opportunistic. Often, you’ll find yourself in an environment where people are hypersensitive or even spooked to the presence of a camera. Set up the camera and compose a shot – not from a tripod, which will draw unwanted attention, but cradled in a ShotSpot or another unobtrusive camera support. Press record, then, walk a short distance away from the camera for a few minutes – never letting it out of your sight. Because it appears to the subjects that no one is shooting, they ignore the camera and resume behaving naturally.
Trust yourself. Unless you are being directed, you are the ultimate authority on how you shoot. So if you don’t like the shot, chances are nobody else will either. Are you bored with the image? Try something different. Do you sense that this person is not concentrating on what he or she is saying? Stop recording and talk about it.
Camera Movement
Advanced biology. Viewing an image from a black and white viewfinder involves only the peripheral vision, the part of the eye that processes changes in movement. Black and white vision wants movement or it gets bored. This helps explain why so many shooters, looking at a black and white viewfinder, zoom, pan and tilt excessively. The viewer, however, is looking at a color image. Color vision is processed by the macula, which is concerned with changes in hue and texture. Color vision prefers gentle movement or, better yet, no movement at all; it has enough on its plate already.
When the camera moves, shakes, tilts, pans or zooms the brain engages in a lot of rapid-fire computing to process a constantly changing image. Excessive camera movement overloads the brain as it struggles to process not only movement, but changing hue and texture. Steady, graceful moves are easy on the brain, allowing the mind to be fully present as the story unfolds.
Visualize the outcome. Make camera moves with intention.
What do you intend to say with the shot? What kind of camera move will help you say it clearly or dramatically?
Help the editor. Make camera moves of editable length.
Meandering pans and endless zooms are needless interruptions to the viewer and a waste of the editor’s time. Offer choices; do the moves in and out, right to left, left to right, up and down, down and up. Snap zooms and swish pans can be helpful to the editor as intervals between shots that don’t cut well together.
A graceful camera move is like a good speech. It has an attention-getting open and memorable close. Before you pan, tilt, dolly or zoom, decide on a beginning and an ending composition, then practice until you get it right. Camera moves should be concise and at a pace that allows the viewer’s brain to process a compact, changing mosaic.
Experiment with your lenses so you’ll know what each can and cannot do, allowing you to see a composition with your mind’s eye. You’ll often see fleeting opportunities that depend on you getting to the composition fast, so set your zoom control on its highest speed so you can zoom in quickly, focus, and then pull out to the desired composition.
Leave no fingerprints. The best camerawork draws no attention to itself. Zooming emphasizes movement and, when used too often or with a heavy hand, pollutes the viewing experience. The viewer is distracted but may be unable to articulate why.
Respect the listener. Zooming while an interview subject is speaking diverts the listener’s attention in order for the brain to process the changing image. During a zoom, little of what is said is retained. Use a purposeful zoom – at a speed consistent with the style of the program – only to change the composition.
Drive carefully. Zooming takes the viewer for a ride, so make it bold and graceful. If you’re happy with the composition of a shot, a zoom is unnecessary – except to get to the next composition.
Hold the shot. You’re shooting not only for yourself, but also for a producer, reporter and/or editor. When shooting B-roll, hold shots for at least 8-12 seconds. If action is developing in the frame, keep rolling.
Create a sense of place. Storytelling involves creating visual and audio context for the viewer. Suppose you’re shooting an interview in a small town in the rural Midwest. Shoot scenes of the town, the neighborhood and the home of the subject. You might get lucky and see a tractor rolling along a country road – a shot that says ‘farm country’. Maybe there’s a diner where locals hang out. Shots of people sitting at the counter, a dog sleeping on the porch or snarling behind a fence. A decorated or neglected mailbox, a piece of loose aluminum siding rattling in the wind or a rusted car on the front lawn. These images help complete the picture, in the mind’s eye and among the senses, so the viewer knows where s/he is, how the place looks, how it sounds and feels.
While wrapping up a short documentary about gun violence in Washington DC, I was asked by the client to get b-roll of a security guard at a downtown office building. The guard’s son had recently been murdered and we’d shot an interview at her home. As a setup shot for the interview, my reporter wanted a sequence of the subject walking into the building and taking her post behind a security desk in the lobby. Before shooting, I took a few minutes to study her routine, which consisted of sitting at her guard desk, looking through the glass doors at passersby on the sidewalk, and keeping an eye on the security monitors beside her. Ignoring my client’s instructions, I shot a couple of minutes of this woman staring out the glass doors, a terminal sadness etched on her face. The image spoke volumes about her sorrow – far more poignantly, I felt, than an impersonal – however serviceable – walking shot. My correspondent was annoyed and didn’t use the shot. Once again, the call of my instincts had drowned out the voice of my professional good sense. Still, the satisfaction I get from being loyal to them is almost always greater than the price to be paid. —DL
The shooters I know who are at the top of their game approach camerawork more intuitively than technically or intellectually. Like an old master on a tennis court, they don’t need to run fast because they know where to be. Through long experience the best shooters are attentive listeners, with highly evolved instincts for creating meaningful images and stories. With steady hands they set the stage and, with composition, draw the crowd.
David Lent’s career in television spans thirty-five years. David co-produced and shot the critically acclaimed PBS special, “Life Without…Inside San Quentin.” With Susan Burgess-Lent, he co-produced the documentary feature, “Staying Alive,” based on Studs Terkel’s bestseller, “Working.” David currently works as a news and documentary cameraman for numerous domestic and international clients including BBC, CNBC, BRAVO, FOX News, MTV, GRANADA, TV ASAHI, YLE, ARD, and ORF. David is the author of “The Laws of Camerawork” and soon to be released book, “Video Rules.”
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