Be wary of what's behind your subject. Through the viewfinder you're often very concentrated on the principle and don't realize until later that there is a telephone pole growing out of their head or a window sash that looks surprisingly like an arrow going in one ear and out the other. The background can also be used to add to your shot. When interviewing your grandfather about his experience in the war, for example, hanging his uniform or a map in the background, slightly out of focus, can add visual interest and useful information to the shot.

Likewise, the foreground can be used to add information -- two people lying on a blanket in the foreground, for example, might suggest that the grassy expanse we're looking at is in a park. Put a deer in the same place, and suddenly, it's a meadow in the woods. Place in a few well-dressed, out of focus people playing croquet, and it becomes an English manor.

Our own brain's function to keep us upright makes us seek balance in composition. An equally weighted frame appears to be at rest and makes the viewer calm. "Balanced" doesn't necessarily mean two people equal-distant apart. A person on the right hand side of the screen might be "balanced" by a clock hanging on a wall on the left-hand side.

You don't necessarily want the viewer to feel peace and harmony all the time. One thing you often want to achieve is tension, which can be done by skewing the balance, adding vertical or angled lines that take away from a balanced frame. Tilting the camera a few degrees to one side will keep your audience from relaxing. They might not even notice the horizon being off, but subconsciously, there is a feeling that something isn't quite right. Using a wide-angle lens that distorts a shot so that lines aren't parallel or perpendicular also creates tension.

It's important to keep consistency in your composition to keep from confusing your viewer. Your actors need to look and speak in consistent directions, two characters facing one another over a dinner table, for example, shouldn't be shown in closeups looking in the same direction.

Color composition is a major part of many motion pictures -- M. Night Shaymalon's The Village, for example, made good use of the color red to represent evil elements and cooler blues to represent good.

Months before shooting begins, many directors, production designers, and directors of photography will choose a color palette for a movie, which includes wardrobe, deciding what types of colors will work together to give the audience the proper "feel". For an example of hyper-color composition, check out Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.

Don't get that cap and gown out of mothballs yet, it's not quite time for graduation.

We showed you the basics; next month, we'll show you some advanced tips on composition to take your shots from video postcards to masterpiece showcases.

Kyle Cassidy is a visual artist who writes extensively about technology.

Basic Training: Composition 102: Part 2