Picture This (page 2)

Enhancing Action

There are a number of tricks you can use within a frame to pique interest or force perspective. Here are two for you to consider:

• Rack Focus: Sometimes subjects are placed strategically within a frame and selective focus is employed to draw attention from one subject to another. For instance, you have two people composed in a frame, one close-up, the face filling up two-thirds of the frame, and one far in the background. The person in the background shouts to the person in the foreground. You want your audience to shift focus from the person yelling in the background to the person in the foreground, to see how the foreground person reacts. As the action occurs, move the focus ring, shifting the camera's focus, and that of your audience, from the person in the background to the person in the foreground.
  Check out any daytime soap opera to see how well they use this effect during any particularly tense or heated conversation.
• Dutch Angle: Sometimes filmmakers will angle their frame to enhance the emotion or accentuate the view of a particular landmark to add more interest to an otherwise static frame. A tense moment can seem even more dramatic if the angle is off kilter a bit, adding to the subject's loss of emotional balance and well-being.

An example of enhancing the static background is seen here. A man is chasing his runaway car down a sloping street. The street in this shot is already at an angle; however, for the shot to work well, the photographer accentuated the angle. Since the street sloped downward from camera left to camera right, the photographer shortened the right leg of the tripod, angling the camera and the frame to the right. This "dutch" makes the angle of the sloped street appear more severe.

Final Frame

As I stated, when it comes to framing, there are no real hard-and-fast laws. Shooting video is a subjective art form. However, having a firm understanding of how best to compose your subjects within a frame and utilizing your subjects within the confines of that frame will eventually allow you to work outside those commonly-used standards. Who knows, you may even create some of your own.

Michael Fitzer is an Emmy™ Award winning writer & producer.