Home Video Hints: Composing Your Shots (page 2)

Problem: Objects in the background distract from the person you are taping.
Have you ever recorded shots where trees seem to grow out of people's heads or telephone wires appear to run through their ears? If so, you probably are forgetting to do one simple thing: check your background.

Solution: Look at both the foreground and the background as you shoot.
Every time you look through the viewfinder, train yourself to look at three places. First, check the foreground to see if anything distracting is in the way of your shot (or to identify something in the foreground you can use to frame your shot). Next, check the background to see if there are objects that blend into your subject making him look like a space creature with antennae or a vacationing reindeer from the North Pole. Finally, check your subject. Failure to check the background is one of the most common mistakes made in video. We have all gone into the editing suite and seen distracting objects we didn't notice before, well after it was too late to do anything about it.

Problem: If you sometimes find that your subject's chins are missing in your shots, you might have Chin Chopper syndrome.

Solution: Compose your close shots so that you chop the top of your subjects head off, not their chin. Always make sure you can see your subject's neck so that when they talk, their bottom jaw and chin won't dip below the edge of the frame. Usually, you'll want to shoot from their collarbone up to a little below the top of their head. This is a close up or tight shot. By placing their eyes on a line one third of the way down from the top of the screen, you will avoid the chin chopper and get a good looking and natural shot of your subject.

Problem: Important objects occasionally get chopped off at the edge of the screen.
If you place an important object too near the edge of the frame, there is a good chance it will occasionally disappear from your shots when you view them on a TV monitor. Does the edge of your screen swallow up objects or seem to drag them into oblivion? If so, your videos may be suffering from On the Edge syndrome.

Solution: Leave a little space at the sides of the screen. Because all televisions do not show the same amount of picture, you need to allow a little extra space on the sides, top and bottom of your shots for those TVs that show less of the picture than others. Keep important items in the inner 89% of your screen. This is known as the Safe Action Area.

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