This week in our Production Tip video we’re talking about the Rule of Thirds. Watch the video below for our 3 minute film school and see if it can help you compose your shots.
Th Rule of Thirds is a composition technique, imagine your screen split into thirds- 2 horizontal lines and 2 vertical lines. This will split the screen into 9 boxes. Now you can use these lines as guidelines to compose your image. Generally speaking the important visual aspects such as horizons or eyes should be placed on these lines.
The Rule of Thirds actually dates back way before film and even photography. Look at the Van Gogh painting ‘Starry Night’ where the horizon is on the lower third, or even the Mona Lisa where her smile is two thirds of the way up the painting. Studies have shown that the viewer’s online lands naturally on one of these points of the frame rather than dead in the center.
Of course do not forget, rules are made to be broken! The Rule of Thirds is more a composition tool and you don’t have to use it. A shot can be composed in a different way in order to get a certain effect across, for example by placing a person in the center of the frame it can make them seem more powerful. Tony Zhou shows in an episode of his Youtube series Every Frame’s a Painting how a shot can be cut up into quarters rather than thirds:
Read more about The Rule of Thirds over at Pixpa.
Brett Welcher was a student at Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY, USA) where studied Public Relations at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. He is interned at the Raindance Film Festival the summer or 2007 and thoroughly enjoyed his time working with professionals and learning about different aspects of the film industry. In the fall of 2007 Brett returned to the States where he will be finishing his last year in school.
Since then we have lost touch and found this excellent article in the archives. Brett – if you see this, get in touch! We miss you!
