Final Cut
Video Composition: The Rule of Thirds
BY JILL HEINERTH
In this wide shot two divers move diagonally through the intersections in the frame with the background generally broken into thirds and the large foreground features falling on intersections
ou’ve carefully selected the destination and spent your hard earned savings to book the dive trip of a lifetime. Painstakingly, you’ve prepared your underwater video system to capture that elusive manta or majestic whale shark you know is out there waiting for your arrival. So, knowing where to place those subjects in the viewfinder can be as important as spotting them in the first place. The unique intuition involved in good composition and proportion can be the difference between a routine video of your underwater experience or a breathtaking visual experience that you can be proud to share with the world on You Tube or Vimeo. Luckily, you can practice good composition techniques every time you
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dive and in any conditions. Using your dive buddies as underwater models, you can direct them and their movements through the frame of your viewfinder and through this process learn to develop a sense of good composition.
Frame of Reference The foundation for outstanding composition in art, photography and videography comes from a basic mathematical principle witnessed in nature. This concept is called the Rule of Thirds. You might have noticed that the viewfinder of your camera offers an option that displays a grid in the frame of reference, dividing it into a tic-tac-toe board with nine cells. By dividing the viewfinder into three columns and three rows, it creates four
intersection points where the lines cross inside the frame. The Rule of Thirds tells us that the points of the intersecting lines are the most interesting to the human brain. If your general composition is divided into elements that fall into the thirds, then the action, or strongest area of interest should take place at the intersecting points, with the motion moving into the frame. In underwater shooting that will give the subject, such as the fish or the diver, room to naturally swim into the field of the picture rather than falling out of the edges of the composition. If your subject is constantly pressing against the forward edge of the frame, it is disturbing and seems compositionally ‘off balanced’. Almost everything in our natural world follows this pattern of design. Whether it is
Photos: Jill Heinerth
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