Even as video technology advances to point where it sometimes becomes difficult to distinguish between an image shot on film and an image shot by a camera there will always be ways to tell home movies from feature films, composition. Composition is how the image looks on your camera. Composition takes years to master, but this is a just a basic guide to filming, so hereπs a few pointers.

There are five basic shots.

• Extreme long shot (ELS)
• Long Shot (LS)
• Medium Shot or Bust Shot (MS)
• Close-up (CU)
• Extreme Close-Up (ECU)

The extreme long shot and long shot are often used as establishing shots. An establishing shot is the shot that gives the audience its sense of orientation in a scene. This is especially crucial when you have dialogue, so that when a character talks to another character off-screen, it doesnπt look he or she is talking to empty air.

The medium shot it one of the most common shots, as it allows a great deal of flexibility while eliminating much of the useless parts of image, such as a characters lower half, which typically has little to do with the scene.

The close-up is used to create a sense of intimacy between the character and the audience and to highlight important thoughts or emotions in a character. This is even more so with the extreme close-up.

Whenever people are in your shot it is always important to frame them right. Your characters must have head room, meaning you canπt have their top of their hair on or above the top edge of the frame, it makes them look cramped. Similarly you donπt want too much room between the top edge and the characters head or it make them look out of place and tiny. When a character moves within a frame it is always important to give them ample lead room. For example, if youπre filming a man as he walks morosely down a dirt path, as you track alongside the man you want give him enough room in front so that he looks like he is walking in the frame, not constantly on the verge of walking out of it. For an audience it can be very visually frustrating to watch a scene filmed like this.

When filming dialogue, or any other scene where you switch perspectives for that matter, it is always important to remember the 180 Degree Rule. According to this rule, there is an axis in any given scene that splits it into two halves. When shooting a scene that switches back and forth between perspectives, all shots must be made from the same side of the axis otherwise the scene will look mismatched. This is due to screen direction. You must maintain the same arrangement as was in your establishing shot. If you suddenly switch sides, the character who was initially facing right is now facing left from the new perspective, and since the other character is still facing the old direction, you have two characters facing left, and if they try to talk to each other that could very confusing.

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