Building the Book Teaser - Part Three

Today's post will be a very brief look at image composition.

Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds is a very well known compositional cheat sheet that goes a little something like this: take your image, now divide it into thirds vertically and horizontally with imaginary lines, so that it looks something like this:

The basic idea is just to avoid placing your subject in the center box, but most people will generally get more specific and say that you should line up your subject so that they reside in the intersection of two lines. A general rule for horizon lines is to place them on either the bottom or top third line (but you can play with this - i.e. if you have a really dramatic sky you want to showcase you could frame the horizon lower to capture more of the sky.

Diagonals

If you want to show motion in a frame or provide a sense of depth, diagonals can work to your advantage. Here's a clip from one of the original motion pictures, filmed by the Lumiere brothers in 1895, legend has it that audiences leapt from their chairs in fear that the train was actually coming toward them:

Type of Shot

Probably more important than your composition, your shot type will affect how your audience relates to the scene and should always be kept in mind. Here are some basic shot types:

Wide Shot - A wide shot captures the entirety of the scene and provides the viewer with a sense of geography, where characters are located relative to each other. Extremely wide shots are often used to communicate setting (e.g. a vast farm landscape or a giant oil drilling rig) before going into where the characters are interacting.

Medium Shot - A medium shot goes in closer on a particular subject (think waist up). This is more intimate than a wide shot but still allows for some geographical information.

Close-up - In a close-up, a certain feature or object takes up the entire frame. This is an extremely intimate form of shot and can be used to great emotional effect.

The important thing about these shot types is proximity, always keep in mind how your proximity to the subject affects the intimacy level with the viewer and if that level of intimacy is appropriate for that moment in the scene. For instance, if we haven't been introduced to a character yet, a close-up might not be appropriate. But if we introduce the character from a wider angle and then as the scene develops and we get emotionally closer to the character, getting physically closer with a close-up can work quite well for dramatic effect.

Try to vary your type of shot and the angle you're shooting from.

In the movie Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams’ character, Mr. Keating, stands on his desk and asks his students “Why do I stand up here?” A student answers “to feel taller!” But Mr. Keating says “No!” and dings a bell with his toe. He goes on to tell the class “I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.” The students then file through taking turns standing on the desk and observing the classroom from a new perspective. I contend that there are two types of people, the type that take their turn on the desk and appreciate the view it offers but then step off, and the type that live to be on the desk and to explore life from a new angle. If you are an author, then I would imagine you fall into the latter category, constantly looking at life from a slightly different vantage point, trying to see something you haven't noticed before. Apply this to your camera work as you film your book trailer. Show us the world in a way we haven't seen it before. No rule of image composition is as important as that of being unique.

As always, feel free to comment below and please share with your friends. The next post in the series will talk about sound.

Finding Your Muse

Below is a great article from Brain Pickings reviewing a book on productivity for creative types. The key point is, “don’t wait for your muse to show up!” If you want to make money off your artistic pursuits, you cannot wait around for inspiration to strike. It will never be the ideal time to write your next novel or finish the one you’re working on. You have to force yourself to sit down and write something.

I was recently finishing up a short film and we had a screening coming up in about 12 hours but we weren’t finished with post-production. My composer was stuck on the final scene. Nothing he tried seemed to be working and he kept getting more and more frustrated. But he stuck with it. He kept making music until he found something that worked. It wasn’t a light bulb moment or a case of sifting the Internet and taking a stroll until something hit him. It was simply working through the problem, approaching it from angle after angle and not stopping till he found a fit. That kind of grit is what separates those that are successful and create engaging work from those that remain mere hobbyists.

I have this romantic notion that I keep coming back to, that our minds are constantly operating on a higher level of understanding than we are ever consciously aware of. I believe that creative insights, truly meaningful and original breakthroughs, come from breaking through that wall of consciousness and into that level of understanding, into our own thoughts. But you can’t get there through pedestrian observation; you have to hammer at it, work for it, and dig into the problem. You have to be your own muse.

Give the article a read, it makes some great points.

 Brain Pickings "Manage Your Day to Day"

Building the Book Teaser - Part Two

Production

The next few posts in this series will cover the basics of the two most integral parts of production: image and sound.

Image

Ideally, you’ll want to use a video camera that allows you to manually control the following features: focus, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance. Now this may sound a little snobbish, but you also want a video camera that shoots full 1080p HD footage. Content should be the main concern, but unfortunately these days if you want your video to be taken seriously it needs to be in HD. Let’s take a look at what each of the features I mentioned actually does.

Focus: This controls the vertical plane, in distance from the camera, that will be seen as in focus (or sharp). I recently talked with a lady whose friend did some filming for her on a professional video camera but she failed to adjust the focus. She was left with blurry, unusable footage. Without getting too much into boring details, you want to be focused on your subject, and there will be a little room in front of and behind where your lens is focused that will also be acceptably sharp; this space is called depth of field. A lot of different factors affect depth of field, but the one you need to know for basic video production is focal length. Focal length, put plainly, is how wide or zoomed in your lens is. If you have a DSLR camera, pick it up and look at your lens, somewhere you’ll notice a marking of millimeters (e.g. 50mm or a range such as 55-300mm), this indicates focal length. The lower the number, the wider-angle view (think looking at something just with your eyes), higher numbers will magnify the image (like using binoculars). At higher focal lengths, your depth of field will be shallower, meaning there is less room for error in focusing. You can use this to your advantage when setting up your shots. Frame your shot, then zoom all the way in on the part of your subject you want to be in focus, now adjust focus until that area is sharp, now zoom back out. Zooming does not change the focal distance so what’s in focus when you’re zoomed in will for sure be in focus when you zoom out. DO NOT FORGET TO FOCUS!

Aperture: Aperture is measured in f-stops, which are ratios of focal length (f) to the diameter of the lens opening. Basically, they are a relative indicator of how much light is being let into the lens, which will affect how bright your image is. Lower apertures let in more light and provide a shallower depth of field; higher apertures let in less light and provide a deeper depth of field. This is important for properly exposing your footage. If your footage is too bright (you’ll notice bright parts of the scene starting to bloom out and you’ll lose detail in those areas) you may want to stop down your aperture to let less light in. Ideally you want to be able to see details both in the shadows and the highlights of your scene, preserving the most detail possible. When you’re editing your footage, you can adjust your contrast levels to give it a more stylized look.

Shutter Speed: Shutter speed is another part of the exposure formula. It refers to the length of time each frame of video is exposed for (how long light is allowed to hit the sensor) and is expressed as a fraction. Higher shutter speeds let in less light and cause less motion blur in the image (a good example of high shutter speeds is the beach landing in Saving Private Ryan, watch it to see how shutter speed affects motion). Lower shutter speeds let in more light and cause more motion blur, which can lend a dreamy feel to the footage if used properly. The general rule of thumb, for smooth motion, is to set the bottom number of your shutter speed at twice your frame rate (e.g. shutter speed of 1/48 at 24 frames per second).

ISO: ISO is a measure of the sensitivity of your cameras image sensor and constitutes the final component of the exposure formula. Higher numbers react more to light (which can be helpful in low light situations), but they also introduce digital noise into the image, which is not desirable. Lower numbers will produce less noise but require more light.

White Balance: This setting indicates the color that the camera interprets as white. It’s important to set this properly in each lighting setup you use so that your footage doesn’t have any weird color tints to it. Many cameras allow you to zoom in on a white piece of paper and press a button telling the camera to interpret that color as white, check your camera’s manual for specific instructions.

This is a very bare bones look at the key manual features on a camera but if you play around with them and see how they work, you’ll be well on your way to capturing a good-looking image. My next post will look at image composition and give some tips for keeping your video looking professional. If you have any questions, please share them in the comment section below.