Camera Techniques - Lines & Structure

I recently wrote an article for an online magazine to help teach fellow videographers/photographers about composition. This article is directly relevant to how I will film my trailer.

Creating Lines and Structure

 

Most people do not actively think about the effect lines have on how we see things, yet alone their impact in videography/photography! Our eyes are constantly controlled and affected by the lines, edges and structures of the array of shapes in front of them. Horizons give us balance, a lack of lines indicates an absence and invisible lines such as lines of motion indicate the direction of movement – I will explain these concepts later.

The structure of a video/photograph is defined by the way the video/photo is built up and what visual relationships subjects have with each other. Lines create the structure and, perhaps most importantly, control where the viewer looks.

I like to split lines into two categories: concrete lines and imaginary lines.

Concrete lines are the physical lines you can literally see; these include roads, people, a particular person’s body gestures etc. Many horizontal, vertical or perpendicular lines in a video/photograph create the impression of stability and control. This kind of video/photograph would work well with static subjects such as buildings. In contrast, curved lines form dynamic scenes and exaggerated atmospheres that would complement an extreme-sports video/photograph.

Here we can see the picture has been composed so most of the elements and objects within it lead the eye towards the busker

 

In this shot the curvature of the ramp signifies a dynamic environment and helps enhance the action. People conventionally look left-to-right in our society, so viewers naturally see the skater in the backgroundf on the left and follow the ramp up to the main subject on the right.

 

Imaginary lines are conceptual and invisible. A simple example of an imaginary line is ‘line of sight’: naturally people make eye contact with people in a video/photograph then follow their ‘line of sight’, perhaps out of curiosity, to discover what they are looking at. For this reason, allow viewers to complete this ‘curiosity’ process by exposing the item your subject is looking at, or have your subject looking across the entire shot (e.g. standing on the left and looking right) so the viewer will establish eye contact with the subject then look across the entire frame. Making the most of the frame's space like this is crucial; every videographer/photographer’s naïve first few snaps had their subject in the middle of the image. Note how in my ‘line-of-sight’ example I said “looking from left to right”. This is because so many things in our culture are made for ‘left-to-right’ viewing, such as the way we write and the positioning of images on product packaging – this is because ‘left-to-right’ structures are more natural and relaxing for the viewer. Whilst videos/photographs with a right-to-left structure still work, it is slightly easier to make the subjects seem awkwardly composed. However, a video/photograph using a ‘right-to-left’ structure may stand out as original and powerful amongst many more conventional images.

 

 

in the example the viewer's eye in lead in a circle. At first the viewer establishes eye contact with the subject, later to follow her 'line of sight' to see what she is looking at. Once the viewer is looking at the right-most side of the frame they notice the light is pointing, and leading the eye back to the left. This creates an efficient 'circle of movement' that makes full use of the entire frame.

Another great use of imaginary lines is implied movement. Even if the subject has been frozen in time thanks to our one-thousandth of a second exposure we can still identify where they are moving. Again, make the most of your space by letting the subject move ‘through’ the frame; this may be from the edges of the frame to the middle or from one side to another. The best images will lead the eye around several places and may even make the eye ‘loop’ and take a second look at the finer details of an image.

 



This shot uses the 'loop' structure as well. Two main imaginary lines are present here: Line of sight (showing relationship between the two motorcrossers) and movement (also enhancing the tension between them).

Common shapes can also be used ‘join-the-dots’ style, such as an imaginary triangle to suggest three subjects are linked in some way, or circles to give an organic, scattered and flowing structure to the video/photograph.

As always: experiment and you won’t have to worry about going cross-eyed from checking if that last video/photo worked  each time.

-All pictures/video shots are my own and can be found here https://picasaweb.google.com/113237858961407281656/StarredPhotos?authuser=0&feat=directlink