Composition Techniques

There are many Composition Techniques to use in your videos, but in my opinion the main four composition techniques are the bet way to go. These four composition techniques are called Rule of Thirds, Framing, Unusual Angles, and Leading Lines. Let's start from the beginning. The composition technique of Rule of Thirds is when in a video if a shot is cut into sixths, the subject's eyes or head is in one of the top corners. In case your wondering, the Framing that I am talking about is not putting a wooden square around a panting. The composition technique of Framing is found when in the shot, there is something that helps you focus on the main subject by blocking other things around the edges of the shot. When Unusual Angles are used it means that this one shot is taken at a shot where most shots would not have been taken at. I like to use unusual angles sometimes just to grab the viewers attention. Last but not least, the fourth composition techniques is Leading Lines. Leading lines is used to draw attention to the main subject. Leading lines is when in a shot there are main lines leading to the main subject.

Some of you might be asking, why do we need to use these in our videos? How are these supposed to make our videos better? Well there are many reasons why composition techniques make our videos better, but here are a few. When we are using these composition techniques in our videos, we are making our videos ten times better. These composition techniques help to make our videos look high quality by making our video look neat and well made. I don't know about you, but I think that using composition techniques really help our videos to look better and give them really eye-catching qualities.

Three Shot Sequences

Me and my team made this video not too long ago, but not recently. When we made this my G.T. class was learning about three shot sequences. We had many choices to choose from and we chose: Girl Picks Up Binder. In these three shot sequences, there is the wide shot, medium shot, and the close up shot. In that order, these sequences are shown in the video. The wide shot is made so that you can see all of the subject. In our wide shot there is the binder that is just sitting in the grass. A medium shot is when, if the subject of the shot is a person, you can only see them from the waist up. In our medium shot, we show a girl walking to the binder. Last but not least, the close up shot is when you are zoomed in on the subject close up. Pretty much explains itself. In our close up, we show the girl picking up the binder. Sure, in this video the camera was shaky but we were only beginners and in my opinion, we did pretty well.

Practice Story Reflection

For the past week or two my G.T. class and I were doing a little project called our Practice Story where we learned about shooting interviews. We learned many things, like interview composition, A- Roll, B- Roll, and even teamwork. To make this video we had to work together to get it done. Although we didn't make the BEST team, we tried our best and got the work done. It actually turned out pretty good.

To start the video me and my three team mates started off by making the B-Roll. Incase you don't know, the B-Roll is little cuts of videos where we show the interviewee doing whatever it is that they are talking about. For example, the interviewee is talking about soccer so it is our job to take little clips of the interviewee kicking around a soccer ball. On the second day of filming, out team had to shoot the interview where we take one long video of our subject talking about this sport or hobby that they do. 

From then on it was all transcription and Final Cut Pro. This is where the real pressure started. Every team had to make a transcription of the questions that the subject answered and what the narrator says. When editing we had to blade the footage. When you blade footage on Final Cut Pro, you are cutting and separating video. In the video, the interviewer's voice had to be cut out because we want to hear the subject talk. We added the narrators voice and the B- Roll and our interview was finished. We may not have finished on time, but it still turned out really good. It may have been a lot of pressure, but I loved doing this project. It taught me a lot about teamwork too.