Framing is important to a photograph. It separates an image into a world of its own, condenses it into a lone life. Framing is control, it is the ability to combine thousands of ideas, of colours.

A few weeks back Nicolette, Alex and I went out to shoot some basic interview shots, exploring the inherent framing in the process. These are a few of the shots that we got:

These are just some basic mid shots and close ups, but what I became conscious of in the process of framing was space. We chose to shoot in a small booth of building 13, that housed hunched over students cramming their last minute assignments. This area was indicative of its inhabitants – a desk and lounge chair packed tightly against the wall until there was no space left for anyone, any thought. When chose the area because we thought it was spacious and that it set up for a good interviewing environment. But we were wrong. As soon as we added another chair, a tripod and a heavy camera, we found ourselves falling over each other. Space was deceiving us. I think that this is somewhat reflective in our shots, we attempted coverage but fell short by merely just what was achievable in such tight areas – something I definitely need to improve on.

You can see from the edit that we broke the 180 degree line of consistency, filming from both sides of my character. I think it important mistake to make, as it highlights to me the significance of uniformity across shots. Jumping across the line creates a discontinuity and disjoints the shots from one other. Depending of what it was you were shooting, this good be a good a bad thing. I think that in this basic interview type setting it’s not a good thing as it isolates the shots. It makes editing difficult and breaks up the fluidity that is so important in these types of sequences.

We attempted to create certain types of framing but I think when we got into the task, found ourselves blindsided by other distractions, of space and of lines. I need to develop my consciousness of framing, not only when there viewfinder in my eye.

Framing is a sign of something complete.