Monday, October 22, 2012

Rule of Thirds, Diagonals, & Vectors (with a F:LoNC teaser screenshot!)

Now this time the assignment was to take a self portrait and then explain the laws of composition that apply to it.  I again chose to do something taken from Fallout, and more specifically from our planned webseries that's abbreviated F:LoNC.


Kasey Straff being held up by someone in the upcoming webseries F:LoNC

Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds is important for any photographer/cinematographer to know about so they can make their pictures look the best they can.  Here, horizontally the photo is divided up pretty well with the sky taking up about the top third & the shotgun taking up mostly the bottom third.  Then dividing it up vertically, there's the character Kasey Straff straddling the right side line & the blown out TV, along with the joint of the shotgun, squarely on the left third.  Considering CK was the subject (he had help from two others to shoot this) and only set up the camera angle, gun position, and moved the trash into one spot that was already there (orginally just scattered around), it turned out pretty well.

Diagonal

When thinking up this shot, CK had specifically two other laws he wanted to include besides the obvious Rule of Thirds.  The angle of the shotgun, being Diagonal, was the first of those two.  The Diagonal angle of it moves one's line of sight toward the subject it's pointing at, actually the purpose of any gun really.

Vectors

CK wanted to include as many Vectors as possible here without ruining the photo, but as any seasoned photographer/cinematographer may know, it's really hard to do that.  So here out of the categories of Graphic Vector, Index Vector, and Motion Vector we have the latter two.  The Index Vector is the same as was described in the Diagonal paragraph, the purpose of it being to point towards something.  The Motion Vector is here in the form of limited space.  Kasey Straff has very little room to move in the photo frame, making it seem he has no where to go and a trapped feeling.

There you go!  Just a update, the commercial preceding the webseries may not be really finalized till late December 2012 or early January 2013 due to prop creation delays.  Of course some will be finished, but the final product won't be done till then.