The rule of thirds is a framing tool that says where parts of your composition should be. It is made up of 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines making 9 equally sized boxes on the screen.
General Framing
Most of the time, the subject should be placed on the left or right third line facing the opposite side of the screen. This gives us plenty of look room or lead room, which is the space to the side the subject is looking.
Your subject’s eye that is closest to the camera should be on the intersection of their vertical line and the top horizontal line. You should also be close enough that you have appropriate head room. But if you want to create some tension, you can cut off the top of the head. Just don’t cut off chins because that just makes the shot awkward.
Most cameras and external monitors have rule of thirds lines that you can turn on in the settings. I keep them on on all of my cameras.
Interviews
Place the subject as I just described, with them looking just off camera opposite the side they are sitting. This gives them look room. It’s how conversations between two people should go. They face opposite sides of the frame to make it look like they are facing each other. To create tension, you can try short-siding, which is framing it so that they are facing the edge of the frame with more space behind them.
Safe Areas
While this isn’t the rule of thirds, I am including it because it is important to keep it in mind while framing.
If you watch the news, you will notice the graphics at the bottom of the screen. These are called lower thirds (because they are in the lower third of the frame).
It is important to remember title safe and action safe area. Action safe is a set part around the boarder that action should be kept in. Title safe is the same, but for titles. Titles need to be kept a little farther inside of the frame. These areas exist due to overscan on TVs cutting off content.
Most external monitors have guidelines for title safe and action safe.
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