High definition cameras have become more common and have plummeted in price in the last two years, and the ability to store several hundred megabytes of raw video has been the main reason why.  HD video eats hard drive space like candy, and you’re going to need the right equipment to do HD composition, and adding in high definition special effects.

High definition composition is something that starts when you shoot the footage.  A lot of the techniques used for film cameras are directly applicable to shooting HD footage, and the same techniques used for composing good still shots and mattes are applicable.  We’re going to go over some basic concepts of HD composition (and making sure that each scene you shoot is a balanced whole), and then cover putting in high definition special effects.

When dealing with composition in HD video, just like composition in anything else, none of these rules are hard and fast; all can be bent, and some are mutually exclusive.  The key is to recognize well composed shots and take the opportunities they present.  The most basic rule of composition is that simplicity is important; your viewer is going to be trying to catch your scene in a few seconds.  Make sure that there’s a clear foreground and background, and that the transition between elements is chosen appropriately.  Likewise, lighting and contrast will call things to the human eye; putting lighter objects against a darker background will have the effect of shining a spotlight on them to your audience; the converse can also work, but is harder to pull off.

The next rule of composition is generally called the rule of thirds; this dates back to theatre work and the perspective drawing techniques developed in the Renaissance; you can divide most scenes that you shoot into three vertical and three horizontal bands; wherever there’s an intersection between these is the place where, psychologically, your audience is going to expect to see something of interest.  Use this to guide the eye around what you’re shooting.  You can also use this to organize a cluttered scene, by putting the first foreground element at one intersection, and then changing the focus on the next element you want in the scene by making sure it’s in the next intersection.  You can also use framing elements to put boundaries on the visual scene to keep the audience’s attention focused where you want it, and framing elements combined with a narrow aperture can be quite effective with a bit of practice.  Use of diagonals in an image composition will make it seem more action oriented – even if nothing is happening in the shot.

Costuming, lighting, the colors used, and the other visual elements, even ones that are ‘too fine’ to show up on HD composition, are all conveyed to the viewer.  Similarly, adjusting your focus inward (or outward) allows remembered use of textures or colors to fill in details you didn’t even shoot.  Also, don’t forget the impact that color has on people’s emotional responses to things

The tedious work comes once you’ve got the footage on the hard drive – composing your video with high definition special effects.  There isn’t enough space in this article to really write about high definition special effects in full; each editing package has a set of tools and options that are subtly different from each other, and like editing and polishing a piece of writing, there’s no real upper boundary limit on how much time you can spend on editing a HD video composition.

The first rule is – what’s your deadline?  If you’re just getting started, pace yourself.  Try things out, and always work with a copy of your footage so that you can roll back.  Save early and save often; this is the real reason why video editors and digital media specialists buy machines with terabyte hard drive arrays.

The second rule is to remember to keep it simple.  Whenever you have a choice between doing something tedious or doing something simple, try the simple way first, and move on – look back on your edits and see what works and what doesn’t.  In most cases, the simpler the effect, the less distracting it will be to your audience, and the less work it will be for you.  (There’s a reason why all the packages for video editing have a number of ’simple effects’ baked in – they’re there because professionals don’t want to recreate the simple effects piecemeal.)

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