Chapter 6 — Exercises

Composition is a seeing skill before it is a shooting skill, and both get better only by doing. These exercises train the eye first (Section A needs no camera), then put you behind the frame to make real decisions. Do the starred ones seriously — they build straight toward your composed Project 1 talking-head, and several of them are the fastest way to feel a principle that only half-lands when you read it.

Exercises are graded by effort and depth:

• ⭐ Warm-up — a few minutes; locks in a single concept.
• ⭐⭐ Core — the real practice; do as many of these as you can.
• ⭐⭐⭐ Stretch — deeper or more ambitious; where the biggest gains live.

Model solutions and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises are collected in Answers to Selected Exercises at the back of the book. Try each one before you read its answer — an attempt you got wrong teaches more than an answer you only read. And a standing instruction for every shooting exercise below: turn the rule-of-thirds grid on and leave it on. It is the cheapest upgrade in the book.

A. Seeing the frame (Eye & Ear Training)

No camera — just your attention and your Frame Log. These build the eye the rest of the book depends on, and you can do them while watching things you'd watch anyway.

1. ⭐ Find the thirds. Pause any five shots (a show, an ad, a music video) on a person's face. For each, note where the eyes fall relative to an imagined thirds grid: on the upper-third line? Above it (too much headroom)? Dead-center? Tally how many pros put the eyes on the upper third, and note what the exceptions have in common. (Answer provided.)

2. ⭐ Headroom patrol. For one full day, every time you see a person on screen, ask one question and answer it out loud or in a note: is the headroom right, too much, or too little? Log ten. Too much will be the runaway winner in amateur clips and rare in professional ones — you are calibrating your eye against the single most common error there is.

3. ⭐⭐ Which way is the room? Pick three shots where a subject looks off-screen. For each, note which third they're placed on and which way the nose room opens, and confirm the open space is in front of the gaze, not behind it. Then go find one beginner clip online where someone got it backwards (there's always one) and describe how it feels wrong. (Answer discusses what to look for.)

4. ⭐⭐ Leading-line hunt. Walk one room of your home and photograph or sketch five leading lines you could use to point at a subject — a table edge, a hallway, a windowsill, a rug's border, a row of anything. For each, name what the line would lead the eye toward if you placed a person at its far end, and whether you'd have to get low or high to make the line read.

5. ⭐⭐ Weigh the frame. Watch 30 seconds of anything, then freeze on a wide shot. Name the single heaviest element in the frame — the thing your eye goes to first — and decide whether it's brightness, a face, the sharpest plane, or the most saturated color. Then judge: is that heaviest thing the intended subject, or a thief stealing the eye? (Answer provided.)

6. ⭐⭐⭐ The negative-space log. Over three days, find three shots that use large negative space on purpose. For each, write one sentence on what the emptiness is doing — isolation, tension, scale, calm, or simply reserving room for text. Add the strongest example to your Frame Log with the reason, and note whether you could recreate its emptiness in a room you have access to.

B. Reading Described Shots (Read the Sequence)

7. ⭐ Name the placement. Re-read FIGURE 6.3 (the Café window shot) once, then close the book and state from memory: which third is the subject on, where are the eyes, and which way does the nose room open? Then check. If you missed the direction of the nose room, re-read the placement rule in §6.2 — it's the one people get backwards. (Answer provided.)

8. ⭐⭐ Diagnose the field. In FIGURE 6.2's overlay the subject faces right with nose room to the right. Rewrite the placement (in words) for a subject who instead looks down and left at a phone and then lifts their eyes to look up and right at a message. Where do you place them so the frame serves both moments — the look down and the look up? (Answer provided.)

9. ⭐⭐ Critique a frame. Here is a described shot: A person is interviewed sitting dead-center; there's a hand's width of empty ceiling above their head; a bright lamp glows in the top-left corner, sharper and brighter than their face; and behind their head, a vertical door-frame line runs straight up out of their skull. Name every composition problem and prescribe the specific fix for each. There are at least four. (Answer provided.)

10. ⭐⭐⭐ Write your own. Watch a 20–40 second scene you admire and write a full Described Shot (all seven fields) for its strongest frame, paying special attention to THE FRAME: name the placement, the headroom, the nose or lead room, the depth layers, and one leading line. This is the exact reading skill §6.1–§6.4 are built on, and it will make the rest of Part II land harder.

C. Composing shots (Shoot This)

The heart of the chapter. Grid on. Make frames — and keep the "wrong" versions, because the contrast is where the learning is.

11. ⭐ Off-center in one minute. Shoot one 10-second clip of any subject placed deliberately on a third (not centered), with the eyes on the upper third. Then shoot the centered, big-headroom version of the exact same subject. Watch both back-to-back and write the one-sentence reason the first beats the second. (Model self-critique provided.)

12. ⭐⭐ The headroom ladder. Frame the same seated person four ways, changing only headroom: (a) way too much (a moat of ceiling), (b) modest and correct, (c) tight, and (d) a big close-up that crops the top of the head with the eyes still on the upper third. Watch all four, keep the one that reads best for a neutral shot and the one that reads best for an intense moment, and say why each wins its category. (Answer discusses the trade-offs.)

13. ⭐⭐ Nose room both ways. Shoot a subject looking camera-left with correct nose room (place them on the right third so the space opens left). Then, without moving the subject, reframe so they're jammed against the left edge they're looking toward, with the empty frame stranded behind them. Watch both on your phone and write one sentence on why the second feels wrong — what is your eye trying to do? (Answer provided.)

14. ⭐⭐ Build a layer. Take any flat shot (a person against a wall, everything on one plane) and re-shoot it by putting something in the foreground to look past — a plant, a mug, a doorway edge, a shoulder — at your widest aperture (or portrait mode). Compare the flat and layered versions and name what the foreground element did to the sense of depth. If it didn't work, your foreground was probably too far from the lens. (Model answer provided.)

15. ⭐⭐⭐ Lead the line. Find a strong leading line — a path, corridor, railing, or counter — and place a subject where the line points. Use your feet to position the camera so the line delivers the eye straight to them. Shoot it. Then deliberately shoot the version where the same line leads away from the subject, to feel how a misaimed line actively fights you. (Answer provided.)

D. One subject, many frames (Five Ways)

16. ⭐⭐ Five compositions, one subject. Pick one still subject (a coffee cup, a plant, a person reading). Compose it five ways, changing only the composition each time: (a) centered, (b) on a third, (c) with a strong leading line into it, (d) with big negative space isolating it, and (e) with a foreground layer for depth. Watch all five back-to-back and rank them for your intended feeling — then say why the winner serves that feeling and the loser fights it. (Answer discusses each.)

17. ⭐⭐⭐ Five ways to balance. Take one subject on the left third and find five different elements to answer its weight on the right: a lamp, a window, a second person, a patch of texture, and pure negative space. Shoot each. Decide which balance feels most settled, and use the result to explain, in your own words, why visual weight is not the same as physical size. (Model answer provided.)

E. Framing for delivery (Settings / Framing Drill)

18. ⭐ Turn on your grid. If you haven't already, enable the rule-of-thirds grid on your camera or phone right now, and shoot one clip using it to place a subject. In one line, note where the setting lived (many apps hide it under "Composition," "Guides," or "Framing") so you can find it on any device. (Answer provided.)

19. ⭐⭐ Frame the same subject three ratios. Compose one subject for 16:9, then for 9:16, then (crop or use a guide) for 2.39:1. For each, write the one main change you made and the reason — how the shape of the rectangle forced a different placement. (Answer provided.)

20. ⭐⭐ Write the framing plan. For each scenario, write the placement choices you'd make — which third, headroom, nose/lead room, negative space reserved for text, and aspect ratio: (a) a corporate talking-head for YouTube that will carry a name super; (b) a vertical Reel of someone cooking; (c) a wide establishing shot of a storefront. You'll refine these in later chapters; this is your first instinct. (Model answers provided.)

21. ⭐⭐⭐ Safe-zone stress test. Shoot a vertical (9:16) clip with a subject's face and a line of your own on-screen text. Open it in the app you'd actually post to and note where the platform's furniture lands — the caption box, the buttons, the progress bar. Did anything important get covered? Reframe so nothing critical sits in the unsafe bottom or right edges, and confirm it. (Answer provided.)

F. Fixing broken frames (Fix the Shot)

22. ⭐ Fix the headroom. A clip shows a person with the top third of the frame filled with empty ceiling and their mouth near the bottom edge. In one sentence, prescribe the exact fix — and name the rule that replaces "leave some headroom" as shots get tighter. (Answer provided.)

23. ⭐⭐ Fix the merger. Described clip: a subject sits on a third with correct headroom — but a bright vertical pole appears to grow straight out of the top of their head, and a picture-frame corner tangents their shoulder. You cannot move the furniture or the pole. Give three ways to fix it using only the camera. (Answer provided.)

24. ⭐⭐ Fix the vertical crop. A shooter framed a subject on the left third in 16:9, then cropped the shot to 9:16 for a Reel and the subject got sliced in half at the edge. Explain exactly what went wrong and give two ways it could have been prevented on the shoot. (Model answer provided.)

25. ⭐⭐⭐ Fix the moving frame. Described clip: a person walks left-to-right across a locked-off frame, but they start at the right edge and immediately walk out of shot; all the empty space is stranded behind them. Diagnose it using §6.6 and prescribe the fix for both a locked-off version and a moving-camera version. (Answer provided.)

G. Stealing on purpose (Recreate It)

26. ⭐⭐ Recreate a thirds frame. Find one still frame you love — from a film or a favorite creator — where a person sits clearly on a third with nose room. Recreate its composition (not its content) with your own subject and space, matching the placement, the headroom, and the direction of the nose room. Put the two side by side and note what you had to move to match it. (Guidance provided.)

27. ⭐⭐⭐ Recreate a symmetrical frame. Find a striking symmetrical, centered composition — a doorway, a corridor, a face straight down the lens. Recreate the composition with your own subject, then write two sentences on why the symmetry works here when the rule of thirds would say to go off-center. If your version feels like a mistake, diagnose which of the three conditions (total, consistent, motivated) it's missing. (Model answer provided.)

H. A first taste of the edit (Cut This)

28. ⭐⭐ Reframe in post. Take one 16:9 clip you shot and, in any editor, reframe or crop it two ways: once to a better 16:9 composition (nudge the subject onto a third), and once to a clean 9:16. Notice exactly how much composition you can rescue after the fact — and how much you can't. (Guidance provided.)

29. ⭐⭐ Compose for the title. Take a talking-head clip and, in an editor, drop a text box where a lower-third name super would go. Did you leave clean negative space for it, or does it cover the subject's face and fight the background? If it collides, re-shoot with a reserved lower third. This is "you shoot for the edit" made literal. (Answer provided.)

I. Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

30. ⭐⭐ Compose and expose. Shoot one talking-head frame that is both well composed (Ch.6: on a third, eyes on the upper third, nose room) and correctly exposed (Ch.5: check it on the waveform or with zebras, and protect the window highlight). Confirm that the brightest thing in the frame is not stealing the eye from the face. (Answer provided.)

31. ⭐⭐⭐ The whole Part-I-and-II frame. Compose one shot that deliberately uses a focal-length choice (Ch.4) for compression or width, a wide aperture (Ch.4) to soften a foreground or background layer, correct exposure (Ch.5), and thirds + nose room + a leading line (Ch.6). Write one sentence naming the reason for each choice — four reasons, said out loud. This is "motivate every choice" stretched across two whole parts. (Model answer provided.)

32. ⭐⭐⭐ Teach it back. In about 200 words, explain to an absolute beginner why "the frame is a choice about what to leave out." Use one concrete example and at least two of this chapter's terms (rule of thirds, headroom, nose room, leading lines, negative space, visual balance). Teaching a concept is the strongest test that you own it. (Model answer provided.)

When you've done these — especially the shooting ones — go frame your Project 1 talking-head for real (the Production Checkpoint), then move on to Chapter 7, where single frames become coverage that cuts.