08.01 Forget the Rule of Thirds
Original “rule of thirds” as first written by John Thomas Smith in his 1797 book Remarks on Rural Scenery 1
Drive: The Quadrant System — Tony Zhou (Every Frame a Painting)
Rule of Thirds- The #1 Reason NOT to Use It! (2021) - Tavis Leaf Glover - IPOX studios
In an interview with Roger Deakins by Phil Mistry for PetaPixel, Deakins is documented as saying “I am familiar with the ‘rule of thirds‘, but I have not considered it a conscious part of my approach since I attended art college in the 1960s,” 2
In an interview by John Witmer for American Cinemetographer, David Lowery talks about needing to throw out the rule of thirds when shooting A Ghost Story because the “sheet ghost” character would dominate the visual frame and required innovative compositional thinking beyond the rule of thirds. 3
In a British Cinemetographer article, Paul Fremes writes, “Although the rule of thirds is seductive in its simplicity and, how a super-imposed grid over an image ‘appears’ to be logical – this idea creates new problems and has the great potential of being destructive when composers attempt to align objects with grid intersections – for its own sake. Imagine how homogeneous all of art would look if this rule were used?”
References
Excerpt from John Thomas Smith’s illustrated book, published in 1797, defining a compositional “rule of thirds” ↩︎
Roger Deakins: Legendary Cinematographer with a Photographer’s Eye https://petapixel.com/roger-deakins-photography-interview/ ↩︎
A Ghost Story: Shared Spaces https://theasc.com/article/david-lowery-directs-a-ghost-story/ ↩︎