home → Composition Techniques → Focal points
Focal points in film definition
What is the focal point?
What’s the point? A common phrase that can also be applied to film. In any shot you compose for your movie, you have to ask what the focal point is. What this means is addressing the idea of what you want your viewer to look at. Good directors and cinematographers want to draw the viewer’s eye to what matters, and that’s called the focal point. There’s an art to shot and frame composition that allows good filmmakers to design frames that get those eyeballs where they need to be.
For an in-depth exploration of this technique, check out our full guide to focal points, complete with examples and breakdowns.
Examples of focal points
Focal point examples
Check out these frames and notice where the focal point is, and how it affects your understanding of the frame.
Guides viewer’s eye
Enhances visuals
Has balance
Shows key info
Uses
What does a focal point do?
Focal points are pretty simple. They’re whatever you’re supposed to be looking at in the shot. Filmmakers want to set up the shot to guide your eye to these points, and there’s a few reasons why:
Important information
The focal point can be used to transmit key information to the audience that moves the plot forward, provides visual context, and meaning.
Key emotions
The focal point can focus on a character who is going through an emotional moment that’s important to the story and becomes our sole point of interest.
More than one
A shot can easily be composed with multiple focal points that leaves it up to the audience as to where to pay attention and how the points interact.
Setting
The focal point is conveying information about the setting or environment — think a signpost or highway sign that tells you where you are.
Focal point definition
Emphasis vs focal point
The focal point and emphasis are two very similar concepts. A focal point puts emphasis on a certain spot in the frame. Meanwhile, emphasis might be how the filmmaker draws your eye to the focal point. Maybe the subject of the focal point is enlarged, bigger than everything else in the frame. Maybe the subject of the focal point is wearing way brighter colors than anyone else in the scene. The emphasis is what you do to get those viewers looking toward the focal point.
Case Study
Shot listing a focal point
Many shots in many films have a focal point but perhaps it's not made so obvious as these examples from Sam Mendes' American Beauty. Here, Lester becomes transfixed by Angela becoming his own focal point. Notice how the shots evolve in both the framing and lighting to narrow that focus down until the rest of Lester's world disappears.
Click the shot list below to take a closer look at the entire scene.
All shots have focal points, and they can and should be used with any type of shot you design.
Unexpected combos
How can you use a focal point with other camera techniques?
How to combine focal points
How do focal points look in various types of camera shots?
- Close-up: In a close-up, the focal point is often a person’s face, so it draws focus to their emotions and how they’re expressing themselves.
- Wide shot: In a wide shot, the focal point can often be a character. A shot like this draws focus to how small the character is compared to the landscape.
- Establishing shot: Establishing shots sometimes draw a focal point to a sign or indication of where we are to help the viewer get their bearings.
- Tracking shot: In a tracking shot, the focal point is usually the character we are following as they move through space. We’re meant to focus on the character.
Frequently asked questions about the focal point
The focal point is whatever the viewer is meant to focus on in a scene.
Focal points are the same in photography as in film - they’re whatever part of the frame the viewer is meant to focus on.
Focal points are the same in art as in film or photography - they’re whatever part of the picture the viewer is meant to focus on, whether that’s a person, object, or landscape detail.
There’s many techniques filmmakers use to draw the viewer’s eye to the right place, such as leading lines or the rule of thirds, or emphasizing qualities like color or size.
