Filming & Production

Headroom

Also called: head room, space above the head

Headroom is a composition control with no single correct value. Wide shots take more of it, close-ups take almost none, and a well-framed close-up will happily crop the top of the head while keeping the eyes around the upper third of the frame. What reads as wrong is a subject stranded in the middle with empty ceiling above them.

Vertical framing changes the sums again. The interface covers the lower part of a Short with captions, handles and buttons, so a talking head framed for a horizontal video ends up with its mouth behind a subtitle. Frame with the overlays in mind and leave your dead space at the top, where nothing lives.

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All 174 Filming & Production terms

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