The Rule of Thirds and why it makes your scene interesting.

To all of the animators out there that think that the rules of the camera are not important in animation, youve got another thing coming, because if you make an animation and it is faniminal but the camera wrok is crappy, the director you show it to, will tell you to take a hike, so even though this kinda doesnt play into the mechanics of animation, listen up, because it is just as important. Oh and another thing, if any body out there is into photography, listen up, because this applies to you as well, and will make your photo shine above all of the rest.
THE RULE of THIRDS, what is this you ask, well interestingly enough, it is the spot on any screen that the audience is going to look at the most, the hot spots if you would. These are the most interesting parts of the screen, i dont know why, but they just are. The mind likes to see a lot in the scene, so if you have the character on any one of these spots the audience gets to see a lot more

Take a look at the picture to the right, what do you see, yes the awesome rule of thirds, well i guess your asking yourself, whats the deal with the tic tac toe. Well the dots that you see are the places that are the HOTSPOTS on the screen, it is any spot that you see the two lines cross eachothers paths, like i said, they are the most interesting spots on your screen.

Now take a look at the picture to the left, you see that the birds eye is right in one of those hot spots, why, because that is what the director wants you to look at, they either want you to look at the birds eye, or at the bird itself. In your scene you are going to want to do this same thing, you are going to put the most important character or thing or whatever, either near, or on  one of those hotspots. You will mostly see the upper dots used thats just so you can get more from the character.

Now look to the right again, i want you too try and figure out what is the most important part of this scene by using the rule of thirds.

 If you guessed the man with his head down, you are correct, but if you chose the guy on his phone you are also correct. Even though there are two characters in this perticular scene they are both still important, they both fall right on a hotspot, or near them, you can see that the guy with his head down, has the hotspot right on his head, because that is where you are suppose to look, and the guy on his phone also has the hotspot protruding from his head or near it, these guys are what you need to look at when you are watching the television screen, and it is so interesting because no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, your eye will always go strait to the hotspots on the screen, even if the main character isnt on the hotspot you will always look at it first. Just imagine if the guy on the left had been in the middle of the picture, that would not have been very interesting, why, well its because he would make the picture unbalanced and you would see him cutting the photo and the scenery right in half, with him right on that hotspot, you get to see all of the scenery and still enjoy the mood he is in.

So remember that when you are putting together your scene, make sure that you have the rule of thirds in there, it will just make it that much better, oh and dont forget, this not only applies to film it most deffinately applies to photography as well, just go out and look at all of the professional pictures out there, they will all have the rule of thirds in them.