Definition:
Framing is the compositional decision about what the camera includes within the boundaries of the shot and what it excludes. Every edge of the frame is a creative choice, determining what the audience sees, where their attention is directed, and what the image communicates before any story element has spoken.
What It Means in Movies:
Framing encompasses the placement of subjects within the frame, the use of foreground and background elements, the management of negative space, and the relationship between the edge of the image and the world beyond it. A character framed centrally reads differently from one framed to one side. A subject with empty space in front of them reads differently from one pressed against the frame's edge. These are not neutral compositional decisions. They are arguments about how the audience should feel about what they are seeing.
Why It Matters:
Framing is where cinematography meets storytelling at the most fundamental level. The frame is the boundary of the audience's world during any given shot, and the filmmaker who controls that boundary controls what the audience knows, feels, and anticipates. Framing can create tension through what it excludes as effectively as through what it includes. The off-screen space that the audience knows exists but cannot see is as much a tool as the space within the frame.
Example:
In The Shining, Kubrick's framing consistently places Jack Torrance in compositions where the Overlook Hotel surrounds and dwarfs him in the early sequences, communicating the film's power dynamic between character and space before that relationship has been established through plot. The framing is already telling the story.