Breaking the Framing Rules – New “Storytelling Sessions” Recording Now Available on MZed

MZed Courses

by Mascha DeikovaSeptember 11^th, 2026

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Have you ever wondered why some of the most striking shots in films seem to break the most basic framing rules? A character looking right into the dead end of the frame. A shot held far too close, or angled from far too low. An enormous amount of headroom above someone’s head… Somehow, these choices still work – and often work beautifully. This is exactly the topic of the latest recorded webinar in our interactive series, “Storytelling Sessions,” titled “Breaking the Framing Rules.” It is now available to watch in the MZed library, and here is a sneak peek!

Before we dive in, let’s clear something up. I don’t actually believe there are any real “rules” in filmmaking. It’s an art, and like any art, it exists for you to express your own voice however you like. I mean it: Nobody is going to arrest you for creating a so-called “off-balance” composition. What we’re really talking about here are conventions: habits the industry settled into over time (and for various reasons) until everyone quietly agreed they were “correct.” Once you understand a convention and how it works on the viewer, breaking it on purpose becomes a far more powerful choice than breaking it by accident.

Breaking the Framing Rules: the Storytelling Sessions format

We launched “Storytelling Sessions” on MZed to build a genuine, two-way dialogue with our filmmaking community, and this third edition follows in the same spirit as the first two. (You can check out “Silence in Modern Filmmaking” and “The Mighty Cut” ones here.) In the latest one, instead of giving participants a checklist of “rules,” we picked apart why framing conventions exist in the first place and what happens the moment we decide to break them. Of course, we used plenty of examples from films and series to illustrate the point.

For those of you who couldn’t attend, we packaged the live session into a nine-module masterclass, which runs just under an hour. And no, it doesn’t consist of any NLE tutorials or technical hacks. It is purely about the artistic philosophy behind the frame, and how visual choices can make the stories in your films and projects even stronger.

A sneak peek into the recorded session

One of the conventions we pick apart in the webinar is something called the leading room — sometimes also known as nose room, looking room, or eye room. Essentially, it is the small buffer of breathing space we instinctively leave in front of a character who is moving, looking, or speaking toward something or someone.

Take that space away on purpose, and you get a curious technique: short-siding. Let’s look at a scene from Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” below to see how it works in practice, starting at the 02:02 mark. (By the way, this film is a great example of how to break conventions in service of the story.)

King George VI, played by Colin Firth, sits down for his very first session with speech therapist, Lionel Logue. However, instead of giving him room to “look into,” the filmmakers push him hard against the edge of the frame, staring straight into it. There is simply nowhere for his gaze to go. (And because the speech therapist gets the same treatment, we can read it as a wall between them that is yet to fall.)

It is not an invisible decision, and it carries a lot of storytelling power. This visual choice tells you everything about how trapped the protagonist feels — boxed in by his own position, his own title, his own inability to say what he means. Short-siding doesn’t just look “off.” It makes the audience feel that way too, often before they can even explain what is making them so uncomfortable.

Isn’t it fascinating how much the absence of empty space can do?

What else will you learn in “Breaking the Framing Rules”?

Other highlights from the webinar include:

• Why we default to certain conventions in the first place, and what a decades-old technical standard can teach us about how quickly a habit turns into an unquestioned “rule.”
• How the rule of thirds came about, and what changes the moment you replace it with, for example, dead-center symmetry.
• The psychological weight you can put on a character with something as simple as extra space above their head.
• Why the 180-degree rule exists, and how jumping across it can signal an emotional shift the audience feels before they can explain it.
• One curious framework, borrowed from a classic book on visual storytelling, for deciding when to lean into a convention and when to break it.
• A quick tour through a handful of other conventions worth knowing – and worth breaking – plus our now-traditional Q&A section and a short, fun quiz to see how much stuck after the webinar.

Price and availability

The recording of “Storytelling Sessions: Breaking the Framing Rules” is now available as part of the MZed Pro subscription. If you couldn’t make it to the live session, you can catch up on the discussion and start looking more closely at your own framing habits. Head over here to watch the recording!

Join our next live workshop!

And that’s not all! I’m thrilled to invite you to our next “Storytelling Sessions” webinar, “Screenwriting Hacks for Building Tension,” which will take place on September 29^th (Tuesday), at 10 AM EDT / 4 PM CEST.

Just like with our previous sessions, attending live will be completely free, and afterward, the recording will be added to the MZed library. We will share a registration link soon, so keep an eye on our upcoming announcements and social media posts if you’d like to join us live!

What do you think? Is there a framing convention you follow purely out of habit – or one you’ve been wanting to break in your own work? Let’s talk about it a bit more in the comments below!

Full disclosure: MZed is owned by CineD.