'Where shall I stand?' ... how to frame a reporter

How a reporter or presenter is framed gives subtle signals about what they are saying. Take last night on BBC channels ...

If you see someone standing square on to camera in the centre of the frame, you're probably watching a news or no-frills current affairs programme. 

So Andy Gallagher on BBC1's Ten O'Clock News (left) is seen dead centre in front of sand and sea, reporting on the BP oil spill. The fact that he was doing a live two-way with Huw Edwards made the framing all the more part of the language of news: it is as if Edwards and Gallagher are talking to each other through a window.

On BBC2's Coast (left), Neil Oliver's angled shoulders suggest he's turning to us as he speaks, interrupting his contemplation to share a thought with us. The angle of his body draws the viewer into the scene, where the traditional square line of Gallagher's two-way separated us from it.

And while Gallagher's camera was fixed, like a window-frame, Oliver's is hand-held, suggesting the fluid view of a walking companion.

Where Coast followed the conventions of documentary, BBC4's Nixon in the Den (left) artfully broke them. In the tradition of authored history programmes, the film was Professor David Reynolds' account of Nixon's presidency - and consisted of archive footage and specially shot sequences of Reynolds, mostly in Nixon's private office. The disciplines of the genre mean the director needs to ring the changes on the inevitable series of pieces to camera so they don't appear repetitive.

Russell Barnes achieved that, and built up an intimate, almost claustrophobic atmosphere in keeping with Reynolds' thesis about Nixon the loner, by having Reynolds in every conceivable position in frame - wildly off-centre, looking out of the frame rather than into it, and in every size from close up to full length.

The result was an intense piece of storytelling which felt close to Nixon, despite its wide-ranging tale of superpower diplomacy and the national trauma of Watergate.

Framing sends the viewer a subtle message. With thought, as above, it can enhance what a programme-maker is trying to convey.

There are only so many places you can put someone in a 16 by 9 rectangle, but you might as well consider them all.