This is a subject which crosses my mind the more I see new animation work coming out. I’d like to share it in the hope its of use to image makers and viewers alike.

Everyone in the business of filmmaking is constantly aware of the rule relating to the Safe area (also called TV cutoff). All design for television is made with an invisible border which clips about 20% of the image. It’s a long established rule that all movement must take place within one border, and all text within another.

This rule is, in my view, completely outdated and unnecessary, and may be officially forgotten about immediately. It simply lacks any practical application considering how most video is viewed today, digitally, online and on modern screens.

As a symbol of where we are now I feel it’s time to drop it and start taking advantage of the full-frame.

From an animation point of view, it’s always been quite vexing to have to keep everything within a certain frame, but still to work to an outer frame just in case.

From a design and composition point of view you want to use your full canvas without restriction, to create a certain balance (or lack of balance) and know your audience will see the same thing. Unfortunately with the Safe Area rule you would have to make a composition work within one frame, then extend it out for posterity. (It must surely be frustrating to anyone involved to have all that old work now be seen exposing the full frame, not what the compositions were designed for.)

This was something I considered when doing my short film Wofl in 2006. The trees in certain shots fit into square shapes, a simple motif which helped establish that world. I can say that, less obviously, they were an expression of frustration at fitting things into this arbitrary frame. They are actually fitting snugly into the Safe Area.

Breaking this rule 5 years ago would be considered unprofessional, but things most certainly have changed, despite this so many still blindly cling to it. For example, a small segment I did for the Boing Boing blog some months ago had images with text that filled the frame. When the thing went online, an editor somewhere had gone in and neatly fitted the image down without thinking. There’s something inexplicably dull and mediocre about the result, small enough as the change seems to be.

The Safe Area is part of a long list of rules which I find useless in modern image making. They reoccur as default, unquestioned laws which will unfortunately paint all which we see as the 00′s style in 10 years.

I really believe we ought to be questioning every rule we are told, especially with animation, when – as trite as this remark will always sound – you can do anything.

David