What Is Negative Space in Film? Definition & Visual Examples

What is negative space in film and art definition featured image
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Published: February 28, 2025 | Last Updated: May 28, 2025

Where positive space defines presence, negative space defines absence. In visual art, this space helps us see the subject. In film, it makes us feel something about them.

When a character is alone in a wide shot, or framed against a blank wall, that space isn’t just empty, it’s doing work. It’s focusing our attention, creating tension, or giving the image room to breathe.

Negative Space in Art and Design

In visual art, negative space is a foundational tool. Artists like Henri Matisse, Katsushika Hokusai, and M.C. Escher used it to define shape and balance.

Giant wave curling above boats with Mount Fuji in the background, using negative space to emphasize scale.
Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa uses negative space to heighten tension and focus. The calm sky defines the violent curve of the wave, while the small Mount Fuji gains impact from the emptiness around it.

Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa (c. 1831) uses negative space to sharpen the drama of the wave. The shape of the crest, and the tiny Mount Fuji beneath it, gain their power from the sky around them. The space isn’t blank. It’s what gives the image tension. That trick, where space becomes structure, applies directly to cinematography.

What Does Negative Space Do in Film?

Astronaut floating alone in space, surrounded by black negative space.
Framed against a vast starless void, the astronaut’s body becomes a fragile point in infinite space. The negative space amplifies fear and detachment, making survival feel almost abstract.
Image Credit: Warner Bros.

In film, negative space shapes both image and emotion. It highlights isolation, creates tension, and leads the eye. It can symbolize emotional disconnection, acting as a visual metaphor for absence, loss, or alienation.

But it’s not always bleak. Negative space can also suggest peace, awe, or spiritual openness, like in Terrence Malick’s quiet fields or Hayao Miyazaki’s open skies. The emptiness makes room for reflection, not just discomfort.

Boy floats in water, surrounded by rippling negative space, suggesting peace and reflection.
Young Jack (played by Hunter McCracken) floats weightlessly across the frame, surrounded by nothing but moving water. The negative space feels gentle, not threatening. Malick uses the emptiness to express stillness, memory, and spiritual openness.
Image Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures.

It also controls rhythm. A long, still shot with lots of empty space can slow down pacing. It gives the moment room to breathe or stall, making silence feel intentional, not like a pause.

Totoro sits on a treetop under a vast starry sky, surrounded by nighttime negative space.
Totoro and his companions sit quietly atop the trees, surrounded by a calm, starlit sky. The negative space stretches the moment into something timeless. In Miyazaki’s world, emptiness isn’t absence, it’s presence.
Image Credit: Studio Ghibli.

Negative space isn’t just visual, it works with sound. A wide, empty frame paired with silence or faint ambient noise can be unsettling or intimate. The less you show, and the less you hear, the more your brain fills in.

Framing someone with negative space can show powerlessness or power. A small figure lost in space may look vulnerable, but a dominant figure centered in an empty room might seem invincible. It all depends on context and scale.

Read more about the difference between positive and negative space in film.

Negative Space in Horror, Sci-Fi, and Animation

In horror and sci-fi, negative space often becomes the threat. A frame left open can make us anticipate something entering it, like in The Babadook (2014) or It Follows (2014). It’s the visual equivalent of the acousmetrê in sound.

Mother and son eat in silence while a dark fireplace sits between them, creating visual tension.
In The Babadook, the empty fireplace bisects the frame, just waiting to be filled. That blank center isn’t neutral. It’s a question mark. Negative space becomes the monster’s territory, like a visual acousmêtre: you sense it before you see it.
Image Credit: Umbrella Entertainment.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Arrival (2016), space itself becomes part of the emotion: vast, cold, unknowable.

Massive alien ship in a wide, misty landscape with negative space surrounding it.
In Arrival (2016), Denis Villeneuve frames the alien ship within a sparse, misty landscape. The negative space around it turns the craft into a question mark , vast, unknowable, and strangely calm. It’s not just eerie. It’s sacred.
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures.

Animated films use negative space just as intentionally. In Wall-E (2008), silence and visual emptiness make the robot’s loneliness feel cosmic. Studio Ghibli often uses negative space to slow down and reflect, with quiet moments in nature or still interiors letting the story pause and reset.

Tips for Using Negative Space

  • Use wide shots to isolate characters
  • Leave room in the frame to show absence or delay payoff
  • Balance emptiness to keep the subject focused, not lost
  • Pair space with silence or subtle sound design
  • Let space reflect the character’s inner world or power dynamic

Wide shots exaggerate space. Off-center framing can destabilize it. A clean background makes your subject pop. It’s not just about minimalism, it’s about meaning.

Summing Up

Negative space in film isn’t just blankness, it’s part of the message. It can isolate, inspire, calm, or threaten. From Welles to Coppola to Glazer, from Totoro to 2001, filmmakers use it to show what isn’t there, and why it matters. Sometimes, the strongest presence in a frame is the absence.

Read Next: Want to sharpen your eye for visual composition?


Start with the FilmDaft illustrated guide to visual composition or explore how mood and emotion shift with color psychology in cinematography.


Then browse all articles on framing, balance, symmetry, and spatial design , from leading lines to negative space.


Or return to the Cinematography section to explore lenses, lighting, and camera movement techniques.

By Jan Sørup

Jan Sørup is a indie filmmaker, videographer and photographer from Denmark. He owns filmdaft.com and the Danish company Apertura, which produces video content for big companies in Denmark and Scandinavia. Jan has a background in music, has drawn webcomics, and is a former lecturer at the University of Copenhagen.