Saturday 11 October 2014

What is composition?

Press Play deliver an excellent discussion on the elusive subject of composition.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

This movie shows instead of telling in a wonderful sweeping artistic demonstration using great movies old and new. I hope I have interpreted it correctly in these notes.

Composition is order through design, the arrangement of elements.

Look at the image from the vantage point of the spectator. At first, film composition took the view of the onlooker as an audience member. Then filmmakers realised that what the camera saw could be constructed and composition became interactive. Point of view could be large or small, wide or narrow, deep or shallow. Directors started to think more like painters and photographers rather than like theatre directors composing a scene. They began to direct the viewer’s eye to direct the emotions.
Colour added a new tool for attracting the viewer’s eye and affecting their emotions.
Widescreen changed things as the shape of the picture matters too.

How to combine and arrange elements is the great question of art.
shape
colour
balance
darkness
light
geometry
motion
perspective
line
symmetry
height
depth
order
design
tension
balance
harmony

The challenge of composition for narrative cinema is unchanged: where will the viewer look and at what. How can the arrangement of elements help the viewer understand or feel?