1/ Space:
- X-axis (horizontal):
Left to right: good
Right to left: bad
Conflict
- Y-axis (vertical):
Straight line: good
Detouring or being sidetracked: bad
- XY-axes (diagonals):
Descending: aided by gravity; once the motion starts, it’s hard to stop
Ascending: against gravity
- Z-axis (depth-of-field):
Character’s height and power
- Z-axis (planes of action):
Staging in-depth: actions in foreground, middleground and background
- Z-axis (rack focus/ pull focus):
Shifting focus from 1 object to another
2/ Frame:
- Directing the eye: light and dark function as visual signposts—directing the audience to focus on what’s intended
- Balance/ symmetry
- Imbalance
- Orientation
- Size: character’s relative strength and weakness may be established by the use of size
3/ Shape within the frame:
- Circular (circular imagery can inherently suggest confusion, repetition and time)
- Linear
- Triangular: created by lighting, furnishings, exterior graphics, character positioning, or movement; harmony or disharmony (e.g. love triangle)
- Rectangular: may represent logic, civilisation, control, or the aesthetics of modernity; can represent death (coffin)
- Organic vs geometric
4/ Editing:
- Montage: created through an assembly of quick cuts, disconnected in time or place, that combine to form a larger idea
- Assembly editing
- Mise-en-Scène: new compositions are created through blocking, lens zooms and camera movement instead of cutting; uninterrupted take
- Intercutting/ cross-cutting: cutting back and forth between 2 actions occurring simultaneously in 2 different locations
- Split screen
- Dissolves: blending 1 shot to another
- Smash cut: to jar the audience with a sudden and unexpected change in image or sound (e.g. cutting a wide shot against a huge close-up or vice versa)
5/ Time:
- Expanding time through pacing
- Contrast of time (pacing and intercutting): slow vs fast (suspense)
- Expanding time—overlapping action
- Slow-motion
- Fast-motion
- Flashback
- Flashforward: cut to the future, real or imagined; typically assisted with a slow dissolve
- Freeze-frame
- Visual foreshadowing
6/ Sound effects:
- Realistic sound (diegetic): character, emotional response and outer world
- Surreal sound (meta-diegetic): inner world
7/ Music:
- Lyrics as narrator: character’s inner thoughts
- Symbolic use of music
- Music as a moveable prop: e.g. used to express an idea linked to a character
8/ Scene transitions:
- Matching audio segue
- Audio bridge: dialogue or sound effects
- Visual match-cut:
Graphic similarity
Pattern and colour
Action
Idea
- Extended match dissolve (time transition)
- Disrupted match-cut: 2 matched images separated by a single shot
9/ Camera lenses:
- Wide-angle
3 grounds
Establishing shots
- Telephoto: brings distant objects closer to the viewer, compresses space, making objects appear to be on the same horizontal plane; its shallow depth-of-field throws objects, both in front of and behind the focal point, out of focus
- Fish-eye: distortion
- Prop lenses within the scene
- Objects: stained glass, water or plastic (distortion)
10/ Camera position:
- Close-up
- Extreme close-up
- 2-shot
- Over-the-shoulder shot
- Point-of-view
- High-angle: makes subject small and vulnerable
- Low-angle: makes subject large and dominant
- High-low combine
11/ Camera motion:
- Static shot
- Pan
- Tilt
- Rotation
- Tracking shot
- Circular: hand-held camera, Steadicam, or tracks
- Push-in
- Pull-out
- Crane
- Handheld
- Steadicam
- Aerial
12/ Lighting:
- Rembrandt lighting: light vs dark
- TV lighting: conventionally bright, flat and shadowless
- Candlelight: flatters the face, smoothens the skin and adds a warm tone
- Motivated lighting: any light that would naturally exist in the world depicted in the frame, e.g. a lamp
- Unmotivated light: e.g. the bath of light symbolising goodness
- Motion: e.g. swinging light bulb, flash lights, etc.
13/ Colour:
- Coding character
14/ Props:
- Externalising character:
Dramatic way to express a character’s inner world
Gives a scene an added layer of meaning
- Repurposing props: the meaning of a prop changes over the course of the film
- Contrast
15/ Wardrobe:
- Wardrobe
- Repurposing wardrobe
- Contrast of wardrobe
16/ Locations:
- Defining character
- Location as unifying element: e.g. similar locations
- Location as theme
- Moving locations: e.g. train
17/ Natural environment:
- Climate
- Seasons and the passage of time
- Physical phenomena: can be foreshadowing, can have symbolic meaning, etc.
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Here are a few cool things I’ve just noted lately watching films:
- The fade-out in the middle of the scene in Kieslowski’s Three Colours: Blue
- The fade-to/from-red in Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers
- The wipe in Kurosawa (scene transition)
- Ingmar Bergman’s juxtaposed faces: close-up of 2 faces, in the same shot, not looking at each other
- Kurosawa’s axial cut
- The geometry of the scene in Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well
- Mizoguchi’s mise-en-scène: move characters around, and then move the camera accordingly; long take
- The dream sequence in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona of Elisabet entering Alma’s room—the use of smoke and the resulting ghost/dream image
- The metaphorical/ symbolic images in Jodorowsky’s The Dance of Reality
- The repetition of the exact same scene, from 2 different angles, in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona
- The face-merging in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona: the morph at the beginning of the film, and the combination of the 2 halves
- The superimposed image in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive
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