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Plate 1. DESIGN FOR A TYPICAL SETTING IN THE FUTURISTIC MANNER
CINEMATIC COMPOSITION
A Guide for the Advanced Amateur
THERE isn't a scene of a cinematographic play that hasn't had thought given, before it was taken, as to how it was going to look on the screen as a pictorial arrangement. Even if some directors and cameramen pay no attention to rules of composition, as such, they take good care to have the figures grouped well and that the static elements in a scene — the settings and property — are effectively placed. When putting the figures into a group, say three characters with the principal one in the centre they, perhaps without realizing it themselves, applied a rule of pictorial composition. And if they have this character dressed in a light colored, or conspicuous costume, another application of compositional principles was made. Again, if any particular arranging of property in a scene is not to their liking they will be quick to detect it. It is because their own sense of artistic harmony, even without evoking a rule of composition, has been offended.
Of course, acting figures in screen pictures do not stay in any fixed re
* Book rights retained by the author. Eighty-two
By E. G. Lutz*
Illustrated by the Author
lationship. They necessarily move. Here is where, respecting the employment of laws of composition, that screen pictures differ from paintings and still pictures. On the screen there are, to be sure, some elements that are fixed and when they are planned as to position in a scene the rules of composition are similarily applied as in still pictures. And at the same time some attempt is made, even though there is a constant instability of position in figures, of using the canons of artistic arrangement. Besides, all the rules, laws, or precepts by which craftsmen in the fine arts produce their works are applicable in some or all departments of cinematography.
A profitable activity for those interested in the technic of cinematography is the studying of works from the hands of recognized masters of pictorial art. But at the outset it is well to understand that this study is not to be prosecuted for the purpose of finding examples of good arrangement so as merely to copy them. Spe
cific cases of such copying are the Rembrandt effects in lighting sometimes attempted in screen work. These imitations are not always successful because those making them worked mechanically without knowledge of the principles operative in effecting such pictorial matters. The idea in studying paintings is to find out the underlying principles of good arrangement. And the endeavor, furthermore, is to see how painters applied the laws of composition for the attainment of artistic effects in specific cases. By grasping the significance of what good composition is and fully understanding how to apply the rules, motion picture sets and scenes always will be arranged successfully. We know, of course, that it is inopportune when a scene is to be "shot" with all the attendant multiplicity of things to think of, to stop and discuss art composition. Whatever is done then must be done almost, as it were, with the quickness of an intuitive act. Some have an instinctive knowledge of what is a good arrangement in matters of art and a certain sure way of achievement. But most of us need to study.