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COMPOSITION IN MOTION PICTURES
Daniel Bryan Clark, A. S. C.
THE word composition is one of the most frequently used, and often one of the least understood, of the many used in discussions of visual art. For this reason many people feel that it is something mysterious and incomprehensible, which only the elect may understand. This conception of composition is as accurate as the conception of all mathematics as being involved and incomprehensible; differential calculus may be intricate, but it is no more mathematics than the basic principles of addition and substraction with which our school-children begin. And the basis of all composition is merely arranging the parts of a picture so that the whole is pleasing to look at. From this simple beginning, composition can develop into an intricate art and science, but it always remains, essentially, the art of arranging a pleasing picture.
The art of composing motion pictures is the keystone of successfully photographed productions. This is true because good or bad composition dictates the success or failure of the story, and, after all is said and done, the photography must show the thoughts of the director, the performance of the actor, and the mood of the writer. These three form the story. Therefore, unless the work of author, director, and actor are composed properly in the final picture or series of pictures, the result of their combined efforts is more or less a failure. So, composition is, or should be, one of the chief aims of the cinematographer in charge of the production. His other essential aim should be to produce a clear, technically perfect negative by the use of his understanding of lights and shadows, and by his skill in handling the camera and its accessories.
The means of composition are many and varied. The space allotted me here does not permit going into detail about these tools, but in order that the reader may become more familiar with the methods that produce the picture which the theatre-goer actually sees on the screen, I will survey a few of the elementary principles of composition, and trace their practical application in making a picture.
The natural laws of composition were discovered long before the cinematographer came to add a composite record of action to the remarkable story of civilized humanity. Even the Old Masters of brush and canvas had to grope back into time for the key, and even they could not find from whence it came. The story of Art does not reach far enough into antiquity to specifically state who discovered the natural law of optics which is the essential principle of composition, yet all of the art of the cultivated ancients shows that its application was known.
Modern tests have proven that on the motion picture screen, as well as on the printed page, or any other field, the vision strikes the lower left-hand corner and travels naturally upward and to the right until some object in its path arrests or diverts the eye to some other
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