Calling your shots

Every time I watch a very deliberately composed film or comic book my mind reels at the thought process of the artist. It's one of the most important elements of storytelling - literally framing the story for the audience.

One can approach this concept of framing the story in a functional sense, simply choosing what angles and shots will tell the story as clearly as possible and capture the mood and emotions of the scene. This contributes to a visual story that is effective and engaging. Thoughtless, lazy compositions alienate the viewer and make a film intrinsically boring. I have a passion for trashy horror but even I can't sit through a series of sloppy visuals, even if the thrills are in place. On the other hand, the slowest moving film is riveting to me if the images are well thought out and meaningful as in a Terrence Malick or Andrei Tarkovsky film.

It's interesting that the two film makers that came to mind for me are known for the spiritual nature of their work. This definitely gives weight to the idea of "framing" the story through their compositions. It seems like the desire to convey meaning through your medium leads to more delicately considered images tracing back to early concepts of iconography and very old symbolism. Maybe it's a personal thing for me that I become emotionally moved when things are heavily symbolic. Something about the obscured meaning making it more powerful to the subconscious. Nothing is more annoying than this kind of story being too on the nose.

It takes a master to elegantly make use of visual symbols without being too obscure or too obvious. However the intent of the artist is also at play and it may be one's desire to play with symbols on a more surface level, which can be just s powerful, as in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. More often for me, I'm moved and intrigued by the less obvious, almost impossible to decipher visuals, like in Bergman's opening montage to the glorious Persona.

These ideas all makes me think about how we frame our own stories all the time. We compose the shots of our personal story and can frame it however we please, and this what I need to think about when crafting a visual story. What is the author's perspective and how obvious should it be? I'm partial to creators who work is idosyncratic and clearly their own. Creators like David Lynch who have their own vocabulary of symbols from which they draw, their very personal way of framing the shot. I'd like to explore Inland Empire shot for shot to see what secrets I can unlock.