Project AP-4 Analyze Picture Composition
Project Analyze pictorial composition, which is a powerful tool for interesting the
audience’s eye, directing their attention, organizing elements that are in conflict, and
suggesting subtexts. Composition is static, dynamic, internal to a shot, and external
between shots. All involve point of view and meaning.
Goals are to identify:
a) How the eye travels differently within different kinds of composition
b) What patterns the eye followed and how you’d classify that movement
c) The strongest elements in particular compositions
d) Different ways to organize space around human subjects
e) How and why people or objects can be on the edge of frame or even cut off
f) Different ways that the third dimension—depth—can be created
g) How the film’s dramatic problem and resulting dramatic tension are implied
h) How compositions draw attention to oppositional forces
i) Variations in visual rhythm through the film and the reason for them
j) Examples of dynamic composition
k) Examples of external composition











Preparation
a) Pick a documentary with a strongly visual style and with a bold use of

composition. My choice is______________________________________(title)
b) Use a computer frame-grab facility to collect samples that you integrate into a

piece of explanatory writing.
c) Find one or more examples of the facets specified in (a) to (k) above, illustrating
each with a frame quotation

Writing Describe in brief,

a. What the film delivers as mood, message, and meaning
b. Why you picked each of your compositional examples to illustrate (a)

to (k) above
c. What the film’s compositional trends contribute to its overall impact

d. What progression the composition follows through the film

e. What you learned from making this analysis, and what resolutions you
formed in relation to your own filmmaking

Notes Shooting to extract meaning from documentary situations means you can capitalize
on the drama in a scene. This means you’ve developed a point of view on the tensions,
issues, and personalities you are recording, and have a dramatist’s sensitivity to developing
subtexts. You use composition’s organizing potential to imply meanings and highlight
relationships. Afterwards, you view your work with a keenly critical awareness of what you
missed, and why. You want to hone your sensitivity ready for future work.
When you operate a movie camera you are in the double role of audience and creator,
with the viewer’s experience happening first. You react instinctively to each new image,
your eye making a journey within it, registering the image’s subject and any meaning or
narrative that emerges. Typical thoughts you have:

What made my eye go to its particular starting point in the image? Was it the
brightest point; the darkest; an arresting color; a human face or a significant
junction of lines creating a focal point? Something else?

What attracted my eye away from its point of first attraction, and what drew it
onward to each new place?

If I trace out the route my eye took, what shape do I have? A circular pattern; a
triangle or ellipse; what else?

How do I classify this compositional movement? Is it geometrical, repetitive
textures, swirling, falling inwards, symmetrically divided down the middle,
flowing diagonally…?

Are places in my eye’s route specially charged with energy? Often these are
sightlines, such as between two field workers, one of whom is facing away.

How are the individuality and mood of the human subjects expressed? By making
juxtapositions between person and person, person and surroundings?

How much movement did my eye make before returning to its starting point?
Aspects of visual design and some sample associations:
Element
Line
Type
Straight
Possible association
Man-made, purposeful, of the mind and
intellect, designed, intentional, divisional.
Line may be actual or implied.
Curved or round
Organic, flowing, soft, pliable, adaptable,
undulating, enveloping
Vertical
Rising, falling, contesting, bisecting,
dividing
Horizontal
Space, broadness, depth, calmness,
limpidity, serenity, bisection above and
Element
Type
Possible association
below
Diagonal
Purpose, dynamism, movement, descending
or ascending
Converging
Fulfillment, destination, completion,
unification
Diverging
Separation, profusion, multiplication
Between people or
Tension; will; intention; potential for
objects
communication, antagonism, attraction, ,
questioning
Eyeline
Implied sightline that we are drawn to
knowing
Shape
Organic
Profusion, welcoming, fruitful, invasive,
multiplying
Texture
Angular
Orderly, defensive, purposeful, watchful
Soft surfaces
Springy, welcoming, resilient, disordered,
comfortable, light absorbing, fluid
Hard surfaces
Definite, contained, defended, ordered, light
reflecting, rigid
Color
Hue
Colors have innumerable natural and cultural
associations. The most obvious are red with
blood and danger, green with safety and
natural vegetation, white with purity, etc
Saturation (degree of
Saturation and desaturation have their
purity or of dilution with
associations and symbolic meanings
white)
connected with energy, assertiveness,
boldness, etc.
Brightness
Lightness might suggest assertive, outgoing
energy; darkness could mean withdrawal,
subservience, or gloom.
Juxtaposition
What colors are juxtaposed to special effect?
Element
Type
Dominant
Possible association
What color or colors predominates in the
frame?
Space
Positive
Usually the subject in arrangement with its
(objects that constitute a
surroundings
picture’s subject)
Negative
Space that is sometimes a shape in its own
(space around the
right
subject)
Juxtaposition Balance
Balanced or unbalanced frame suggesting
harmony or disharmony?
Depth
Contrast
Strong or weak? Intended or inherent?
Repetition
Patterns, mirroring?
Background plane
A sense of depth comes from lighting,
Middleground plane
perspective, or selective focus. Subject is
Foreground plane
normally focused in middleground, with
foreground and background in lesser focus.
Racking focus to a new plane shifts our
attention to new detail.
Framing
Closed
All narrative information is arranged and
enclosed within the frame. Framing often
suggests meaning or subtext. An aware
camera operator sees in terms of relatedness
and uses composition to further the ends of
the film.
Open
A necessary narrative element is either
obscured or is outside the frame; the frame
may look partial or unarranged. Half a face
may look out of frame, causing the viewer to
imagine the rest.
Balanced
Elements are harmoniously arranged
Element
Type
Unbalanced
Possible association
suggesting order and balance.
May be intended to create unease, or may
anticipate new element entering the frame,
such as someone appearing out of a door.
Frame within a frame
A subframing, such as a room through whose
window one sees outdoor activity framed by
the window.
Lead room
Space ahead of someone facing across screen
Unlike the viewer, you as the camera operator are responsible for what the audience sees,
so you must immediately exploit values implicit or potential in the situation. Unlike a
fiction operator, you often have no time to plan or think, and must rely on intuition and
the values to which you have trained yourself to react.