FORM, CONTENT, and MEANING

Art within Physical and Psychological Spaces

COMPOSITION• We have already determined that

COMPOSITION determines how and what your viewer will observe within the frame

• COMPOSITION and FRAME are both considered “forms”

• In film, the main concerns of “form” are distance and space and how they apply to the viewer psychologically

PERSONAL SPACE

• In “real-life”, personal space is culturally defined

• “Closeness” is a psychological concept

PERSONAL SPACE IN ART

• In ART, distance is set up by the artist

• The viewer has no control over their personal space because the artist is deciding how physically close the viewer is to the subject matter!

3 BASIC DISTANCES IN FILM

LONG SHOT

a composition where the subject matter is usually small, far from the camera,

surrounded by large amounts of information about the environment and

surroundings

MEDIUM / MID SHOT

subject matter is closer to camera, usually occupying about half the frame

(if a person is the subject, typically he or she is seen from the waist up)

CLOSE UP

in a close up the subject typically fills the frame and very little of the

environment is visible

NERVOUS MAN IN A FOUR DOLLAR ROOM

• As we watch Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room again, think about the concept of distance and space

• When you see a Distance Composition happening on screen, call it out… Close Up! Long Shot! Etc.

• When did you, as an audience, feel most likely to share this character’s feelings? When did you empathize, or feel sorry for him?

• When were you most likely to judge him, make decisions about him, or be more intellectual about the situation?

THE BASIC FILM DISTANCES AS

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL

INDICATORS

LONG SHOT

in the Long Shot, the viewer’s emotional and empathy levels are down and the

audience is prone to be intellectual and analytical about the image or situation

depicted in the artwork

CLOSE UP

in the Close Up, where the subject fills the frame and distance between subject

and viewer has been closed, the viewer’s emotional levels have been raised - the intellectual is DOWN and

the empathy is UP

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

• The final showdown sequence in Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is very famous for its manipulation of “aesthetic distance”, or the use of the psychological connotations of Long, Medium, and Close Up composition forms

• As we watch the segment, think about what it is the filmmaker is attempting to accomplish by deliberately manipulating the distance between the viewer and the subject matter

• Visual structure of a film is based on the design of a series of aesthetic distances

• Different types of shots / compositions have very different meanings for an audience

FORM GIVES MEANING TO

CONTENT!

• The MEANING of WHAT YOU SHOW is determined by HOW YOU SHOW IT!

• Form and Content are equally valid to structure of a film

• Form is harder to understand, however, because it is usually used AGAINST you as a viewer

• The viewer gets caught up in the emotional connotations of the forms and forgets that what they are experiencing is not real, which is the basis for…

WILLING SUSPENSION OF

DISBELIEF!