“Cinematography: The Visuals & the Story” by Block
Conference:
Type:
Entry Number: 14
Title:
- Cinematography: The Visuals & the Story
Course Organizer(s):
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Abstract:
Prerequisites
None.
Intended Audience
All attendees.
Description
A writer is concerned with story structure. A musician is concerned with musical structure. A picture maker must be concerned with visual structure. If you create pictures for video games, feature films, animation, television shows, advertisements, or Imax movies, there is only one language available to you. The language is called “visual structure”.
Anyone creating visuals always confronts the same basic questions: How can you create, control and sequence your visuals so they tell a story? How can you link the visuals to the story so they support each other? How can you make your visuals unique and use them to communicate with the audience?
The answer to all of these questions is based on understanding the key building blocks to all types of visual structure. These visual building blocks are: space, line, shape, color, tone, movement, and rhythm. It is through the control of these basic visual building blocks that every picture maker stirs an audience’s emotions, creates unique visual styles and controls the critical relationship between story and visual structure.
A definition of these visual building blocks can be found in any design class but the more important concept is how to use visual structure in relation to a story narrative. How do the two separate worlds of visuals and story fit together? If they remain separate, you end up with pictures that can work against the story, overwhelm the story or distract your audience from the story. When the visual structure and story structure are linked together, their final product can transform a production into a unique, entertaining and emotional experience for the audience.
This class is an overview about connecting visual structure and story structure together; not just in a theoretical way but also in a practical way that works in the direct production of both live action and animated projects. The principles discussed can be applied to productions of any length from commercials, to feature films, to open-ended Internet game environments. In any media platform, visual problems can be solved by understanding visual structure and its critical relationship to story structure.
