See also:   [Formal Elements]
                   [Structure]

                   [Art Terms]
                   [Film Terms (on film page)]
                  
                   [Distribution] (film term)
                 
Composition

On this page:  {Intro}
               {Stuff}
               {Handiness}


Intro

How is the thing laid out? How are line and space, color and texture,
object and shadow (if any) used?



Stuff

Thee are several excellent books by aritsts on compostion, one might
even go so far that the for the visual artist, composition is THE
albatross that haunts us all. The written works by Van Gogh, Cezanne,
Serat, Kandinski, as well as by Rudolph Arnheim (the psychologist) 
lay out and explore the "conceptual space" of composition. 

To the lay person, what we do when we look at simple compositions seems
not to be art at all. And yet, from a dictionary of these designs that
for "what ever reason" intrigue and dominate our our work. There are 
simple rules by which these tendencies can be recognised, but as to why
they (among quite literally an infinite number) dominate and "possess"
us, not even we can say. 

The famous black square on a blank canvas by Kasimir Malevich is of course
(like the works of the other constructivists/suprematistists/bau-haus-ists/etc)
form a sort of minimum alphabet for us. Couple this with the similarlly "atomic"
ideas of pointilism, primary/secondar/complementary/etc colours, etc - and we
have an almost totally devoid intellectural plane of art. And on that absolutely
blanker than blank canvas, we draw (mentally extract) all possible forms, 
ideas, compositions, representations, and even actual images of either a 
directly (objective) or indirectly (abstract, symbolic, non-objective/subjective)
nature.

We know tha the direct images/things are what they are and the in-direct ones
depend not only on the state-of-mind/aesthetic/tallents of the artist, but to
that undefinable something that strikes the chord within the viewer and each
viewer often in a totally different way - perhaps, that's much of the whyness
of why we do our work. At least at this particular juncture in time/space/self
it seems to me (whateve that thing is).




Handedness

An important element is the LEFT-RIGHT vs RIGHT-LEFT concept.
In the occidental (western) languages, one reads left-to-right,
in the orriental (eastern) languages, one reads right-to-left.

So, ingrained is the EYE MOVEMENT/EYE TRAINING that the
very nature of the image presented depends HEAVILY upon this
for its emphasis, impact, etc.

For example, when viewing a drawing, if the most important
element appears in the upper left-hand corner, it is more likely
to be a western designer/artist. Similarly, for eastern designers/
artists the upper-right-hand element has more emphasis.

This is something to consider in both visual arts, as well as set
design, film, etc. For the western audience/viewer, things in
the upper left have more impact, than things in the lower 
right do. This is reversed for the eastern audience/viewer.

Thus, simply by moving the SAME element to a different 
location in the Picture Plane we, totally
change its impact and "presence".



Chronology

film clip examples, etc.