Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

by Victor Oscar Freeburg

When the whole picture is deep, as in the example just discussed, it offends us if some of the moving objects come near the camera, because this produces two pictures within a single frame, namely, a close-up and a long shot. The effect is as bad as that of listening to an orchestra so placed that some of the instruments are five feet away from our ears while the others are seventy-five feet away. In either case there comes a sense of violence instead of restfulness. The close-up superposed on the long shot is a common fault in photoplays. But we are often annoyed by the opposite fault also, that of jumbling two sets of actions which are going on in adjoining areas, one just beyond the other. In such a case the director should contrive to make the vertical planes seem farther apart than they really are; and it can easily be done without cleaving the picture in two.

To prove this let us imagine a cabaret scene containing prominent persons of the play sitting at tables near the camera, and a number of couples dancing on a floor farther away. In such an arrangement it is probable that the diners have more dramatic value than the dancers; yet the dancing figures are likely to distract attention from those seated at the tables, and thus throw the picture out of balance. Mr. Ingram in “The Four Horsemen” had this very problem, and he solved it in a very simple and convincing way. He allowed a thick haze of cigarette smoke to envelop the dancers till they seemed dim and distant. Or, rather, he used the smoke as a transparent curtain which separates the diners from the action in the background. Thus balance was restored and the spectator could follow the action in the foreground without a sense of disturbance.

A separation of planes somewhat similar to this was skilfully effected by Allan Dwan in “Sahara.” One of the settings is a luxurious tent in the desert. The front of this tent had a wide opening over which hung a veil of mosquito netting. Viewed from within the tent, this veil became a soft background against which the figures moved, while at the same time it served as a thick atmosphere to give dimness and distance to the figures which were just outside the tent. By this device, which is as natural and unobtrusive as the smoke screen described above, Mr. Dwan, besides providing a peculiar pictorial quality of gradated tones, kept two sets of figures separate and yet combined them in rich restfulness.

When a director is composing a scene in which there is a single moving element with a very short path of motion and no strong fixed interests to counter-balance it, he should remember that an object tends to shift the weight of interest somewhat in advance of its own movement. Therefore, a picture will seem to be in better balance if a movement begins near one edge and ends near the center, than if it begins at the center of the picture and passes out at one side.

This observation regarding the shifting of balance during pictorial action raises the question whether it is a practical possibility to keep the composition of a cinema scene steadily in equilibrium for minute after minute. Since the fixed accents do not change their positions and the moving accents do, one might suppose that the scene must sooner or later fall out of balance. But this is not necessarily so. It is true that if, for example, there is a group of fixed accents in the left half of the picture, and a single figure starts from the center and passes out of the scene at the right, it would tend, first, to over-balance the right side of the picture, and then suddenly to leave it without weight. But this tendency may be counter-acted by swinging the camera slightly to the left without stopping the exposure. Such an expedient would shift all of the fixed accents together, though at the cost of introducing a momentary false motion. The ingenious director may find other means by which to compensate for the changes which must of necessity come about in a cinematic composition. However, when it is not possible to have good proportion and balance at more than one moment of a changing scene, that moment should be at the pictorial climax, the crucial point of that scene, the instant when the spectator is to receive the strongest impression, the greatest stimulation and yet the most perfect repose.

Equilibrium is reposeful because it is characteristic of a thing at rest. To say that another characteristic of a thing at rest is that it stays where it is, may sound like an Irish bull; but we say it, nevertheless, in order to make another point in our argument that pictorial motions may sometimes be in dynamic repose. It is quite possible for a pictorial motion to give a sharp impression of power, weight, and velocity, and yet stay practically where it first appears on the screen. An express train, for example, may be shown in a “long shot” starting several hundred yards away from the camera and continuing for miles into the distance, and yet the actual moving image on the screen might cover an area less than two feet square, and might, from beginning to end of the scene, never come near the frame of the picture. Thus the train, without losing any of its impressive character, would provide a reposeful motion for the eye to gaze upon. Surely such an effect would be better than to show the train as a close-up on a track at right angles to our line of sight, with the locomotive crashing in through the frame at the left of the picture and crashing out through the frame at the right.

The reposeful quality of restricted movement on the screen is due partly to the fact that the flicker and the eye movement is thus reduced, as we have said in Chapter III. In the case just described it is due also to the contrast between the slight movement which we actually look at and the large movement which we really perceive and feel. We look at inches and perceive miles. Thus we see very much with extreme ease.

We have remarked in preceding chapters that every picture has four lines, those of the frame, which the composer must always consider. He could, it is true, soften the sharp boundaries of the picture by using some masking device with the camera, but this is not usually done. The four corners of the frame are always strongly emphasized, because of the crossing of lines at right angles. To lead another strong line into one of the corners would surely result in undue emphasis and lack of balance, because of the power of converging lines. It is almost as bad to lead a strong line squarely into the frame between the corners, because such a meeting creates two more right angles to attract attention. Of course, there may be certain lines in a composition, such as the line of the horizon, which cannot stop short of the frame. In such a case it is well to have some other strong accent not far from the center of the picture in order to keep the attention of the beholder within the frame.

What is true of the relation between fixed lines is also true of the relation between paths of motion and fixed lines. It is rather annoying to watch a continuous movement continually being cut off by the frame; and it is especially annoying when one sees that such a composition might have been avoided. In a waterfall, for example, the points of greatest interest are the curving top and the foaming bottom, and we like to see both at the same time and wholly within the frame. A motion shown entirely surrounded by things at rest is reposeful on the screen as well as in nature. Like a fixed object it stays where it is.

There are certain pictorial motions, however, such as the falling of snow, which must always either begin or continue outside of the frame. But even when we view such a motion on the screen or in nature we get a feeling of repose, because our eyes do not perform any following movement; we do not, in watching a snow storm through a window, pick out certain flakes and follow them from a height until they strike the ground; but rather we keep our line of sight steady upon a certain spot while the changing texture slips by. One can get the same effect by looking down from a tall building into a crowded street. The individuals are no longer thought of as separate moving objects, because they weave themselves into a broad band of moving and changing texture. Here we get the feeling of restfulness, of motion in repose, in contrast to the feeling of restless motion when we ourselves become part of that crowd.