Elements of Cinematic Creation. Object Image and Character Anthropomorphization

Abstract

In cinema, the act of creation is closely related to the visual message. This paper presentation exposes the connection between sign and creation with eloquent examples from Romanian and international feature films. The symbols and signs used for the film composition transfer emotions and feelings to the viewers, mechanisms which depend on the specific norms of perception. A major part of these rules of visual perception are adapted to maximise the message as the basis of the narrative construction of the movie. The level of empathic involvement of the movie audience is manageable through emotional triggers, a cumulative structure of sensations and cultural norms projected on the big screen. The art of film uses the actor, the human body and its expressivity, as one of the most important aesthetic signs. For this reason, composition (framing, focal length, lens depth of field and contrast ratio), lighting, and colours, are elements that help build the mood of the shot or the entire scene. The emotions and sensations experienced in the cinema are unusual, uncommon, and the narrative space developed by all four dimensions simultaneously present in the projection (Euclidian three-dimensional structure of the screened picture, and the fourth dimension, time) are in a state of continuous mutual reliance. Creating the scene mood is indissolubly connected to the level of empathy of the viewers; depending on the narrative structure (the movie genre) certain stylistic and compositional approaches are possible.

The atmosphere of the shots mediates the experience of emotion; its construction and its consistency are dependent on the message and the length of the scene. Due to the fact that emotion is evoked through a “network” of associative stimuli, within the cumulatively built visual structure, we can identify a gallery of clues: the character’s facial expression, the movement of the camera and the actor, vocal expression, costumes, set design, lighting, shooting list, and editing. As the main tool of communicating the message, the camera, through its point of view, the distance, movement, and optical properties of the medium (frame ratio and shooting format), contribute to the precise construction of the mood, moderating the viewer’s reactions. The narrative structure and the shot sequence dose the audience’s emotional response, the intensity of stimuli depending on the mood created for each shot/movie scene.

The objectives of creation, although vague and diffuse when conceptualising the shot/scene, are made concrete by having as a binder the aesthetic experience of viewing the final result. The analysis of the creative stages begins with the elaboration of the visual concept, at which point the stylistic references in the fields related to the film (music, painting, photography, video-art, etc.) are incorporated into what becomes the visual key of the film.