Read some chapters of book "The Visual Story"

I realized this is not a real story book until I read it. I find this book is about some basic knowledge of film. Because film is a visual and sound art. It includes 7 important visual components. Space, Line, Shape, Tone, Color, Movement and Rhythm.





In my opinion, the visual component is very important. When I decide to make a film, the first thing I need to think is the space. If the space is not sufficient, I cannot imagine too many things in the picture because the audience can not accept too much information.


In the space, we can arrange lines. When I thinking, I don't know where is the line so I create it. When I shooting, the line is there, I just arrange it. Line looks not very important in the space, however, if there's a wrong line in the picture(like cross people's brain or neck), the audience will feel uncomfortable.


All shapes appear to be constructed from lines. Shapes goes hand in hand with line because all shapes appear to be constructed from lines."The legend of 1900", was directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. There is a scene to show the shape.In the scene, we can feel the peaceful emotions. So sometimes, director can arrange shapes to express feelings.







Tone is a component of color. It refers to black & white and the gray scale. The audience will usually look at the brightest area of the frame first, especially if there isn't any movement. So in most cases, we can put bright part and gray part in a scene, arrange important character in the sunny place to attract the audience's attention.


Before the color camera born, people make black-and-whit movie or use paint draw on the films. Nowadays, still have many artists prefer to use black and white. But we cannot deny color is one of the most powerful visual components. People live in a colorful world. They are glad to see the colorful story in the film. Color in the film is also related to the light, so sometimes we need color plates when we make a film.


Movement includes actual movement, apparent movement, induced movement, relative movement, simple and complex movement, object movement and camera movement. Different movement can constitute distinct effect of screen. I consider it is a very interesting point, I will do more research in the future.


Although we are not familiar with rhythm, we cannot forget it. Rhythm is easy to experience but difficult to describe. How to create rhythm in the film is the thing I still need to study.


I haven't finished reading this book. However, I already gain a lot of knowledge from it. I will continue reading because it's really helpful.