- Just how sentences work in language, filmmaking too has a grammar. Films could be thought of as filmed theather, until D.W. Griffith moved the shot's perspective. “When asked what his greatest asset was, he responded without hesitation, ‘my imagination.’” - Frances Coppola. While not a theme of these chapters necessarily, I see here a reminder not to close doors on inspiration. What we now see as so common and obvious, had to be done for the first time at some point. Often times, museums of modern art are thought of as less than. But all those pieces had to be handmade, go through a process, most often very lengthy. But does length confer value? I find it to be an interesting question, especially in an AI world. I'm learning that film too has formulas, such as the 180-degree rule (don’t confuse the audience by flipping a character’s position on screen) and the 30-degree rule (if you cut between two shots of the same subject, change the angle enough to make it feel natural). Could we automate these formulas and process them together? If not - where does the equation fail? That's what I'm interested in learning this semester.
- "Psychologists have told us that those of us who grew up moving our eyes from left to right when we read find it is more “comfortable” for us when a character in a film moves from left to right. When they go from right to left, a tension is created. Maximum tension is created when the character moves right to left and up."
- The fulcrum of a scene is basically the moment where things could go either way—it’s the emotional tipping point. I'm wondering if it's also the point at which the stakes can't get any higher. If they could, would it really be a fulcrum? In practical terms, when we're writing our films, it will be interesting to challenge the tension between simplicity of transmitting your idea whilst increasing the stakes as much as the story format can take.
A true new insight from the text. Likely due to our brains being wired by habit - left to right is how we read, how we process motion in everyday life. Right to left creates a small sense of resistance in the unconscious. Left + up => we instinctively associate uphill motion with effort, challenge, or even danger.