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Full Chapter The Visual Story Creating The Visual Structure of Film TV and Digital Media 3Rd Edition Block PDF
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The
Visual
Story
This updated edition of a best-selling classic shows you how to structure your visuals as
carefully as a writer structures a story or composers structure their music. The Visual Story
teaches you how to design and control the structure of your production using the basic
visual components of space, line, shape, tone, color, movement, and rhythm. You can use
these components to effectively convey moods and emotions, create a visual style, and
utilize the important relationship between the visual and the story structures.
Using over 700 color illustrations, author Bruce Block explains how understanding the
connection between story and visual structures will guide you in the selection of camera
angles, lenses, actor staging, composition, set design and locations, lighting, storyboard
planning, camera coverage, and editing.
The Visual Story is an ideal blend of theory and practice. The concepts and examples in this
new edition will beneft students learning cinematic production, as well as professional
writers, directors, cinematographers, art directors, animators, game designers, and anyone
working in visual media who wants a better understanding of visual structure.
Bruce Block has worked in a creative capacity on dozens of feature flms, television
shows, commercials, and animated productions. His feature flm producing credits
include Something’s Gotta Give, What Women Want, America’s Sweethearts, The Parent Trap, and
Father of the Bride I and II. He served as a creative consultant on Spanglish, As Good As It Gets,
Stuart Little, and many other flm and television productions. He is a tenured professor
at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and holds the Sergei
Eisenstein Endowed Chair in Cinematic Design. Mr. Block gives seminars at a variety of
studios including Blue Sky Studios, Cartoon Network, Disney Feature and Television Ani-
mation, Dreamworks Animation, Industrial Light & Magic, Laika, LucasFilm, Nickelodeon
Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, and a wide range of European and Ameri-
can flm schools including AFI and Cal Arts. Mr. Block also conducts seminars for digital
game designers and companies including Activision-Blizzard, Blur Studio, Google, Hulu,
and Tencent. He is a member of the Director’s Guild of America, the Art Director’s Guild,
and co-author of the book 3D Storytelling (Focal Press).
www.bruceblock.com
The
Visual
Story
Bruce Block
Third ediTion
creating
the Visual Structure
of Film, TV, and
digital Media
Third edition published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction vii
CHAPTER ONE
THE BASIC VISUAL COMPONENTS 1
CHAPTER TWO
CONTRAST & AFFINITY 11
CHAPTER THREE
SPACE: PART ONE 16
SPACE: PART TWO 71
CHAPTER FOUR
LINE & SHAPE 97
CHAPTER FIVE
TONE 127
CHAPTER SIX
COLOR 145
CHAPTER SEVEN
MOVEMENT 193
CHAPTER EIGHT
RHYTHM 223
CHAPTER NINE
STORY & VISUAL STRUCTURES 245
CHAPTER TEN
PRACTICE, NOT THEORY 289
APPENDIX 307
BIBLIOGRAPHY 317
No one fnds his or her way alone. My teachers Word Baker, Lawrence Carra, Byron
Friedman, Sulie and Pearl Harand, Dave Johnson, Bernard Kantor, Eileen Kneuven,
Mordecai Lawner, William Nelson, Neil Newlon, Lester Novros, Woody Omens, Gene
Peterson, Mel Sloan, Glenn Voltz, Jewell Walker, and Mort Zarkoff have inspired me
and continue to do so. Thanks to Alan Mandel for the use of his script in the discus-
sion of directorial beats and to Calder Block for his editorial skills.
The practical aspects of making pictures that I discuss in this book are the outgrowth
of working with talented professionals on commercials, documentaries, digital
games, animated and live-action television shows and feature flms. The experiences
we shared have been critical to the maturation of the ideas presented in this book. I
am particularly grateful to Bill Fraker, Neal Israel, and Charles Shyer who helped give
me my start in Hollywood.
Much encouragement and support has come from Chris Huntley, Richard Jewell, Jane
Kagon, Ken Marschall, Billy Pittard, Adam Joyce Ramirez, Ronnie Rubin, my close
friends Alan Dressler, Eric Sears, and my brother David Block.
Bruce A. Block
Los Angeles, California 2020
vi
INTRODUCTION
In Russia, on an icy winter night in 1928, an eager group of flm students waited in
a poorly heated classroom at the Soviet GIK. The building, located on the Lenin-
grad Chaussée, had once been the exclusive restaurant Yar, but was now the Russian
Film Institute. Its main dining room with foor-to-ceiling mirrors and tall, white
columns had become a lecture hall. The students had gathered to hear the flmmaker
and teacher Sergei Eisenstein who, along with Vsevolod Pudovkin and Alexan-
der Dovchenko, were among the frst to develop formal theories about flm’s visual
structure.
Eisenstein’s ideas and flmmaking talents would take him all over the world. In 1933
he spoke at Hollywood’s Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Science and lectured at
the University of Southern California. Eisenstein was only 50 when he died in 1948 in
Russia. He never met Slavko Vorkapich, a Yugoslavian flmmaker, who was directing
Hollywood montages at MGM, RKO, and Warner Bros. In the early 1950s Vorkapich
briefy became chairman of the flm department at USC. In his classes Vorkapich
advanced Eisenstein’s flmic ideas and developed ground-breaking theories about
movement and editing. Vorkapich, with his charming, humorous teaching style, intro-
duced fundamental cinematic concepts to new generations of flmmakers. He lectured
internationally until his death in 1976.
In 1955 Lester Novros, a Disney studio artist, began teaching a class at USC about the
visual aspects of motion pictures. His class was based on fne art theories and the
writings of Eisenstein and Vorkapich. I took over teaching the course. My goal was to
bring the theories of cinematic structure into the present, make them practical, and
link visual structure to story structure. I wanted to remove the gap between theory
and practice so that visual structure would be easy to understand and use.
This book is the result of my professional experience in flm and digital production,
coupled with my teaching and research. What you’ll read in these pages can be used
immediately in the preparation, production, and postproduction of theatrical motion
pictures, television, streaming programs, digital media, documentaries, music videos,
commercials, and digital games, be it live action, animated, or computer-generated.
Whether you create images for a large, small, or tiny screen, the visual structure of
your pictures is as important as the story you tell.
The concepts in this book will beneft writers, directors, photographers, production
designers, art directors, storyboard artists, and editors who are constantly confronted
by the same visual problems that have faced every picture maker. The students who
sat in Eisenstein’s cold Russian classroom had the same basic goal as we do today:
“To make a good picture.” This book will teach you how to achieve that goal.
vii
This book is dedicated to my parents
Pictures usually communicate moods, emotions, or ideas to the viewer. We can call
these pictures cinematic images. There are three ways that cinematic images commu-
nicate with an audience.
1. Story: The viewer becomes involved in the picture because it tells a story. The fun-
damental building blocks of story are plot, confict, and character development.
2. Sound: The viewer becomes involved in the picture because of the sound. The fun-
damental building blocks of sound are dialogue, music, and sound effects.
3. Visuals: The viewer becomes involved in the picture because of the visuals. What are
the building blocks of the visuals? Scenery? Actors? Costumes? No. These answers
are too limited. The fundamental building blocks of visuals are the basic visual
components.
These components are found in every moving or still picture we see. Actors, locations,
scenery, costumes, and props are made of these visual components. A visual compo-
nent communicates moods, emotions, and ideas, and, most importantly, creates the
visual structure. This book discusses these basic visual components in relation to the
cinematic story telling experience, although these components appear in any picture.
Space
There are three ways to categorize visual space: First, the physical space in front of the
camera; second, the space as it appears on a screen; and third, the size and shape of
the screen itself.
Line is the result of tonal contrast. Line’s visual partner is shape because all shapes
appear to be constructed from lines. Line is an important visual component because
it also contributes to the control of space, movement, and rhythm.
Tone refers to the brightness of objects. Tone does not refer to the tone of a scene (sar-
castic, excited, etc.), or audio tone (treble and bass). Tone, sometimes referred to as
“value,” is an important factor in both black & white and color photography.
color
Color, a powerful visual component, is also the most misunderstood. This book will
explain the complex component of color and make it simpler to use.
MoVeMenT
Movement is the visual component that frst attracts the audience’s attention. There
are three ways to create movement. Objects create movement, the camera creates
movement, and the audience’s point-of-attention creates movement as they watch
the screen.
rhyThM
We’re most familiar with rhythm we can hear, but there’s also rhythm we can see.
Rhythm is found in stationary (non-moving) objects, moving objects, and editing.
Whether it’s an actor, the story, the sound, or the visual components, audiences react
emotionally to what they see and hear. Music can communicate moods or emotions.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho or Steven Spielberg’s Jaws demonstrate how well music gen-
erates fear in an audience. In Psycho it’s the screech of the violins, and in Jaws it’s the
pounding notes of the bass that prompts the fear. In both cases, the flmmaker intro-
duces the musical theme when the murderous character frst appears and then, by
repeating that theme, rekindles the audiences’ fear, tension, and horror.
Can you decide not to control the visual components in your production? Yes, of
course. Shooting in black & white eliminates color, but even a blank screen contains
most of the components, so the screen is never empty. The picture maker who disre-
gards the components is making an unfortunate mistake because the audience can’t
ignore the visual components they see on screen. The components are always com-
municating moods, emotions, and ideas to the audience. Left uncontrolled, the visual
components can inadvertently contradict the story telling, mislead the audience, or
simply bore them.
Understanding the visual components opens the door to controlling the visual struc-
ture of your pictures. It’s the key to staging actors, choosing the lens and camera
angle, location selection, art direction choices, and editorial decisions.
Remember, though, that any study, if blindly adhered to, can be misleading. It’s not
the purpose of this book to leave you with a set of rigid textbook defnitions. If visual
structure were that predictable a computer algorithm could produce perfect pictures.
Visual structure isn’t math. Fortunately, there are some concepts, guidelines, and
even some rules that will help you solve the problems of producing great images. The
key is understanding the visual components.
In this book each visual component will be explained and illustrated. Most impor-
tantly the process for assigning moods, emotions, ideas, and meanings to the
components will be discussed. The purpose of this book is to enable you to control
visual structure and use it to support the story you want to tell.
The real world is the environment in which we live. It’s the three-dimensional place we
inhabit every day.
The screen world refers to the two-dimensional screens where we watch pictures. It’s
the high-tech picture world we create with cameras and computers, and the low-
tech picture world we create with pencils and brushes. This includes movie screens,
television and computer screens, screens on hand-held devices, screens inside head-
sets, the canvases hanging in museums, and the pages in books and magazines that
display photographs and drawings. All of these two-dimensional surfaces are part of
the screen world.
The picture plane is the two-dimensional surface where our pictures exist. The picture
plane is usually surrounded by a “window.”
In an art museum, the picture plane’s window is the actual frame. In a movie theatre,
curtains frame the two-dimensional picture plane. On a television, computer or hand-
held device, the picture plane is framed by the plastic edges of the screen.
When we compose a shot using a camera’s viewfnder or use our hands, we look
through a picture plane.
This book will use the term foreground abbreviated as FG (objects close to the camera),
midground or MG (objects that are farther away from the camera), and background or BG
(objects that are farthest away).
ViSual progreSSion
The point can be pulled across the screen creating a line. The line is visually more
complicated than the point.
If the plane is expanded, the most complicated level of this visual progression is
created: a volume.
Wait. Don’t let these terms disillusion you. Learning about visual structure won’t
force you into over-thinking your ideas or killing your creative instincts. Understand-
ing visual structure is actually going to make your ideas work better and give you a
language to communicate with your collaborators.
Good picture making has always used progressions. Watch any Fred Astaire or Busby
Berkeley musical or a great music video and you’ll see visual progressions as the
musical numbers increase in intensity. Watch the visual progression as the plane
attacks in the crop duster sequence from Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.
Look at the progressive build of intensity in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather
I and II as Michael Corleone reluctantly takes control of the family business. Care-
fully planned visual progressions make the action sequences in The Incredibles build in
intensity.
Watch Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. You’ll see that each boxing sequence is part of
a progression that moves from simple to complex and builds in story, sound, and
visual intensity. In fact, every Scorsese flm is structured around visual progressions
that support the intensifying story. Take a look at Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker or
Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver and see how they use progressions and visual structure to
tell their stories.
Automobile commercials can make a vehicle appear faster than the competition
because the visual progressions are working. Visual progressions make advanced
levels in digital games more challenging and exciting. If you know what to look for,
good story telling and visual progressions always work together.
Space, line, shape, tone, color, movement, and rhythm. Many picture makers don’t
even know what the visual components are, yet they’ve appeared in every flm, tele-
vision show, theatre performance, digital game, photograph, and drawing ever made.
The visual components don’t have lawyers or managers, work for free, receive no
residuals, and never arrive late. What better cast could you ask for?
Using the basic visual components requires an understanding of a key principle upon
which all structure is based. This extraordinary concept is the Principle of Contrast &
Affnity, which is discussed in the next chapter.
Contrast can be explained using tone, which is one of the seven basic visual com-
ponents. Tone refers to brightness, so the gray scale is an excellent way to organize
the tonal range and illustrate contrast of tone. Maximum contrast of tone means two
shades of gray that are extremely different in terms of brightness.
The two gray tones with maximum contrast are black and white.
This picture is an example of maximum contrast of tone. The picture only uses jet
black and bright white tones. There aren’t any middle grays in the shot.
On the gray scale, any group of similar gray tones has affnity. This gray scale has been
divided into three brightness ranges: dark, medium, and bright. A picture illustrating
affnity of tone uses only one small portion of the gray scale.
Each of these three shots is an example of tonal affnity. One shot uses only dark
grays, another only the middle grays, and the third only bright grays.
What does “visual intensity” mean? A high-speed roller coaster ride is intense; a
sleeping kitten is not intense. A wild action sequence in a great movie is intense;
a calm ocean shore on a mild, overcast day is not. A computer game can be excit-
ing or dull. A television commercial can be agitating or soothing. A documentary can
be alarming or reassuring. These emotional reactions are based on the intensity or
dynamic of the audience’s experience as they see a movie, watch a video, read a book,
or ride a roller coaster. The audience’s reaction can be emotional (they cry, laugh, or
scream), and physical (their heart rate increases or they fall asleep). Usually the more
intense the visual stimulus, the more intense the audience’s reaction.
The Principle of Contrast & Affnity can be used within a shot, from shot to shot, or
from sequence to sequence. Once the basic visual components and the Principle
of Contrast & Affnity are understood, using visual structure to tell a story becomes
possible.
Good writers carefully chose and structure their words to communicate dramatic
intensity to the audience. For the same reason good composers carefully structure
their music. A director, cinematographer, production designer, or editor can create
a visual structure that communicates dramatic intensity by applying the Principle of
Contrast & Affnity to the seven basic visual components.
The next six chapters defne the basic visual components. It is critical to understand
how to see the components, control them in practical production, and, most impor-
tantly, use them to create a visual structure that supports the story.
CHAPTER 3 Space 15
Space is a complex visual component. Defning space is the frst step in understand-
ing how to control visual structure. Space not only defnes the screen where the other
six visual components are seen, but space itself can make important contributions to
the overall visual structure of your production. This chapter is divided into two parts.
Part One defnes the four basic types of space: deep, fat, limited, and ambiguous.
Part Two discusses aspect ratio, surface divisions, and open and closed space.
PART ONE
It’s important for picture makers to understand the choices they have in controlling
the visual components. For example, we have choices when picking colors. Different
colors will communicate different moods and emotions to the audience. How we light
a scene involves a variety of choices about tone and brightness. Visual space has its
own variety of choices that will communicate different moods, emotions, and ideas
to the audience. Understanding space affects the staging of actors, decisions about
camera angle and lenses, the lighting, the locations, and the set design. The more
a flmmaker knows about the types of visual space, the easier it is to make the best
choices for a production.
Deep Space
The real world where we live is three-dimensional, having height, width, and depth.
But the screen world is only two-dimensional. Movie, television, and computer
screens are fat surfaces that have height and width but, practically speaking, have
no actual depth. The challenge is to portray our three-dimensional world on a two-di-
mensional screen surface and have the result look convincingly three-dimensional.
16 Chapter 3 space
This photograph could be described as a busy freeway that extends from the fore-
ground (FG) into the depth of the distant background (BG). This description seems
correct, but it’s completely wrong. The photograph is presented on a page in a book or
on a digital screen, both of which are two-dimensional surfaces. But something about
this picture convinces us that we’re seeing depth. This picture appears deep because
it uses the depth cues.
1. Convergence
The most effective depth cue is convergence.
Here’s the two-dimensional plane that was introduced in Chapter One. When discuss-
ing space we’ll call this a frontal plane. The plane’s horizontal top and bottom lines are
parallel and its vertical left and right side lines are also parallel. The frontal plane
lacks depth. It appears as fat as the surface of this page or a screen.
This building is also a frontal plane. The building’s horizontal lines are parallel and its
vertical lines are parallel. For visual space purposes, this building lacks depth.
The depth cue of convergence can be activated by changing the camera angle.
Chapter 3 space 17
One-point convergence:
From a different camera angle, the building’s horizontal lines are no longer parallel.
The building’s horizontal lines now appear to converge, or meet, at a single point called
a vanishing point, or VP.
18 Chapter 3 space
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Solomon Notredame.
"Jos olisit irralla, niin mahtuisitko tästä ikkunasta?" kysyi mies. Hän
supatti hyvin hillitysti, mutta hänen olisi sallinut huutaakin viereisen
piltuun rähinä, puhumattakaan rumasta renkutuksesta, jota hoilattiin
toisessa päässä tallia. "Niinkö? Ota sitte tämä viila. Hivuta viidettä
rengasta, joka jo on kulunut enemmän kuin puolitiehen. Ymmärrätkö,
poika?"
"Kyllä, kyllä", vastasi Jehan taas, hapuillen oljista työkalua, joka oli
pudonnut hänen jalkoihinsa. "Tiedän."
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"Hiirakkoni?"
Mies ja vaimo.
"Kovemmin!"
"Jehan de Bault."
"Sanele se markkinajuttusi."
"Niin."
"Talo metsässä."
"Muistatko isääsi?"
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"En tiedä."
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"En tiedä."