We seem to forget that the basic element of the film is frame-by-frame image, and the habit of focusing on the dialogue line or a certain star, the image will bring a deeper imprint than the language, so to understand and understand the film, we also need to have the ability to identify the image, for example, the most important visual symbol of the film - space.
Those great directors or classic films will cleverly set off the atmosphere through space to highlight the theme, for example, Martin Scorsese expresses the "dark" theme of "Taxi Driver" through the spatial background of "Night".
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > therefore, the analysis space will improve the ability to appreciate the movie, and of course, will also increase the fun of watching the movie. </h1>
For space, our most potential understanding is natural space and artificial space, the former can not only express the beauty of nature, but also can be used to set off the smallness of human beings in the film, such as "Robinson Crusoe". Some films express a kind of introspection through people 'fighting against nature', and "Home in a Place with Abundant Water and Grass" is like this - through the images of grassland degradation, silently indicting the survival dilemma caused by industrialization.
The wild wilderness is a very recognizable image symbol for Westerns, and the terrain derived from this natural environment is also particularly attractive in the photography frames of different directors. The meaning of sin obscured by snow in "Ice Storm" and the Texas desert of "Old And Helpless" reflect the brutal killings in the story.
"Old Nobody" Sets off the brutality of the story in the desert sun
Films that use artificial space are more: the metropolitan steel forest can well set off the oppression and suffocation of human beings, and then express guilt, such as "Joker", which echoes the protagonist's injustice through the messiness of the industrialized city. In director Jia Zhangke's shots, there are often smoke pipes and construction sites that are directly inserted into the sky, and the emotional changes of people and people in the process of industrialization are captured by them and further amplified through the environment.
According to the size of the space, it can be divided into open and closed space. "The Fantasy Drifting of the Young Pi" makes full use of these two spaces: for a man and a beast, their boat is an enclosed space, the sea where the boat drifts is an open space, and the open space of the sea can be beautiful or dangerous for the protagonist, and this uncertainty constitutes the extension of the contradiction and conflict of the film.
Road movies are also a type of film that "open and closed spaces are interdependent", for example, the Oscar best film "Green Book", the car is the enclosed space of the two protagonists, the world outside the car is an open space, the conflict between the two flows in the open and closed space, and the symbolism is used by the director in it.
Thriller films like to choose enclosed spaces, because enclosed spaces can easily bring tension. Enclosed space can make the story writing and shooting relatively simple, but does not mean that it is not brilliant, the whole story of "Locke" happened almost in a car, a person plus a phone to create the ups and downs of the series, of course, this is an abnormal test of the protagonist's acting skills, starring Tom Hardy with this film to get a double-digit film critic award nomination is proof.
Tom Hardy's excellent facial expressions in Locke
Spaces can also be fixed and movable. The most common are means of transport, including the aforementioned Green Book and Locke, which reminds us that the division of space is not absolute, but can be transformed into each other.
The moving space of transportation can also have symbolic significance, such as "Snow Country Train" and "No Thief under the Heavens", the world on the train is the epitome of society, and class separation, confrontation, and utilization can be displayed in this relatively small moving space. Science fiction films will also use the vehicle - spaceship, "fixed" universe and moving spaceship a comparison, the unknown, exploration, fear will come out.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > of all these spatial categories, architecture and cinema are the most special beings</h1>
"Architectural space, like film, constructs anatomical moving images, the dynamic trajectory of living space and life narrative", "Film is very important to architecture because it establishes a new relationship between time and image", Bruno and Jean Nouvel's expression fully shows that film and architecture are both interpretation and transformation of space.
To put it another way: Have you ever seen a movie without a building? No! In the movie, the building can be the background, the landscape, the protagonist, and can be like a material existence that is nothing. However, if we look at the movie through architecture, we may feel the different charm of the movie.
Hitchcock was a great architect who was exceptionally adept at using the interior environment and details to express the plot. In "Rear Window", he uses a building to divide the Greenwich Village neighborhood in New York, driving the audience's depressing emotions caused by the enclosed space, and completing the narrative in the setting theme. In 1959, Hitchcock brought modernist architecture to the screen to make "North by Northwest", which was reflected in the grid-like appearance of the CIT Building in downtown Manhattan, and was painted by the designer as a classic film prologue.
Prologue to the north-northwestern movie
In order to create the image of Philip in the film, Hitchcock even had people design his private villa, although it is expressed in the form of a matte canvas, but the angularity of the villa standing on the top of the rugged hill is undoubtedly impressive.
In the early days of cinematic expressionism, many architects were directly involved in filmmaking. In The Birth of The Clay Man, architect Hans Polzeg designed a three-dimensional village for the film. The expressionist classic film "Metropolis" has set the benchmark for the imagination of future urban architectural forms in science fiction films: the high-rise clouds inhabited by the elite, the dilapidated and chaotic underground world of the poor at the bottom, and the urban system reflects the class system.
In an era without special effects, the presentation of modernist architecture in an expressionist manner, and the imagination of architectural conception alone, made this film a milestone and had a huge impact on science fiction films and architects. Decades later, another German film, Under the Berlin Sky, used the scene of the Berlin State Library – breaking classical architecture with irregularities – to represent Germany's reconstruction from the ruins after World War II.
In 1982, Blade Runner took over Metropolis's vision of the future city, and on the basis of the latter, incorporated deconstructivism, high-tech and other styles, extending the concept of the fusion of classical and modern elements to the combination of space and geography. Later, when the Japanese magazine New Architecture magazine wrote "Architecture in the Twentieth Century", the "illusory architecture" in the "Blade Runner" film was listed in the real reality works, compared with the architects such as Mies van der Rowe, Le Corbusier and Philippe Johnson.
A sci-fi scene from Blade Runner in 1982
Pol, the designer of Blade Runner, was once an architect and urban planner. Examples of architects like Pol turning from architect to film creator abound: Hitchcock's royal designer Robert Boyle graduated in architecture; John Box, who won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for Lawrence of Arabia, built at the North London Institute of Technology; Nathan Crowley, an architect, sketched the space romance of Interstellar, the coldness of Dunkirk and the dark Gotham of The Dark Knight in collaboration with Nolan...
The bond between architecture and film is getting deeper and deeper in the interpenetration between the two!
Tracing back to the source, when More than a hundred years ago, Lumière took the camera he invented, observed and photographed the world with great curiosity, and later Méliès built the first studio, space, or inside or outside has appeared in the movie, if the film is oil painting, then space is the drawing board, it is the presentation of the poetic expression of the film.