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Architects design living spaces, and context designers design spaces to tell stories. A lot of architects do the job of designing movie sets because of the
Starting from a simple idea, the setting of a film integrates all the studies of cinematic space, including the script, the arrangement of the interior and the organization of things. Going beyond decor chosen elements can bring out the character’s personality while helping the viewer understand the house’s events. Story.
Since theatrical performances in ancient Greece, the setting has played an essential role in the story. In the early days of cinema, George Melies was considered a pioneer in experimenting with special effects in film. Filmmakers create their own movies using the trompe l’oeil technique, a painting art form that allows the setting to be seen through an optical illusion.
Researcher Gilka Vargas commented that filmmakers no longer applied this technique and began to build more realistic three-dimensional space scenes.
In Italy, the birthplace of great theatre, Giovanni Pastrone released “Cabiria” (1914), a three-dimensional film designed by architect Camillo Innocenti. André Martins claims the project has revolutionized the cinematic setting by escaping the two-dimensional space of the flat canvases used in Melies’ films.
This technique allows the camera to move within the recording space, making filming easier. Producers improvise with “the first travelling,” a technique in which cameras are mounted on equipment with wheels that move in parallel during shots.
According to Dr. Nelson Urssi, PhD in design and architecture, it was the works of the German expressionist movement, which began to appear in films around 1910, that contexts began to be explored far beyond Traditional filming space.
In expressionist scenarios, the spaces are the perspectives suggested by the story, with architectures that are not close to reality, often reminiscent of nightmares.
“Expressionist cinema gives landscape designers and architects the opportunity to explore psychological effects using relevant elements such as: foreground and background, distance and frames diagonal, high and low horizons, light diffusion and focus, the development of a graphic, formal and spatial vocabulary with high dramatic potential.”- URSSI, 2006.
André Bazin, one of the world’s most respected film critics, shared that “the fulcrum of dramatic leverage lies not in people, but in things” (1958). Therefore, based on these concepts, context is not only relevant.
The landscape designer gathers from the script all the relevant information that is important in setting the scene, such as descriptions of the surroundings and important character features, which give meaning to each thing. designed and placed in the movie scene.
Context designers bring new meanings to spaces, seeking to define relationships with viewers based on the context, through the choice of colors and shapes, the placement of furniture, the character of the space. materials and textures. Every element chosen and positioned in the scene contains information, that’s why the script is a means of communicating, influencing and influencing the viewer, creating effects and solutions. Different likes.
The film’s context reveals important information that helps the audience understand the film better.
In “Parasite,” the first foreign-language film to win the Oscar for best picture 2020, director Bong Joon-ho shows the contrasts of society across two families. While trying to catch the wi-fi signal on their mobile phones and the lens shows the space in which they live: stored objects, precarious living environment, bathrooms are used for many purposes, as well as old furniture and wall paint.
An attention-grabbing element is a small window, the top image of the film. From there, the view from inside the poor house is just across the street, showing the collapse of society. Contrasting with this window frame, the rich family’s house is surrounded by glass windows, filled with sunlight. Through the architecture of these environments, the theme of the film is revealed.
In addition, with the help of framing and camera placement, the footage is proof of the narrative direction of the story, contributing to the viewer’s understanding of the plot. In the process of choosing a location or setting a scene take advantage of the architectural advantages to express or emphasize an idea, improving the film space through the position of the frame. .
“Room” scene, from a distance, as in “Breaking bad” and in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” character.
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