Nānā i ke kumu.

Look to the source.  Utilize various sources (i.e. kupuna, kumu, loea, moʻolelo, wahi pana, moʻomeheu) to foster inquiry and seek knowledge.

OVERVIEW:

Composition is a visual tool to help you communicate relationships and meaning.  A photographer utilizes different Elements of Design and Principles of Composition to tell a viewer what to look at, what is important in a frame, and perhaps how they should feel when looking at an image.  For this project focusing on composition, you are to use what we learned about composition and sequencing to communicate a story about connections.

Think about how you could watch a movie or TV show in a foreign language or on mute and still understand elements of the story.  Part of that is because of composition and sequencing of shots.  Film makers are hyper aware of composition and how balance, framing/space, perspective, and juxtaposition can be used to communicate relationships and power in a scene.  Guiding lines and frames-within-a-frame to help partition space or create borders around important things in your scene.  Size, color, and value can help tell you who is the main subject, who is a good guy or the villain, or may foreshadow whatʻs to come.  This movie below does a great job of explaining exactly how composition is one of the most important parts of storytelling in movies.

For this project, think like a cinematographer.  How do you tell a story through images alone?  You will shoot a series of pictures and choose 3 of them to edit and collage together to communicate a story or reference the idea of connections.  Consider what images come to mind when you see the word “connect”.  What objects do you see?  What does connection look like?  How does something connect?  On the flip side, think about disconnection and what that looks like?  How can you show separation and distance?  Or something that was once broken being repaired?  Connection/Disconnection |  Broken/Whole  |  Lost/Found  | Apart/Together  |  Traveling from Point A to Point B are all different ways of looking at the same word and the same story.

You can shoot this project with people, animals, landscapes, or even objects.  The story, subject, location is all up to you, and that freedom is part of the challenge of this project.  But  consider how to establish that these 3 different pictures are related or belong to the same story.  It helps to have similar subject matter in all 3 image OR have common Elements of Art uniting the pictures.  Perhaps all your pictures have the same shade of blue, or thereʻs a cat in all the images, or thereʻs a strong horizontal line that goes through all 3 images.  Look at the images below and consider why they look like they belong together.

Another thing that is important about this project is sequence of images, or which picture is first, second, and third and how that communicates relationships, a transition, or passage of time.  Consider the set of images above.  Which is the first image you look at and which is the last or “ending” to the story.   See how the images on the far left and right have people traveling and meeting in the middle? In this case, the sequence of images doesnʻt match the passage of time, but show the figures being lost and then finding each other in the middle.

STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO:

• Recognize the principles of design in still- and moving-images
• Analyze how composition and the sequence of images forms
  relationships that help viewers interpret a narrative.
• Demonstrate an understanding of composition and sequencing
  by creating screenshots of movie trailers and arranging the still
  images to tell a story.
• Continue to build up on Photoshop editing and collaging skills

WHAT TO TURN IN:

• 1 contact sheet (40 shots = 1 full roll)
• 3 pictures collaged together in PhotoShop** weʻll learn how to do this in a future tutorial

More tips for Composition

NATIONAL CORE ARTS STANDARDS

PRESENTING – HS Proficient VA:Pr4.1.Ia – Anchor Standard 4: Select, analyze, and interpret artistic work for presentation.