The Director’s Visual Concept-Part One
(c) Peter D. Marshall
The director’s Visual Concept is how you want to create the image structure or visual style of the “words written in a script.” It’s your visual approach to the plot and themes of the film through the specific use of light, shadow, colors, composition, lens, angles, focus, depth, movement, pacing, narrative structure, symbols, sounds, music, montage, casting, locations, hair, makeup, costumes, set dressing, props etc.
A director’s Visual Style is often an expression of their personality which helps them to shape the look and feel of a film. When we think of visual style, certain director’s will always come to mind because of their use of distinctive themes or “visual signatures” that appear throughout most of their films. (i.e. John Ford, Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, Zhang Yimou, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Terrence Malick.)
Creating the Director’s Visual Concept
Before you can fully bring any script to life, you first need to research every available source (movies, books, magazines, plays, paintings, television, internet, locations, music etc.) that will help to immerse yourself in the outer story world (plot, actions, events, characters, text) and the inner story world (story themes, character subtext and inner feelings you want to arouse in the audience.)
General Research
The audience should always learn something from watching your film that they didn’t know before: about the characters, about the location, about the time period. So ask yourself “What do I want the audience to know? What do I want the audience to feel? What do I want the audience to experience?”
In other words, what emotion or feeling do you want the audience to have in a scene, then find ways to achieve it.
You need to keep true to the “story rules” of your specific film world (and genre) by managing the unique characteristics of the story to create a film that is believable. Remember, even fantasy and science fiction films have to be “believable” within the realm of their particular “unreal” world.
Create a world in which the characters are in conflict. Understand your characters’ behavior. What are their motives in every scene? This will affect their actions and what they do as a result.
Find out what generates the scene action before it happens. What event in the scene begins the action? What motivates a character take action? (It could be an event, a line of dialogue or a certain character’s look.)
What do your characters really want? Develop the subtext (through dialogue and actions) to make it believable by discovering what the character is really trying to say – and why!
Use counterpoint to create multi-dimensional characters. Unless a person is certifiably insane, everyone has the capacity to love one person deeply and hate another person or group just as passionately.
Everyone has secret lives and fantasies. What are yours? What are they for your characters?
Specific Research
What is the audience is going to See? Since you decide where to place the camera, you decide what the audience is going to see – or not see.
What is the Tone & Mood of the film? What do you want the audience to feel? (Light or Dark? Warm or Cold? Comedic or Dramatic? Sensual or Sexual? Serious or Satirical?)
What is the Pacing of the story? What is the pace at the beginning of the film? What is the pace at the end of the film?) (Fast-paced action sequences, lengthy dialogue sequences, long scenic transition shots.)
Is there one Main Image used to take the audience into this story world? (In Empire of the Sun, Spielberg used the sun as his main image represented most clearly by the Japanese flag.)
Design a Visual Motif which are images or symbols that establish a certain mood. When you repeat a motif it becomes a stylistic image pattern that helps to develop the theme or a character over the entire film.
What is the First Scene or Image in your film? (What images will grab the audience and take them into your world?)
What is the Last Scene or Image in your film? (What do you want the audience to feel at the end of the movie?)
What Dialogue is the most important to be heard? (Know your story points.)
What is the Rhythm of each scene? Every scene should have highs and lows, so graph out the rhythm of each scene so you can see what the whole film looks like. (If you graph out a scene and it looks like the flat line of a hospital ECG monitor, that’s exactly how your audience may feel – nothing!)
Copyright (c) 2019 Peter D. Marshall / All Rights Reserved
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