Master filmmakers do more than tell a story. They craft an entire experience for the viewer, which means manipulating every detail in a way that leads you through the drama.
How do you emphasize to the audience that something is important? Well, you could always cut to a close-up, but how about something subtler? Today I consider ensemble staging — a style of filmmaking that directs the audience exactly where to look, without ever seeming to do so at all.
Tony Zhou explains the intricacies of ensemble staging in another episode of the fascinating series Every Frame a Painting, using the 2003 South Korean crime-drama Memories of Murder. I had never heard of the movie, but now I want to see it. -via Digg
See more from the series Every Frame a Painting.
The strength of this reflex is almost uniquely strong in humans. Human eyes have a large amount of the sclera (the 'whites' of our eyes) visible, unlike pretty much all other animals with complex eyes. Humans communicate in part by using eye position or gaze direction in a way that is not found in other creatures. Using this in cinematic direction is sadly neglected. It is, however, found in extreme closeup frames in comics and graphic novels.