Analysis means: reading and understanding films

The great privilege of film and video is that you can watch them without prior knowledge and without analysis. No instructions are required to understand moving images. Unless the work is highly artistic or unsuccessful in terms of content and therefore incomprehensible. Because films are made for people, their perception mechanisms follow the way we perceive, feel and classify moving images. The film analysis tries to recognize these patterns.

Against this background, the well-known rules such as the golden ratio or the so-called two-thirds rule were created. They all share the intention of reinterpreting a perceived regularity into a generally functioning rule. Now that you can watch free movies online you can delve deep perfectly.

Proven Rules Of Thumb And Mechanisms Of Perception

The positioning of a person in the film image or the viewing angle of the camera are good examples of how perception and design rules of thumb interact. You can use these two points when analyzing film and also for cutting the video.

For example, we perceive an actor who is standing a little to the right of the center in the picture to be ideally positioned. At the same time, a person who is to the right of the camera axis appears to be friendlier (or more positive) compared to being positioned to the left of the center of the image.

Conversely, a person who is precisely centered appears more objective. If two people are in the picture, the person on the right seems dominant.

The well-known film critic Roger Ebert therefore speaks of a strong axis. He was the first to sketch out the film rules presented in this article in an easily understandable manner as reading instructions for films. Of course, such regularities do not claim absolute validity. In the analysis you follow a mixture of experience, feeling and your own perception.

Nevertheless, a surprisingly high number of these rules can be observed over and over again. The majority of directors and filmmakers use them to specifically target the effect of moving images. The more films and videos you analyze, the more often you will discover these mechanics.

What happens to you when you can read movies?

When you know these rules of filmmaking and regularly analyze films and videos, various good things happen. First, you’ll see videos with new eyes, realizing that there is a lot less randomness than you think.

Second, you can use it to easily develop a key that you can use to immerse yourself in the head of the director or cameraman.

Thirdly, you repeatedly come across narrative meta-levels that remain hidden from the normal viewer.

No rule without exception in film analysis

In conclusion, as is always the case with video and film design, there are no principles that cannot be turned upside down. This can have a particularly strong effect. Of course, it must be taken into account that every rule break always takes place in the context of the action because in filmmaking there are only sins, no rules. The greatest sin is ignorance. Even when analyzing film and video. Nothing more can be added to this quote from Frank Capra.