Eros + Massacre + Composition In Photography
A while ago, I signed up with a free streaming service. Free means: you don't have to pay money, but your programming is going to be interrupted by a period of advertising at certain intervals. I'm at a stage with my "career" where such consideration are, well, mote. I would rather not see inane advertising while watching a movie. But given that what I produce has no (monetary) value (nobody wants to pay for photography criticism), I am in no position to be picky.
Having signed up, I started to browse what was being offered, typing "Japanese" in the "Search" window. Much to my surprise, there were plenty of Japanese movies, a larger part of them -- of course -- anime. But there were also some other offerings, such as, for example, the Ringu movies that I enjoyed so much when they first came out.
And then there was a movie entitled Eros + Massacre. That was such a laughably absurd movie title that I immediately added it to my list of movies to watch. Having finished the Dracula movie that I mentioned in an earlier email, I went through my "to watch" list, and I picked this one. I had never heard anything about it, and maybe that's a good thing.
Well, no, that was really good.
I suppose there are two different ways for me to write about the movie. I could write about it based on everything I looked up once I had become completely fascinated by it. Just briefly, its director is Yoshishige Yoshida, who married one of the main actors, Mariko Okada, who had previously had played a major role in Yasujirō Ozu's Late Autumn (which I watched a while ago). I didn't recognize Okada, because unlike in the Ozu movie, here she played the complete opposite of the demure young woman she had portrayed before.
Furthermore, Eros + Massacre is, Wikipedia tells me, "considered to be one of the most representative films from the Japanese New Wave movement, and often one of the finest Japanese films." I'm glad that I didn't read this before I watched it. Expectations can not only be a pest, they can also blunt an effect.
What really struck me about the movie was the way its images were composed (I did enjoy the New Wave parts more than the ones set in 1920s Japan). The image frame is very wide, and Yoshida had made excellent use of it: finding someone or something in the very center was very, very rare.
I ended up taking about 300 screenshots while watching the movie on my laptop -- this is the very first time ever that I did this. Maybe by showing you a small number of examples, I can convince you that if you're a photographer, you will want to watch the movie for its use of the frame alone.
This is actress Toshiko Ii, here seen while taking a shower (right at the beginning of the movie). It's a very wide frame. Note how it is being filled.
This seems easy. But I don't think most photographers would imagine filling a frame this way: the placement of the figures, the relationship between them... Obviously, when you make a movie, people move (as they did here). In photography, you often pose people where you think they belong. Still, it's your choice where and how to pose them.
One of the worst problems in photography is figures or objects or actions being placed in the center of a frame, with all the rest being some vast, unfilled emptiness. Note how here, the action is pushed toward the left edge, which vastly enhances the drama. The sea of blackness at the right edge truly pushes the central figure towards the person she's facing.
Again, look at how the frame is filled. Without that metal beam just barely entering at the top-right corner, this would fall apart. But just a little bit of the frame of the crane helps to anchor the right side of the frame..
How to work with the center of the frame? Why, of course you keep in empty!
... or if you use the center, you really use it. But note the table legs at the edges!
To make your job of having to fill such a wide frame even harder by consciously leaving the bottom half empty -- who would think of this?
And of course rules of thirds still work.
Rules of third, but this time vertically. In the movie, the frame is static, and the two women walk towards the camera. Very effective.
Break up a centered composition by using one side and adding a vertical component: notice how Ii's defiant gaze has her in charge when faced with a man's camera.
I could show you a few dozen additional examples. But I won't. Watch the movie, and even if it's just to see how you can fill a frame. Like I said, one of the biggest problems in photography is how so many photographers create simplistic center-weighted compositions that offer nothing beyond whatever or whoever occupies the center of their frame. The wider the frame, the more urgent the problem becomes.
I started going on walks again to get some exercise. The area I live in is unappealing in a number of ways. So it's a chore more than anything. A few days ago, I started listening to Shostakovich string quartets while walking. At times, this makes for a grim experience: walking through the cold grayness with such a soundtrack becomes very intense. But it's a good opportunity to fully focus on the music.
Quartet number 8 is one of my favourites. It's absolutely astonishing how much intensity you can get out of a string quartet. If you click on the picture above, that's a recording of the 1960 world premier of the quartet. Not sure it's my favourite recording. But to imagine that an audience that included the composer would have heard if performed for the very first time makes up for that.
As always, thank you for reading!
-- Jörg