Story’s lack of movement when compared to the
frenetic movement in, say, Yimou Zhang’s Hero
(2002; production designers: Tingxiao Huo and
Zhenzhou Yi) is equivalent to condemning Shake-
speare for not writing in the style of contemporary
playwright Harold Pinter. In other words, the com-
parison is unfair to both sides.
Movement of Figures within the Frame
The word figure applies to anything concrete
within the frame: an object, an animal, a person.
The most important figure is usually the actor, who
is cast, dressed, made up, and directed for the film
and thus is a vital element in the composition and
resulting mise-en-scène. Figures can move in many
ways: across the frame (in a horizontal, diagonal,
vertical, or circular pattern), from foreground to
background (and vice versa), or from on and off the
screen. A character can float weightlessly in outer
space, as Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) does in
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968);
dance without danger to himself up a wall and
across the ceiling, as Tom Bowen (Fred Astaire)
does in Stanley Donen’s Royal Wedding(1951); or
break free from leg braces and run like the wind,
defying a childhood spinal problem and gravity itself,
as the title character, played by Tom Hanks, does in
Robert Zemeckis’s Forrest Gump(1994). These and
other kinds of figure movement—which can be as
prosaic or as poetic as the story requires—not only
show where a character is moving, but how (on foot,
in a vehicle, through the air in a fight), and some-
times (explicitly or implicitly) also why.
The director and his team must plan the positions
and movements of the actors and the cameras for
each scene and, in rehearsals, familiarize the cast
and camera operators with their plan—a process
known as blocking. In the early stages of blocking,
the director often places pieces of tape on the floor
to indicate the position of the camera and the
actors; once crew and cast are familiar with their
positions, the tape is removed. In designing a film,
another essential element to be considered is how
all the figures move within the space created to tell
the story, as well as how they are placed in relation
to each other. The physical placement of charactersKinesis in action films Throughout the history of
film——from the swashbuckling of Hollywood legend Douglas
Fairbanks to the cinematic portrayals of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet by Laurence Olivier, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh,
and many others, to the movie careers of martial artists such
as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan——old-fashioned swordplay has
always been one of the most exciting forms of movement
on-screen. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon(2000),
a contemporary update of Hong Kong sword-and-sorcery
movies, combines martial arts with elaborate choreography.
In playing the nobleman’s-daughter-turned-warrior, Jen Yu,
shown here in one of many fight sequences, actress Ziyi
Zhang used her training in dance as well as her martial-arts
skills.COMPOSITION 209