There Will Be Numbers

Love the golden mean, thirds and Phi and all the maths behind it – what I understand anyway – and this is a look on how they inform a film like ‘There Will Be Blood’.

I’ve not seen the film, but could watch hours of this…although I think some of the spirals are a little bit of wishful thinking, I do know that thousands of years of composition, painting, drawing, art and photography have bequeathed a mathematical view of the world. I’m sure the Director of Photography or indeed the Director himself didn’t say ‘can we have a spiral here?’ but Rule of Thirds is well known, as is One Point Perspective and a lot of this skill is instinctual. Obviously some of this theory is taught, but also we replicate the beauty in nature, in art, in photography inside the frame.

I echo one of the comments here though, I’d love to go deeper into some of the compositional tricks of the trade, where you make or break them (the actor stepping out of thirds immediately draws your eye to him, for instance). (via Felix Five)