I've been struggling with an idea, and I just can't wrap my head around it enough to present it to you. It has to do with the balance of light and dark - about the balance of positive and negative shapes (positive being the dark spaces, the spaces where somethig IS; negative being the light spaces, the spaces where something ISN'T). There's something about them in this movie.
There's an artictis princial called 'balance.' Balance with when the right side is given roughly the same 'wieght' as the left side, or the top and bottom. There are two kinds of aesthetic balance. There's symmetrical. That's when one side looks like the other - they are, to a large degree - mirror images of one another.
Then there's asymmetrical balance. This is when two sides are balanced, but by different sized shapes.
But even this idea of balance doesn't cover all the bases of what I'm trying to grasp at. I don't know. There's just something about the images of the film. There's almost no gray - it truly is a nearly all black and white movie.
Here's what I would like you to do. Just look at the following images. Take your time.
Now look at the following pairs of images. Most come one right after the other. Again, take your time.
Okay. So we touched on it in class. What's going on here? What's going on in terms of balance, positive and negative space, aesthetic tension vs. dramatic tension? Help me out. We need some theories on the subject...