Let’s not fiddle around: tell me, why do you make films? Of course, there is no general answer to this question. The most common, though, is probably – to tell exciting stories and to engage with your audience in some way. As a filmmaker, I have so many ideas in my head, that want to be heard. Does this relate to you? If so, there’s something that can help your stories become even richer and take their meaning to the next level: visual subtext. Seasoned cinematographer Alex Buono has an amazing lesson about it in his MZed course on visual storytelling. Below, I’d like to share some of his insights, showcases, and tips for practical use of the theory. We already touched on visual subtext in one of our previous educational posts on the art of imbalance and the impact of headroom in storytelling. This time around, I want to dig a bit deeper and understand, how visual subtext works in films, and also show you some ways of implementing it into your own stories. Don’t worry, Alex Buono will guide us along the way. We want to know, what a film means. We want our stories to mean something because we want our lives to mean something. We want to know, that we didn’t just waste our time on an hour of mindless television. Alex Buono, a quote from his course on visual storytelling Symbol and meaning are the essentials of visual subtext Simply put, the visual subtext consists...
Published By: CineD - Thursday, 28 September, 2023