Sabrina Debrard

Triptych Context One: Composition and Storytelling in Film

Coming into this class my idea of composition was quite narrow and restrictive, as I only
thought of composition as the writing and formation of text. I have already branched out from
this viewpoint, as I realized that almost everything created is composed, and as I also noticed that
I have composed pieces that were not strictly textual in my own studies (such as music, video,
images, webpages).
Now to compare my older view of composition, the one exclusive to the field of rhetoric
and composition, to another field is more of a challenge. Despite realizing that I have composed
in many different mediums already I sometimes struggle to see the process as relatable to
rhetorical composition, likely because of incredibly different elements and processes in each
field. For this triptych, Ill use film composition as a comparison to composition in rhetoric, as I
struggle the most with its incredibly different, yet somewhat similar nuances.
Film composition not only combines textual elements in dialogue, writing on screen, and
visual cues, but it is also heavily involved in musical composition with soundtracks and original
scores. The most impactful (and most obvious) relation to rhetoric and composition in film is
visual rhetoric, where each frame is carefully composed by the director, actors, and
cinematographer to create a message, illicit an emotional response, or to satisfy the viewer. Each
particular frame in a film was carefully composed by a team of individuals that considered
lighting, color, background, and framing to add context to a larger, specific scene that compiles
all of those frame elements and also factor the overlaying musical elements, dialogue,
movement, and performance. Any compositional element changed in a frame or scene could
have overall tonal changes in the film as a whole, which delegates the importance of fine-tuning
each particular aspect of the films composition.
In relation to composition in rhetoric and composition, the study of film composition
forces the composer to combine multiple separately composed elements together to create a
single overall message. Rhetoric and composition does the same, through images and design
format as well as writing. Film draws from this central concept but adds many more layers for an
immediate experience. The composition process in film begins with writing about the story
within the film, and how a director can display this process with their other rhetorical tools
(interestingly, the writing portion of this process, according to Colleen Jankovic in Feeling
Cinema: Affect in Film/Composition Pedagogy, seems to be the primary challenge for film
students).
It is interesting then to think about how a cinematographer and director are both
composers, but how their processes and outcomes are different. How do they work together to
create central meaning when they likely come from different backgrounds, have different
interpretations, and inherently view the work differently? Does this summation of rhetorical
stimuli overwhelm some teams, ultimately ending up with a film that does not match its
intended message? How does the screenwriter factor into this, and what is the process for
transforming the words on a script into a visual scene? Film composition definitely draws from
rhetoric and composition but ultimately uses it in a way that takes advantage of the new medium,
and Im interested to study how the differing elements of composition lay together.
Sabrina Debrard

Jankovic, Colleen. "FEELING CINEMA: Affect in Film/Composition Pedagogy."

Transformations, vol. 22, no. 2, 2012., pp. 86-103. ProQuest Social Sciences
Premium Collection, https://login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?
url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1495898229?accountid=4840.
Accessed 16 Jan 2017.