The importance of film as a visual art

A movie can have some of the most fascinating themes, great acting, wonderful dialogue, or a plethora of other great attributes, and still fall short of truly being cinema. Film, at its core, is a visual artform, with the framing and placement of every shot being a crucial piece of filmmaking. This year, after the Oscars announced the awards for editing and cinematography would be given during commercial breaks, many filmmakers were offended by what they saw as pushing aside the very heart of cinema. Academy Award winning director Alfonso Cuaron tweeted that, “In the history of CINEMA, masterpieces have existed without sound, without color, without a story, without actors and without music. No one single film has ever existed without CINEMAtography and without editing.” Many other auteurs agreed with Cuaron, including his good friend and fellow academy award winner Guillermo del Toro, who wrote, “Cinematography and Editing are at the very heart of our craft.” You can make a good movie without much emphasis on visuals, but to create a great film, the visual arts must be put at the forefront. Strong visuals often push the narrative to be stronger, emphasizing the points the filmmakers want to convey. The best visuals can create cathartic, deep emotional responses that do not even require spoken dialogue. A great example of this is the short film Bunny. With no dialogue, this story of a bunny and her moth guide to the afterlife is firmly rooted in its animated visuals. While not traditionally filmed, the angles and shots chosen during the storyboarding process are in line with classic cinematography. By having the bunny often in the side of the frame, allowing the moth to fill the empty space, we connect to our bunny protagonist who feels the moth has invaded into space that should be filled by our protagonist. The different, off-kilter angles used to show the moth also add a certain layer of unease to our view of the moth initially. This short film is propelled by its visual art and its music that are edited together perfectly to create a multisensory artform, which can only be described as cinema.

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