They say an image speaks a thousand words, but does it really?

In this project I explore justifying the quote and experiment with different image composition styles to try and achieve that.

IDEATION

Coming up with a concept and deciding who i wanted to portray for this project was the biggest problem i encountered during this assignment. I was given the liberty of doing any character fictional or non fictional. My favourite movie is inception and since i am planning to major in film i decided to do a film character.

The character in this assignment that i portrayed is Cobb from inception.

If you haven’t already watch the movie let me try and give you a brief summary of who he is in the film. Inception the movie revolves around the life of Cobb and his memories. He earns a living through being an extractor, someone that extracts information out of people through their dreams. One day someone offers his a job to carry out a special type of job; “inception” where one plants an idea into someone else’s mind when their dreaming and when he/she wakes up they will believe that the idea was legit.

Cobb is struggling in the movie as he is known as a criminal that murdered his wife and is finding redemption and wants to get back to his kids. This job is the key to his freedom.

Thus I decided to go ahead and use Cobb as my character for this assignment as he has a lot going on in the movie for me to experiment with.

VISUAL ANALYSIS

The overall image has been composed as a portrait to represent Cobb’s nature as a character struggling to reach his goal in the movie

Water is a symbol of the unconscious. I wanted to include that into Cobb’s mind as it shows that he is drowning in his thoughts trying to meet his kids.

The Penrose staircase represents a never ending maze as he constantly tries to get closer and closer to his kids however it seems like he is going in never ending circles. The Penrose staircase was also used in the movies in quite a number of scenes thus i felt that it was apt to use it as a semiotic.

The distorted city is a very prominent style used in the movie and i included it in this composition to act as a frame and also the buildings are leading lines leading the viewers towards Cobb.

Jellyfishes symbolise painful memories that are rising up from your unconscious. I felt that it was perfect for this portrait as Cobb has painful memories about his wife’s death which keeps messing up his jobs because she turns up in his extractions and sabotages the jobs. The jellyfishes are in black and white so as to not draw too much attention away from the gold water droplet in Cobb’s head.

The tops in his tie adds texture and balances the image as the composition is very top heavy. The tops are also used a lot in the movie as Cobb spins it to make sure that he’s back to reality.

The rule of thirds was applied in this image. I positioned the head of Cobb to intersect the top third of the frame which makes the image look well balanced.

The golden droplet is golden to represent a glimmer of hope and also act as a magnet to the viewer’s eyes as it stands out from all the other blue tones.

I chose blue to be the main colour of this composition because blue represents regret and unsettlement.

CONCLUSION

The assignment helped me achieve a better understanding of semiotics and image composition techniques if used properly can speak a thousand words. Overall i had lots of fun completing this piece and hope to use these skills to tell better stories as a filmmaker in the future.