More like a white Friar Tuck

Women wanted to be lawyers and engineers and chemists. They wanted to use their brains in challenging and interesting ways. They wanted to get the satisfaction from solving problems and inventing new shit and getting attention for it.

But if you’ll notice in my post, I’m pointing out a piece that is missing, which is that women also had ambition and a desire to do things which go above and beyond informal work or undervalued and low paying jobs or domestic labor because some women have fun doing those things.

Hiroshi Nagai's paintings need sunglasses to look at.

They look like how it feels to walk across a parking lot on a 98° summer day without a speck of shade in sight.

They look like heaven but also like you'd burn your bare feet on the ground.

Even when you can see shade you know it's not enough and the minute you step out you'll be burnt to a crisp like a vampire.

This feels like I could trip on that radio and fall right into that water, feeling the crystal waves as I drop in.

And this, a nice stroll down a resort strip, where my sunscreened skin could literally feel cooked if I leaned too close to the tiling.

And then a nice stretch of summer street, wherein you could see your face in the flushed red of that car provided it didn't blind you from its sunny reflections.

Including the Sam Adam's Taproom. Whose only job is to HAVE BEER.

got pissed off about how badly star war treated mr finn sequel trilogy and had to draw him and the ST trio a bunch to be normal again

When you are just starting out learning about crafting visuals, the "rule of thirds" is given to folks as training wheels. If you don't know what you are doing, it is a good way to force people to think about their framing and avoid obvious snapshot compositions.

The idea is that if you gain experience and get better, you will shed those rule-of-thirds training wheels and start thinking more deeply about composition.

Eventually, you learn that central compositions can be done well and may gravitate back to them. Professionals use central framing all the time and some use it almost exclusively. You can play with focus and symmetry and layered compositions. It's a great way to draw the eye with leading lines. The idea is that you put the subject in a central position and then the secondary subject and the periphal context support the subject.

This movie was not made for TikTok or vertical viewing. That Twitter user overlayed the vertical video lines to demonstrate their point, and it ended up proving them wildly incorrect.

Remember that composition, more than anything else, needs to serve the story.

Let's look at how this falls apart.

How does this composition work without the other kids gossiping about her? This composition was constructed to show she is a school pariah. If it were on TIkTok, she'd just be walking down a hall.

Here we might not even know these are legs.

Here you can't tell she's hiding in a bathroom stall. Never has a roll of toilet paper been so important to a composition.

Have some random fingers, TikTok.

The subject is actually the glowing hands. This is a symmetrical composition, not a central one. Her in the mirror is not actually the subject.

I'm pretty sure that floating mouse needs to be in frame. TikTok gets an eyeball and a thumb to figure out what is going on.

You get one leg to figure this one out. Good luck.

I did find one single scene where the entire context could be shoved into a vertical video format.

That is the only shot that would work on TikTok out of the entire trailer.

What most people call composition is actually just subject framing. Which can be an important part of the composition, but it is only one variable.

I'm going to steal from another post of mine because I don't feel like writing essentially the same thing over. But I detailed how a professional visual author thinks about composition beyond just framing and rule of thirds...

Things that are often considered when designing a shot… background, midground, foreground. Symmetry or asymmetry. Primary and secondary subjects. Visual weight and balance. Visual anchors. Subject separation via depth of field, background/foreground exposure ratio, contrast, or color palette. And most importantly… storytelling.

Let's think through the composition of this shot.

I prefer to think back to front. What do I want the viewer to see?

Background is the sky. Midground is the town. Foreground is Michael B Jordan.

They chose a mostly symmetrical composition, with the gun being asymmetrical to help it stand out. The visual weight of the left is balanced on the right. Symmetry is a powerful and dramatic visual anchor. If you would rather the viewer chew on the environment and absorb the entire frame, you may frame the subject off-center.

The primary subject is his face and the secondary subject is the gun. You can tell this because the gun is out of focus. They want you to visually anchor your attention to his expression. The angle of the gun even has a leading line that goes straight to his eyes.

Subject separation is mostly done with an exposure ratio. He is dark against a bright white sky. There is some background blur as well.

The camera is slightly below his eyeline, so it is looking up at him. This gives him a sense of power and control. He is dangerous and imposing. They are using a strong central framing with a low perspective as storytelling tools.

All of those creative decisions are part of composition. If all you consider is subject framing, your shot is probably going to be weaker for it.

I agree that there is some content being made more friendly for watching on phones. But even with shows and movies, most people still make the effort to turn their phone sideways. So I don't think this central framing thesis holds any water. I think it was just a compositional preference by the filmmakers.

Either that or Wes Anderson was a visionary, creating the most TikTok-able movies before the platform even existed.

So far, the villains have been soft lighting, background blur (shallow DOF), CGI, digital cameras, and now we can add central compositions to the pile.

But if you look at the best looking movies throughout history, many filmmakers used all of those things, in abundance, to great effect.

It's a matter of ratio, intensity, taste, and effort.

Knowing when to use hard vs soft light.

Knowing how to use soft light while keeping the image dimensional and not flat.

Knowing how much to blur the background to get good subject separation.

Mixing practical with CGI to give the effects grounding and real world lighting reference.

Making sure your central subject framing is well designed and having the taste to know you can't just stick something in the middle and get a good shot without all the other compositional variables considered.

If I could assign bad visuals to one villain, it would be low effort.

If you use soft lighting because it is easier to make look good than hard lighting, that is a low effort issue, not a soft lighting one.

If you blur the background to mush because you didn't want to put in the effort to create an interesting set or go to a beautiful location, that is low effort, not shallow depth of field.

But often, low effort visuals are the only option available. Filmmakers are given a day to shoot and not enough time and money to prepare. They are told to just use a green screen. They are told to light things flat so they can just fix it in post and easily blend the VFX.

The high effort options are not always available to every director. They are just a cog in a capitalist studio machine that demands efficiency over artistry.

So when these critics blame the artists for not knowing their craft rather than blaming the systems they have to work within, it makes me very frustrated.

And if we take away all of these vital tools to create visuals, it will not make things look better. You just get low effort hard light, deep depth of field of boring backgrounds, bad practical effects, all with everything framed on a rule of thirds grid line.

But hey, at least it is shot on film!

CURRENTLY SOBBING. OK SOO, RIPLEY IS GAY?!!

Also I read that there are deleted scenes of Ripley and Lambert arguing and being more overtly in a relationship. Ever since I learned that it's been my favorite ship.

Later, the director chose who was to be cast as male or female:

And it wasn't even Ridley Scott's idea in the end:

As for the rainbow patches, that is the logo for the company Nostromo:

And every single character wears it:

I can't find anything that supports the assertion that Ripley and Lambert had a relationship of any kind.

The LGBTQ rainbow flag was only adopted in 1979, which is the same year this movie came out, but was not at all a mainstream symbol of queer identity, and likely the creators had no clue of the association. Further, it was the 1970s, where bright, colourful rainbow motifs were common and popular in general.

As for Lambert, her trans identity was only introduced in the second film, Aliens (1986), directed by James Cameron. Ripley was explicitly given a gender role in this film too, which was 'mother,' with the introduction of her backstory about her daughter on earth, and her protection over the lost child Newt. So the second film introduced gender and characters take actions driven by gender roles. This is also a big reason why the second film has much more appeal to the wider, general audience, as people have familiar characters to relate to and root for, and the patterns are predictable and therefore comfortable.

The exclusion of gender in the first film was what made it ground breaking. As a non-binary person, this was incredibly important for me growing up, and Ripley has always been a personal hero. I'm not saying she is non-binary or androgynous, but her character is devoid of a gender role, and that was what made it so special.

Queer interpretations are fine and good, but they are not intentional.

1.) Not all our parents would bake us a fucking cake when we come out. Some of us are closeted. Surely you understand this? You also do not need to know my parent’s names or occupations; we are both adults. I do not need nor want to mix you and my private life with my parents and my public life.

2.) Trans people do not owe you their dead name or government name

3.) I’m not telling you for the sake of job security. I am a government fucking caseworker working amidst a fucking lavender panic!

“There’s no way you’re a different person outside this; you’re still you at your core. What harm is there—”

No, I am a completely different person. A different person with a different personality and different interests and a different name and presentation. I am a completely different person because I keep this life and my public life private to avoid fracturing 90% of my interpersonal relationships and 100% of my professional ones.

“You’re not out? But you’re so confident.”

I need y’all to start bringing that energy. Because it’s not always safe for someone to be out and not everyone is safe to be out around.

Watching star trek next generation. First episode. 1987. In a quick background shot there's a guy wearing one of the short skirt uniforms. In 1987. SO BADASS.

I absolutely love this quick cut shot. The Federation is supposed to be a utopian society. So the designers are very clearly stating that traditionally feminine garb is no longer gender coded in utopian society.

It's a super quick shot, likely leaving viewers going, "Was that...?" and having no way to confirm it. (No pause, rewind, or video release.) So they can get away with it.

But. Seriously. They did this in what was THE VERY FIRST EPISODE OF THE BRAND NEW STAR TREK REBOOT.

They boldly went.

Who is realy imprisioned here? The way this shot is framed makes it clear that Zuko is in a prison of his own mind. In fact you can look at how Zuko and Iroh are generally framed in this scene

Zuko:

and Iroh:

Even in shots where Iroh is framed together with the iron bars he is far removed from them while Zuko is right in front:

What takes the cake though is the following shot sequence:

When it shows Iroh it zooms in from this:

To this:

While with Zuko it’s the exact reverse. It zooms out from this:

To this:

Say what you want but man Avatar had some amazing shot composition. 

And the twin blades? Zuko himself says they’re two halves of a single weapon, and shouldn’t be thought of as separate. The twin blades which we really first see in The Blue Spirit storyline, in which Aang asks Zuko if they COULD HAVE BEEN FRIENDS. It’s been stated that the blades represent the good and evil parts of Zuko, but isn’t that just a direct result of him grappling with his lineage, which is directly tied to Aang?

4910280 fights and brawls

everyone on the ground all the time

an own goal of course

the ref dying of cramps and getting help

Aussies serving face and HEIGHT

more floor time