In the Spring of 2009, I gave a class at the American University of Beirut entitled Montage. It was an enjoyable and educational experience (forgive the alliteration) to return to the School of Architecture and Design after ten years. While most of my professors from that era had left, some were still there and I was happy to work alongside them as colleagues, while continuing to learn from them as mentors.
Most of all though, I learned from the students, 19 of the most talented people I’ve met (and I would have had no problem saying otherwise were this not genuinely true). Although the class mostly comprised final year Graphic Designers and Architects who had spent almost every waking hour of the last 4 years together, they each had their unique personality, vision, and skill-set. Their enthusiasm motivated me to do my best, and I poured my heart into every lecture, spending many hours every week to prepare the course material.
To quote my syllabus:
The course investigates cinema’s unique power of montage, which creates a multi-subjective space and time that may not exist in objective reality. We will avoid the usual pitfalls of the representation of space in cinema (the space of the architect) and instead explore the creation of space by cinema (the space of the story-teller).
This is just my bullshit academic way of describing a theory I’ve had for quite a while now: Architects and film directors think alike. We explored this idea through a series of engaging projects, many of which I’ll share here, but for the time being I’ll just present an excerpt from one of my own lectures.
This lecture introduces visual composition through examples from influential photographers past and present. I explain that the rules of composition are only called that for want of a better phrase, and am the first to insist that there are no rules — merely rules of thumb and loose principles to fall back on, to engage with and challenge. More importantly, the purpose of these so-called rules is not to create pretty pictures (though that is often a happy byproduct of their application) but rather to draw the observer’s eye and orient it in a way that enriches the subject of the shot and tells a story.
In the end, it’s all about story.
AUB Spring 2009 • Click play to begin presentation. Contains music and some nudity.
This story is from Meedo’s upcoming book montagespace: Cinema and the Making, Un-Making and Re-Making of Architecture. Please feel free to contact us for more details and read related stories here.
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I recall when I saw this a few months ago I had no idea you did it, this is great insights and helped me learn a lot about the art of photography=)
I shows! How about you share a link to your albums with us? :)