When the Sun-Times appointed me film critic, I hadn't taken a single film course (the University of Illinois didn't offer them in those days). One of the reasons I started teaching was to teach myself. Look at a couple dozen New Wave films, you know more about the New Wave. Same with silent films, documentaries, specific directors.

visual compositions have "intrinsic weighting." By that I believe he means that certain areas of the available visual space have tendencies to stir emotional or aesthetic reactions. These are not "laws." To "violate" them can be as meaningful as to "follow" them. I have never heard of a director or cinematographer who ever consciously applied them.

I suspect that filmmakers compose shots from images that well up emotionally, instinctively or strategically, just as a good pianist never thinks about the notes.

I already knew about the painter's "Golden Mean," or the larger concept of the "golden ratio." For a complete explanation, see Wiki, and also look up the "Rule of Thirds." To reduce the concept to a crude rule of thumb in the composition of a shot in a movie: A person located somewhat to the right of center will seem ideally placed. A person to the right of that position will seem more positive; to the left, more negative. A centered person will seem objectified, like a mug shot. I call that position somewhat to the right of center the "strong axis."

They are not absolutes. But in general terms, in a two-shot, the person on the right will "seem" dominant over the person on the left

In simplistic terms: Right is more positive, left more negative. Movement to the right seems more favorable; to the left, less so. The future seems to live on the right, the past on the left. The top is dominant over the bottom. The foreground is stronger than the background. Symmetrical compositions seem at rest. Diagonals in a composition seem to "move" in the direction of the sharpest angle they form, even though of course they may not move at all. Therefore, a composition could lead us into a background that becomes dominant over a foreground.

Of course I should employ quotation marks every time I write such words as positive, negative, stronger, weaker, stable, past, future, dominant or submissive. All of these are tendencies, not absolutes, and as I said, can work as well by being violated as by being followed. Think of "intrinsic weighting" as a process that gives all areas of the screen complete freedom, but acts like an invisible rubber band to create tension or attention when stretched. Never make the mistake of thinking of these things as absolutes. They exist in the realm of emotional tendencies. Often use the cautionary phrase, "all things being equal" -- which of course they never are.

The intransigent Zoomer modernity of Zendaya’s screen image — a face that, because of “Euphoria,” will probably always seem to me as if it’s “seen an iPhone” — is the perfect foil for a role so rooted in pre-Code comedies like “Design for Living,” and she harnesses that disconnect in a way that allows Tashi to have this entire movie by the balls without ever foot-faulting into invulnerability.

There isn’t an inch of nudity apart from some extras in the locker room showers, and yet Guadagnino shoots the climactic match with a stylistic vulgarity that suggests what sports might look like if Brazzers suddenly took over for ESPN. Slo-mo, Wong Kar-wai-esque step-printing, floor-angle shots from underneath the court, racket POV shots, ball POV shots … every point is defined by a different technique, each rally existing within its own self-contained universe in which sex doesn’t exist and tennis is the only form of human expression.

There was just something magical that happened. We have that shot that’s swirling around her and it’s right after you see Cinna [Lenny Kravitz] get the shit kicked out of him and he’s probably been killed. She’s wildly upset and banging on the glass, and then there’s that music that’s ascending and the elevator starts to ascend, and it goes into darkness and then brighter, brighter, brighter, and you see the mats just start opening up. I think it’s a combo of her emotional state—the anticipation of seeing the beginning of these games again, the elevator rising, the music rising, the stuff opening up, and also feeling like you’re seeing it and experiencing it through Katniss’s eyes—that I think all just came together in that moment and made it so satisfying.

We were going to use the IMAX cameras and I decided, you know what? We’re just going to do the games in IMAX. That’s what makes sense—when we’re in the arena only. We’ll shoot these sequences with the IMAX cameras, these sequences with spherical lenses and 35mm, and we’ll blow it up, which meant that the transition was going to happen because our first time in the arena is as Katniss comes up.