Essentials of Applied Media Aesthetics

This chapter describes the fundamental aesthetic elements of media aesthetics — light and color, two-dimensional space, three-dimensional space, time-motion, and sound — and how they can serve as basic criteria for analysis of video and film. It also explains how these elements can be structured and applied to produce maximally effective visual and sound images in video and film. By placing these essential image elements into their respective contextual fields, their interdependence and structural potential in aesthetic synthesis, the clarification, intensification, interpretation, and communication of significant experiences are made explicit. Ultimately, applied media aesthetics attempts to give some answers to why we compose or light a particular shot in a particular way, or how we match pictures and sound most effectively.