Nielsen’s Aperture Framings in Casablanca

In Casablanca, Jakob Isak Nielsen used staging and shot composition to further impose and show the viewer the important parts and details in a particular series of scenes or stories. In doing this, he focused on aperture framing. So what does Nielsen meant by `aperture framings` as he explained in the article? As I have analyzed the diagrams and comprehended the short definition, I think aperture framing is the picking of an important part in a scene and frame it into a more close-up and detailed shot for the viewers’ advanced understanding, even if logic and standards are violated on the part of the characters. According to the article, Nielsen’s aperture framing does more than filling out the composition and supplementing the series of shots. Aperture framing was said to have more important functions in the viewer’s understanding and perception of the obvious and concealed meanings and symbols in the movie. The aperture framing was said to help direct the viewers’ attention, evoke mood, and have metaphorical and thematic implications for the film. The diagrams and explanation of Nielsen provided me a clear understanding of how aperture framing performs the mentioned functions. Based on how I understood it, directing viewers’ attention is primarily done by the close-up, angled, and detailed frames produced by the aperture. Metaphors in aperture framing is done through focusing or framing the hidden extra-objects and compositions in the background or as formed by the main objects. Lastly, the aperture framing provides mood and theme for a particular scene through the use of some elements like darkness/brightness, lines, shades, colors, and basic composition techniques. Overall, these were done in Casablanca to give a more vivid, concrete, and imposing conveyance of important and usually unraveled meanings and stories.