How do you deal with subjects with patterns and textures??

[LucaM]

While watching “The Doubt” I noticed how elegant  the composition of the shot of the exterior of the church was (the one in the beginning of the movie, with people entering the church for the mass) with the warm color of the brick patterns of the walls and the creamy white of the elements of the church facade. In your experience a subject with such a regular pattern (or anyway a really visible texture) is an opportunity to add an element of interest to a shot or it’s too “loud” and distracting? In other words, i am sure that somehow it depends on what you are shooting, but in general do you look for such elements (regular patterns, repeating forms, etc) or do you try to avoid them to make the audience focus on other elements?

Besides that,  in the movie i noticed that  there was a recurring element of simmetry in the shots (the bricks, the church arcade, the nuns at the table for dinner, the pipes of the organ, etc) that made me think to a world with rigid rules, but the shot with the Father Flynn somehow lacked it (the camera slightly slanted, the priest shot through something that broke the simmetry, etc). Perhaps i’m overthinking about that, but since there was Roger behind the camera i am pretty sure that there was a narrative reason for the shots and not only an aesthetic one.

(sorry for re-posting the same message, i had some problems with the editing and perhaps i messed things up a bit)

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