Arthouse

The frame is held past the point where a conventional edit would cut, and the audience is left to decide what matters inside it. Nothing is pointed at.

Withholding explanation is the method. A scene that refuses to tell you how to feel asks you to notice, and noticing is what the style is built to produce.

Long static takes. The camera is placed and left, often at a distance, and the action enters and leaves the frame rather than being followed.

Muted palette and natural light. Colour is drained toward the neutral, and the light is whatever the location has, so nothing in the image reads as designed for effect.

Sound stays literal. Room tone, footsteps and traffic instead of score. Removing the music removes the instruction about how to feel.

Use it for observation, for duration as a subject, and for any scene whose meaning would be damaged by being explained.

Skip it when the audience needs to be carried. The style asks for patience, and it fails completely if the viewer is not given a reason to give it.

Blockbuster gloss cuts quickly, saturates the grade and makes every beat legible. Arthouse does the opposite on all three counts.

A still photograph look also holds the frame, and it holds it as a composition with a decisive moment. Arthouse holds it as duration, and the shot usually runs long enough for something to change inside it.

Chantal Akerman shot Jeanne Dielman (1975) in long static takes of domestic routine, holding on ordinary tasks for their full length, and the film is the standard reference for what duration can do to an audience.

The model cuts or moves the camera. Ask for a single long static shot and say the camera does not move, because movement is read as the default.

The second failure is a graded image. Say muted palette and natural light, and avoid anything that sounds cinematic, which models translate into contrast and saturation.