Maximalism

Every part of the frame is occupied. Pattern on pattern, object in front of object, colours that argue with each other, and nowhere for the eye to rest.

The overload is the content. A frame with no empty area tells the audience that abundance, excess or chaos is the subject, and it does so before anybody says a word.

Fill the frame in depth as well as across it. Foreground objects, a busy middle ground and a patterned wall behind, so there is no plane without something on it.

Clash the colours deliberately. Saturated hues that do not belong together are part of the effect, and a harmonious palette quietly turns the frame back into a designed image.

Pattern on every surface. Wallpaper, fabric, tile, print. A single plain wall becomes a rest point and breaks the effect.

Use it for excess, for a character who hoards, for spectacle, and for any scene where the environment should overwhelm the person inside it.

Skip it when a detail has to be found. In a maximalist frame nothing is emphasised, so a plot-critical object will be lost.

Giallo fills the frame with coloured light and can work in a nearly empty room. Maximalism fills it with objects and pattern, and the light can be perfectly ordinary.

The test is what is doing the filling. Light means giallo. Stuff means maximalism.

Baz Luhrmann packed Moulin Rouge! (2001) with costume, set decoration and cut, keeping the frame dense from edge to edge for long stretches, and the design gives the audience no quiet plane to settle on.

The model leaves negative space, because clean composition is what it defaults to. Say every surface is patterned and no area of the frame is empty.

The second failure is a tidy harmonious palette. Ask for saturated clashing colour, and name several object types so the frame has different kinds of clutter in it.