In visual criticism, composition has traditionally referred to the artful, sometimes painterly, orchestration of elements into the expressive totality of the frame or mise en scène. By examining how light and color, bodies and objects are arranged to appear within the frame, criticism has shown how stylized form creates narrative and affective impact, how the artwork speaks its themes and politics without saying a word. Composition for film, once the domain of art directors, production designers and cinematographers, now also extends to a film’s visual effects supervisor, evident in the use of terms like compositing.

In environmental criticism, the term composition has another meaning. The elemental turn has brought attention to the processes by which media are made from their material substrates or constitutive elements. By tracking, for example, how smartphones harvest cobalt or media production generates toxic waste, studies of composition have brought the humanities’ environmental, ecological, and extractive concerns into closer conversation with questions of mediation, infrastructure, and logistics, defining concerns in media studies.

This talk tests composition as a logistical metaphor that bridges the distance between film and media studies. Exploring the atomic details of cinematic mise en scene as atmosphere, I ask if they may be read as expressive forms of the labor, extraction, and environmental engineering of media production and circulation.

Moving between valences and across scales of composition in film and media studies, I ask if "elemental composition" is the scalar concept best positioned to link the narrative and aesthetic effects of mediated elements with the underlying infrastructures of elemental media.