Setting and Expressionism
- Not always just a backdrop
- Creates mood, emotional response, etc
- Helps people empathize
- Edward Scissorhands:
- Bland, unoriginal neighborhood
- Castle in background: lots of jagged edges, high in contrast, black and scary looking, gives off feeling of uneasiness
- Gives info about character
- Sets a tone
- Reflects characters emotional state of mind
- Can be filmed on-location (more realistic) or in a studio (re-creation of reality or “whimsical fiction”)
- The Earth Seen From the Moon
- Film was shot on-location but isn’t super realistic
- Pasolini wishes to depict shanty town in Rome, but colorful rubble and freshly painted homes gives an ironic approach to the scene
Lighting and Familiar Image
- The Night of the Hunter (1955) – IMDb
- Lighting conveys lots of emotions
- Familiar image: repetition of things to help audience understand scenes in future
- Night of the Hunter
- Silhouettes: give negative vibes of darkness and mystery
- Sidelight: illumination and shadow divide face into two halves
- Represents a split personality
- Not as much attention to continuity
- Size of character in scene: shows power
- Light behind characters head: halo effect
- Three-Point Lighting
- Arrangement of key, fill, backlight (3 light sources)
- Even illumination of scene
- Not dramatic
- Common in typical narrative cinema
- Small amount of shadow: small amount of added depth
- High-Key Lighting
- Fill lighting increased to near the same level as key lighting
- Even illumination
- Makes scene very bright and soft
- Very few shadows
- Used commonly in musicals and comedies
- Low-Key Lighting
- Technical opposite of high-key lighting
- Fill light = very low level
- Causes frame to be cast with large shadows
- Lots of contrast between dark/light parts of frame
- Much of subject of frame is hidden in shadows
- Used commonly in film noir productions and gangster films
- Gives off a very dark and mysterious atmosphere
- Looks really cool in black and white films
Composing The Frame
- How visual elements are composed or arranged within each shot
- Eyes seek equilibrium or balance in film
- Rule of thirds:
- Three vertical sections, three horizontal sections
- Composition is built in thirds
- For every visual element in one section, there will be a counter-element in another section to balance it out
- People will look where characters are looking
- Top horizontal line: Where characters eyes should go (balances well)
- Symmetry in the thirds convey rigid order, formal elegance, etc
- Breaking rule of thirds: Compositional stress
- Tension
- Something is wrong
- Looking room and lead room: important to how things are laid out, looks weird without it
- Negative space: makes us expect something to come and return balance in frame
- Deep Space Composition
- Foreground, middleground, background
- Conveys power/status
- “Deep focus composition”
- Visual elements do not need ot be focused to be significant
- Deep Space
- Important components in frame located both far and close to camera
- Used to emphasize distance between objects and/or characters
- Also emphasizes obstacles
- Shallow Space
- Opposite of deep space
- Image appears flat/two dimensional
- Little to no depth
- Can create suspense
- May lose realism, but emphasizes and enhances the closeness of something
- Offscreen Space
- Space that isn’t physically present in the frame
- Viewer becomes aware of something outside the frame
- Usually through character’s response to a person, thing or event offscreen, or an offscreen sound
- More creative method of conveying information to the viewer
- Frontality
- Character’s directly facing camera
- Providing viewers sense that they are looking right at them
- Directly informs viewer of a characters thoughts
- Breaks the typical boundary between the audience and the characters onscreen
Costume
- Can include both makeup or wardrobe choices
- Used to convey a character’s personality or status, and to differentiate them from different characters
- Signifies era in which film is set and advertises era’s fashions
- Biographical films: important to making actor resemble historical character
Resources
- Looking at Movies: Chapter 5 Mise-en-Scène
- College Film and Media Studies Mise-en-scene article
- Aspects of Mise-en-Scène by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson