Mise En Scene.

Mise En Scene

Mise En Scene is defined as an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction. It is also commonly used to refer to multiple single scenes within the film to represent the film. Mise-en-scène has been called film criticism's "grand undefined term".

Setting.

The setting of a film creates mood and atmosphere within a scene as well as obviously showing the audience where the film is taking place. The setting is usually different depending on the genre of the film, for example, a horror film usually takes place in abandoned areas, woods, etc. which are used to provoke fear within the audience as if the film was to take place within a brightly coloured town full of people, it would not have the same effect.

Comedy films don’t usually tend to have a specific setting and instead usually tend to focus on the person rather than the setting. Comedies try to be relatable to the audience and therefore use relatable locations such as characters houses, schools, work, etc. Romance films usually follow the same setting structure and focus on the people rather than the location to make it relatable to the viewer, however, location still plays a big role in establishing characters interests and backgrounds.  Action films are alike horrors and tend to focus largely on the locations as they’re usually shot in big cities or busy towns. This is shown in Spectre during the Rome car chase scene.

Lighting.

Lighting changes depending on the genre of the film and/ or to create a specific mood. High-key lighting involves the fill lighting (used in the three-point technique at a lower level) to be increased to near the same level as the key lighting. With this even illumination, the scene appears very bright and soft, with very few shadows in the frame. This style is used most commonly in musicals and comedies, especially of the classic Hollywood age. Below is a good example of this technique from The Wizard of OZ. 

Low key lighting is the technical opposite of the high key arrangement, because in low key the film light is at a very low level, causing the frame to be cast with large shadows. This causes stark contrasts between the darker and lighter parts of the framed image, and for much of the subject of the shot to be hidden behind in the shadows. This is typically used in film noir productions, gangster films and horrors due to the mysterious atmosphere that is created.

Spacing.

Deep Space is used when there are important objects in the foreground films also use this technique when there are important components in the frame located both close to and far from the camera. It is used to emphasize the distance between objects and/or characters, as well as any obstacles that exist between them.

Staging is used to enable the audience to get a better sense of what is occurring within a film. This is the actor’s duty to bring his or her character to life within the framework of the story, and their emotional input dictates how strongly the audience feels about the film.

Blocking is the precise staging of actors in order to facilitate the performance in the film. The way in which certain actors are positioned can signify the importance of different characters. 

Costumes.

Costume is another important aspect in terms of mise en scene as it cannot the time and place of when the film is set, it can show narrative progression and can also determine the character.  Different clothing styles say different things about different characters.