The Key Elements of Film Form: Mise-en-scene

Question 1

Filmmakers use a range of elements in constructing narrative meaning and generating response.
What are the five Key Elements of Film Form?

Answer 1

MSPEC

• Mise en scene
• Sound
• Performance
• Editing
• Cinematography

Question 2

What are the 3 Principal Elements of Mise-en-scene?

Answer 2

• Setting, props, costume and makeup
• Staging movement and off screen space
• How cinematography impacts mise-en-scene (in particular through variation of depth of field, focus and framing (this overlaps with cinematography))

Question 3

List 3 Creative Uses of Mise-en-scene.

Answer 3

• How it can be used naturalistically and expressively
• How it can generate multiple connotations
• How changes contribute to character and narrative development

Question 4

List 6 ways that Mise-en-scene Conveys Messages and Values.

Answer 4

• The significance of motifs
• How m-e-s –> generates multiple connotations and suggests a range of interpretations
• Why different spectators –> different interpretations of the same m-e-s
• How m-e-s –> used to align spectators and relates to interpretation of narrative
• How m-e-s –> contributes to ideologies of film

Question 5

What are the 4 common things to think about when analysing how the Key Elements of Film Form (cinematography, mise-en-scene, sound, editing, performance) convey Messages and Values?

Answer 5

• How [Camera shot / M-e-s / Editing / Sound / Performance] –> contributes to narrative development
• How [Camera shot / M-e-s / Editing / Sound / Performance] –> generates multiple connotations and suggests a range of interpretations
• Why different spectators –> different interpretations of the same [Camera shot / M-e-s / Editing / Sound / Performance]
• How [Camera shot / M-e-s / Editing / Sound / Performance] –> used to align spectators and relates to interpretation of narrative
• How [Camera shot / M-e-s / Editing / Sound / Performance] –> contributes to ideologies of film

Question 6

Core Study Areas: Film Form

What is aesthetic?

Answer 6

The style adopted by an artist or a film movement

Question 7

Core Study Areas: Film Form

What is production?

Answer 7

The period of actual shooting

Question 8

Core Study Areas: Film Form

What are auteurs?

Answer 8

Certain directors will have a strong aesthetic

Question 9

Core Study Areas: Film Form

What is pre-production?

Answer 9

The period prior to filming, where key decisions are made, including securing funding, selecting actors and creative personnel, choosing locations, building sets, designing costumes and determining the film’s aesthetic and planning the production schedule.

Question 10

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene

What is mise-en-scene in Film? What is it in theatre?

Answer 10

• It refers to everything on the screen in front of the camera
  In theatre, it refers to all the elements placed on a stage that contribute to the setting or mood the creative team were working towards

Question 11

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Colour

List 7 colours, plus black and white and the psychololgical associations with each.

Answer 11

• Red: anger, violence, danger, love, excitement
• Pink: femininity, sweetness, innocence, playfulness
• Orange: warmth, happiness, friendly, exoticness
• Yellow: sickness, madness, idyllic, insecurity
• Green: nature, renewal, hope, darkness, envy, ominous
• Blue: cold, calm, melancholy, cerebral
• Purple: fantasy, mystical, ethereal, ominous
• Black: fear, grief, sophistication
• White: sincerity, purity

Question 12

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Colour

Model for success. One of the best ways to do well on an exam question is to see an excellent answer and then try to incorporate items of excellence into your own answer.

Describe how colour is used in “We need to talk about Kevin” and what it represents.

Answer 12

• In the screenshot, it shows Eva whose son has carried out a mass school shooting, sitting in a cafe. In it are two primary colours; red and green. Eva is sitting in the green-lit window which alludes to darkness, giving the shot an ominous feel. The window and Eva is framed on all sides by large blocks of red, suggesting that she is surrounded by anger, violence and danger, with no escape

Question 13

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Colour

Model for success. One of the best ways to do well on an exam question is to see an excellent answer and then try to incorporate items of excellence into your own answer.

Describe how colour is used in “House of Flying Daggers” and what it represents.

Answer 13

• Colour plays a significant part in the aesthetic style with a single colour dominating the mise-en-scene in different sequences. Here the characters and backgrounds are almost all the same shade of green, with the green alluding to nature, renewal and hope

Question 14

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props

Who is responsible for setting and props in a film?

Answer 14

• Production designer

Question 15

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props: Setting

What are the two main parts of setting?

Answer 15

• Location

- Time

Question 16

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props: Setting

Where are the 5 main places that a film set is created?

Answer 16

• Exterior
• Interior
• A real place
• Specially built set on a soundstage
• On location

Question 17

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props: Setting

Describe the 4 times that form setting.

Answer 17

• Dawn
• Daylight
• Dusk
• The dead of night

Question 18

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props: Props

What are setting props?

Answer 18

• All the items used in both interior and exterior locations

Question 19

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props: Props

List 4 things in an external scene in a historical drama that a production designer would have to consider when designing props.

Answer 19

• Vehicles
• Street lighting
• Shop facades
• Background extras

Question 20

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props: Props

List 3 things in an internal scene in a historical drama that a production designer would have to consider when designing props.

Answer 20

• Pictures on the wall
• Books on the shelf
• Items on a table

Question 21

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props: Props

True or False: The absence of props that would be expected to be in a setting (e.g. a football pitch without anyone playing football) are indicators to character and story.

Answer 21

• True

Question 22

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props: Props

What two decisions about props can carry additional narrative emotional or symbolic weight?

Answer 22

• Where props are placed and how they are used

Question 23

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and Props: Props

What is a costume prop? Give 4 examples.

Answer 23

• Props that characters make use of
• Spectacles
• A holstered gun
• An umbrella
• A wristwatch

Question 24

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Colour

Complete the following cloze: There is considerable crossover between _____________ and mise-en-scene , particularly with regards to ________. The position of the ______, part of the mise-en-scene, is also an essential element of a cinematographer’s framing.

Answer 24

• Cinematography
• Lighting
• Actors

Question 25

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and props

Model for success. One of the best ways to do well on an exam question is to see an excellent answer and then try to incorporate items of excellence into your own answer.

Describe how setting, props and costume are used in “Life is Beautiful” to develop the narrative, provoke emotional response, offer understanding to the characters or serve a symbolic function.

Answer 25

• The setting is clearly a barrack in a concentration camp, with the men wearing the grey and black striped uniform synonymous with the German WW2 concentration camps. The uniforms have a yellow star on them, so we know that these men are Jewish because the Nazis forced all Jews to wear the Star of David.

Question 26

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Setting and props

Model for success. One of the best ways to do well on an exam question is to see an excellent answer and then try to incorporate items of excellence into your own answer.

Describe how setting, props and costume are used in “We Need to Talk about Kevin” to develop the narrative, provoke emotional response, offer understanding to the characters or serve a symbolic function.

Answer 26

• The setting is a domestic living space, filled with furniture and soft furnishings of golden browns and reds, which alludes to gold, warmth and comfort. The stripped wooden floor and throw rugs indicate an arty-affluence that is reinforced by the vinyl collection. The only primary colours in the room are the children’s toys, suggesting that Kevin has invaded this warm golden space with his solid colourful toys.

Question 27

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Costume, Make-up and Hair

For what 5 purposes does the costumer designer work with other creative departments/production designer?

Answer 27

• Are put of the wider aesthetic vision
• Develop the character
• Support or contrast other characters’ costumes
• Are suitable for the actor’s performance (physical/restrained)
• Are appropriate to the setting (both time and location)

Question 28

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Costume, Make-up and Hair

Give an example of an item of clothing that suggests a particular genre.

Answer 28

• Stetson hats in a western

Question 29

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Costume, Make-up and Hair

What are the 3 main uses of make-up?

Answer 29

• Day to day, which is used for naturalistic performances, or used to enhance an actor’s features.
• Character or transformation make-up would employ specialist make-up alongside facial prosthetics to change a person’s appearance.
• Special effects (FX) make-up also uses prosthetics made of latex, foam or silicone, but these may be entire bodysuits and complete head/facial masks.

Question 30

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Costume, Make-up and Hair

Model for success. One of the best ways to do well on an exam question is to see an excellent answer and then try to incorporate items of excellence into your own answer.

In “Shaun of the Dead” what are the different functions of the costumes worn by Foree Electric employees?

Answer 30

• It’s an over-the-shoulder shot, with Shaun in the foreground. He and his junior colleagues are all wearing the same costume: black trousers, white shirt and red tire. But the styling for each reflects six different characters. Some shirts are ironed, other wrinkled. Some have the shirt neatly tucked into their trousers while others have them bagged out or half-tucked.

Question 31

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Staging, Movement and use of off-screen space

Staging: What 3 things can be affected by the way that characters and objects are positioned in a frame?

Answer 31

• Add further meaning to their relationship to one another
• Indicate their importance to the narrative
• Draw attention to a particular character/object

Question 32

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Staging, Movement and use of off-screen space

In Mise-en-scene, what kind of movement is analysed? Camera or actors?

Answer 32

• Actors are analysed

Question 33

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Staging, Movement and use of off-screen space

What are the 6 offscreen spaces?

Answer 33

• To the left
• To the right
• Above
• Below
• Behind the set
• In front of the camera

Question 34

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Staging, Movement and use of off-screen space

Describe 4 subtle ways in which off-screen spaces can be used.

Answer 34

• Walking into frame from the right
• Across the frame and out of the left
• Looking upwards
• One character to point to the action happening off-screen

Question 35

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Staging, Movement and use of off-screen space

Describe 2 overt ways in which off-screen spaces can be used. What is the intended effect of these on the audience?

Answer 35

• When a character breaks the fourth wall by addressing the audience or looking directly into the camera making the audience complicit in the action

Question 36

Core Study Areas: Film Form: Mise-en-scene: Staging, Movement and use of off-screen space

Model for success. One of the best ways to do well on an exam question is to see an excellent answer and then try to incorporate items of excellence into your own answer.

In “Shaun of the Dead” what does the staging tell us about the relationship between characters? ( 1. Liz and Shaun in a cafe 2. Shaun and Ed on the sofa)

Answer 36

1. In the foreground, Liz and Shaun are sitting opposite each other, across a fairly wide table. They are placed in the lower half of the screen. Ed is in the background standing, so we see more of his body and is standing between them as though his mere presence is pushing them further apart.
2. Ed and Shaun are sitting very close together on the sofa, with their arms overlapping. This proximity to one another mirrors their friendship, which seems far closer than that of Shaun of Liz.