We can call everything that is put in a scene by a French word mise-en-scène, which literally means put on the stage. This is a handy phrase once you know how to spell it because it includes all the elements of acting, location, set, production design, costume and make up, that are put in a scene to contribute to the meaning of the scene.
How do you analyse mis-en-scène?
We see the world through our two eyes, and our brain interprets what we see as a three dimensional image with depth and perspective. A camera only sees the world as a two-dimensional image, which means the picture on the screen is noticeably flatter than it would be in real life.
Film and television industries have evolved techniques of lighting, framing, set design and shot composition to produce the impression of depth and perspective. This adds to our enjoyment of a movie or television programme as it looks naturalistic – that is it re-presents real life. It can also add meaning to a scene.
As Media students we have to work out what extra meaning is added by these techniques including how the acting, location, costume and make up also add to meaning.
LOCATION and SETTING
The set or location of any filmed drama is created to give meaning to the text. A documentary will also attempt to film contributors in locations that are relevant to the story or meaning of the text.
The set can be the location recreated and enhanced as a set of the film. In the trilogy Lord of the Rings think of the importance of the New Zealand landscape and how it was enhanced to be the defining backdrop of the films.
Blade Runner is located in a very rainy city of the future. We hear and see the rain – what does this suggest to us about the film? Why has the director added rain? He wants the audience to feel that this is a dystopian city – the opposite of a utopian city which is an ideal or perfect state where everything is as good as it possibly can be. So Scott is showing us a place where:
1. it rains all the time and it is night, suggesting an underworld of vice and crime
2. it is overcrowded
3. there is too much traffic above and below you
4. the police can see into everyone’s personal life
5. there is an air of menace and violence
6. the cityscape is festooned with adverts
7. the city seems to swamp the individual
8. there is very little that we can relate to from our everyday lives
9. this could be hell
We can see that this is a constructed set – both real and virtual (CGI). It is obviously not a real location. We can see that the set and the location are conveying meaning as to how we read the film. This is called the Production Design.
The Production designer oversees everything that is to do with the set or the location. The Production Designer works with the Director creating the backgrounds, the set design and the look of a film.
Blade Runner fully and richly deserves its reputation. It is simply one of the most extraordinary films ever made.
THE LIGHTING
In Blade Runner the lighting is what the professionals call ‘moody’ – the set and the actors are lit in low light to create a mood – here a mood of people living on the edge, of menace and suspicion. Shafts of light illuminate specific objects or people. Look at the scene where Deckard (Harrison Ford) visits the oriental looking optical instrument maker. The market swirls with heat, energy and atmosphere. It is very human in contrast to the cold replicants that are the antagonists of the film.
Things to look for in Lighting:
• Is the lighting hard – lots of dark shadows and hard edges as in film noir.
• or soft where the scene appears cosy and the light is diffused and may be slightly misty
• Where does the main or key light come from? Does it come from more less where the camera is placed or from the side? It may come from an obvious source such as a street light (the umbrella sequence in Singing In The Rain) or from the back to give silhouettes, or the side to be dramatic and emphasise facial features
• Some genres have lighting conventions such as horror where monsters and bad characters are lit from underneath – try it with a torch under your chin in a dark room – you look like a monster’s side-kick.
• A toplight can produce a spotlight effect that goes with musicals. In fantasy films a toplight suggests a character has superior or magical power see Lord of The Rings.
• Naturalistic lighting. A police or cop drama, and most soaps, will try to create a very flat, strip-light look to an office setting. They will make the scene look realistic with few highlights or shadows – a bit like a classroom. Using daylight through windows also creates a naturalistic look.
Soaps like to create a world that is familiar to the audience, so the lighting is low key for interior scenes like this one from Hollyoaks (C4 2007).
The set is a room in a suburban house. The lighting does not need to show details of the room or the character’s clothes as we know who they are, so these are not lit. A soft fill light illuminates the character’s faces so that we can concentrate on what they are saying.
• The sun. The best light source of all is the ‘current bun’ as gaffers (chief lighting technicians) call it. It is full spectrum light with all the colours perfectly in proportion, and it is very powerful – at midday too powerful as it gives dark shadows, so sunlight is often used as a light source by using a reflector. This gives a softer light with softer shadows.
• Colour. Filmmakers like to use filters on their camera lenses for a variety of reasons. They may want to take out some of the reds and yellows to give a more naturalistic ‘washed out’ effect, or to heighten the reds and intensify the colours to create a happy mood or emphasise the significance of a scene as in the musical Moulin Rouge (2001) .
• Three dimensional lighting. Most characters in a scene from a good quality fiction film will be lit from three sources. This is known as three point lighting and gives a person shape, solidity and depth.
A key light usually from the front lights the face and body, a fill light from the side fills in the shadows created by the key light, and a back light lights the back of the head and body. Look for this in any dialogue scene in a film, or The Bill or a sitcom like Ugly Betty.
In Blade Runner the lighting is what the professionals call ‘moody’ – the set and the actors are lit in low light to create a mood – here a mood of people living on the edge, of menace and suspicion. Shafts of light illuminate specific objects or people. Look at the scene where Deckard (Harrison Ford) visits the oriental looking optical instrument maker. The market swirls with heat, energy and atmosphere. It is very human in contrast to the cold replicants that are the antagonists of the film.
Things to look for in Lighting:
• Is the lighting hard – lots of dark shadows and hard edges as in film noir.
• or soft where the scene appears cosy and the light is diffused and may be slightly misty
• Where does the main or key light come from? Does it come from more less where the camera is placed or from the side? It may come from an obvious source such as a street light (the umbrella sequence in Singing In The Rain) or from the back to give silhouettes, or the side to be dramatic and emphasise facial features
• Some genres have lighting conventions such as horror where monsters and bad characters are lit from underneath – try it with a torch under your chin in a dark room – you look like a monster’s side-kick.
• A toplight can produce a spotlight effect that goes with musicals. In fantasy films a toplight suggests a character has superior or magical power see Lord of The Rings.
• Naturalistic lighting. A police or cop drama, and most soaps, will try to create a very flat, strip-light look to an office setting. They will make the scene look realistic with few highlights or shadows – a bit like a classroom. Using daylight through windows also creates a naturalistic look.
Soaps like to create a world that is familiar to the audience, so the lighting is low key for interior scenes like this one from Hollyoaks (C4 2007).
The set is a room in a suburban house. The lighting does not need to show details of the room or the character’s clothes as we know who they are, so these are not lit. A soft fill light illuminates the character’s faces so that we can concentrate on what they are saying.
• The sun. The best light source of all is the ‘current bun’ as gaffers (chief lighting technicians) call it. It is full spectrum light with all the colours perfectly in proportion, and it is very powerful – at midday too powerful as it gives dark shadows, so sunlight is often used as a light source by using a reflector. This gives a softer light with softer shadows.
• Colour. Filmmakers like to use filters on their camera lenses for a variety of reasons. They may want to take out some of the reds and yellows to give a more naturalistic ‘washed out’ effect, or to heighten the reds and intensify the colours to create a happy mood or emphasise the significance of a scene as in the musical Moulin Rouge (2001) .
• Three dimensional lighting. Most characters in a scene from a good quality fiction film will be lit from three sources. This is known as three point lighting and gives a person shape, solidity and depth.
A key light usually from the front lights the face and body, a fill light from the side fills in the shadows created by the key light, and a back light lights the back of the head and body. Look for this in any dialogue scene in a film, or The Bill or a sitcom like Ugly Betty.
COSTUME AND MAKE-UP can sometimes assume importance to the viewer only in a period TV drama such as BBC’s The Tudors (Oct 2007), where the magnificent and period accurate costumes give the modern looking characters a historical presence.
The sense of period realism is created purely by the costumes and original 16th century locations such as Hampton Court. The actors’ faces deliberately look modern to appeal to a 21st century audience, and show that people have not really changed, just the period in which they lived.
The sense of period realism is created purely by the costumes and original 16th century locations such as Hampton Court. The actors’ faces deliberately look modern to appeal to a 21st century audience, and show that people have not really changed, just the period in which they lived.
A period film such as Grease which was made in 1978 but set in the 1950s, uses costume and make-up and props like classic cars to suggest the look and feel of the time.
The acting and language and to a certain extent the settings are modern, so the most obvious signifiers of period have to be the costume and make-up, which includes hair style as a very important signifier of period.
Certain genres like Sci-fi and Horror require heavy use of prosthetic make-up to create the monsters and aliens that the audience expects.
All actors use make-up in even the most realistic and modern scenes. Lighting and Close Ups mean that actors need some make-up to keep their skin tone, facial features and the continuity from one scene to the next. If an actress turns up on the set of a romantic comedy with a large pimple on her face which was not there yesterday, then make- up have to make it disappear, which they do very effectively.
Costume and make-up can be used as a form of parody as in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003–2007) where the setting is ‘fantasy pirate land’ around about the 18th century. The costume and props suggest the traditional time of pirate stories that goes with Capt Hook in Peter Pan.
The acting and language and to a certain extent the settings are modern, so the most obvious signifiers of period have to be the costume and make-up, which includes hair style as a very important signifier of period.
Certain genres like Sci-fi and Horror require heavy use of prosthetic make-up to create the monsters and aliens that the audience expects.
All actors use make-up in even the most realistic and modern scenes. Lighting and Close Ups mean that actors need some make-up to keep their skin tone, facial features and the continuity from one scene to the next. If an actress turns up on the set of a romantic comedy with a large pimple on her face which was not there yesterday, then make- up have to make it disappear, which they do very effectively.
Costume and make-up can be used as a form of parody as in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003–2007) where the setting is ‘fantasy pirate land’ around about the 18th century. The costume and props suggest the traditional time of pirate stories that goes with Capt Hook in Peter Pan.
THE ACTING
Analysing the acting in a media text is possibly the hardest part of text analysis. It is too easy and not at all analytical to say the acting is either realistic or wooden. Describing an actor’s performance is subjective.
It is possible to see if an actor is creating a believable role – believable in the sense that you as a member of an audience can believe in that character existing in the real world. Much of that has to do with the writing of the script and the direction as much as the acting.
Many media texts do not set out to be realistic or to have believable characters. Think of the Wizard of Oz (1939). We have to first believe that Dorothy is real and lives in a real house in a real place, Kansas – so part 1 is in black and white. Then we can accept the story in colour where all the characters are deliberately unbelievable, and non-realistic although with some human characteristics.
The story is highly entertaining, and it is an allegory about finding your own lion-like strength within yourself. So ‘realistic’ acting is not what is required to be the Tin Man. The notion of what is natural and realistic changes with time.
We can analyse actors performances under these criteria:
Analysing the acting in a media text is possibly the hardest part of text analysis. It is too easy and not at all analytical to say the acting is either realistic or wooden. Describing an actor’s performance is subjective.
It is possible to see if an actor is creating a believable role – believable in the sense that you as a member of an audience can believe in that character existing in the real world. Much of that has to do with the writing of the script and the direction as much as the acting.
Many media texts do not set out to be realistic or to have believable characters. Think of the Wizard of Oz (1939). We have to first believe that Dorothy is real and lives in a real house in a real place, Kansas – so part 1 is in black and white. Then we can accept the story in colour where all the characters are deliberately unbelievable, and non-realistic although with some human characteristics.
The story is highly entertaining, and it is an allegory about finding your own lion-like strength within yourself. So ‘realistic’ acting is not what is required to be the Tin Man. The notion of what is natural and realistic changes with time.
We can analyse actors performances under these criteria:
Appearance - how the actor appears in the role - big, small, the right size. Costume and make up can help an actor build a character – Johnny Depp in Pirates.
Movements – an actor’s movements can enhance the believability of the character and increase the amount of information about the character
Gestures – gestures are helpful to creating the character – check Johnny Depp in Pirates.
Facial expressions – important in whether a character is sympathetic or not
Vocal delivery - very important in delivering the lines so that comprehensive meaning is understandable to the audience.
Movements – an actor’s movements can enhance the believability of the character and increase the amount of information about the character
Gestures – gestures are helpful to creating the character – check Johnny Depp in Pirates.
Facial expressions – important in whether a character is sympathetic or not
Vocal delivery - very important in delivering the lines so that comprehensive meaning is understandable to the audience.
SOUNDTRACK
Media Language involves the use of sound and music to convey meaning and often to work on the emotional impact of a scene. The soundtrack of a film is a very complex mix of:
- dialogue recorded on location
- dialogue recorded after filming, and dubbed in sync with the lip movement of the actors – virtually all the dialogue on major movies is post- synched in a dubbing studio to get a very clean high definition sound
- diagetic sound or music. Sound or music that is recorded on location as it happens.
- non-diagetic sound or music. Pre-recorded music or sound that is added to the soundtrack during the audio editing process..
- sound effects(FX) - these may be recorded on location and added later or they may be created for a scene such as a gun shot, the sound of a man being punched, cars crashing etc. Hollywood does these extra sound FX in a Foley studio, which you can see working on a tour of Universal Studios – (picture of Foley studio at Universal)
Commentary - documentaries of all types have a commentary recorded as a ‘voice over’ the pictures, explaining what is happening or moving the story forward.
The mixing of the soundtrack can take longer than the shooting of the film. Creating a multi layered surround-sound soundtrack for use in a modern Dolby cinema or home video set up is a complex audio project. For a musical like Moulin Rouge (2001) the soundtrack took as long as two years, and is marketed as a CD in its own right.
Media Language involves the use of sound and music to convey meaning and often to work on the emotional impact of a scene. The soundtrack of a film is a very complex mix of:
- dialogue recorded on location
- dialogue recorded after filming, and dubbed in sync with the lip movement of the actors – virtually all the dialogue on major movies is post- synched in a dubbing studio to get a very clean high definition sound
- diagetic sound or music. Sound or music that is recorded on location as it happens.
- non-diagetic sound or music. Pre-recorded music or sound that is added to the soundtrack during the audio editing process..
- sound effects(FX) - these may be recorded on location and added later or they may be created for a scene such as a gun shot, the sound of a man being punched, cars crashing etc. Hollywood does these extra sound FX in a Foley studio, which you can see working on a tour of Universal Studios – (picture of Foley studio at Universal)
Commentary - documentaries of all types have a commentary recorded as a ‘voice over’ the pictures, explaining what is happening or moving the story forward.
The mixing of the soundtrack can take longer than the shooting of the film. Creating a multi layered surround-sound soundtrack for use in a modern Dolby cinema or home video set up is a complex audio project. For a musical like Moulin Rouge (2001) the soundtrack took as long as two years, and is marketed as a CD in its own right.
The editing of a moving image product is the final area of media language to look at. Modern editing of film and video is on computer editing software such as AVID or FINAL CUT Pro.
This is a non linear digital process allowing the editor to put pictures and sound together in any order and in any way he or she chooses.
There are a huge number of video effects that can be used, and because everything is in the digital domain Computer Generated Images (CGI) can be added.
Editing is exciting and very satisfying when you see the finished product, but it does take a lot of time. Look for the basic cut between two shots, a fade also known as a dissolve where one picture dissolves in to another and a video transition where one picture changes to another picture via a transition effect.
In a traditional non-CGI television drama, such as Hollyoaks (C4) or Robin Hood (BBC), the editor has to create the film from the shot material using dialogue recorded on location. The director will have covered most scenes by shooting them several times using different camera angles and shot sizes. This gives the editor, working with the director, various options to create meaning from a scene.
The juxtaposition of shots is particularly important for storytelling and the connotation of the whole piece. A quiet intimate romantic scene of two people together may be followed by a harsh cut to a fast moving car or other dramatic action. The pace and rhythm of a film or episode are decided in editing.
Editing can play with time...
Some scenes are cut out and many scenes are shortened to keep up the pace.
A crook drives up to a house in his Hummer and in the next shot he is on the roof, and in the next he is breaking into the safe. Or if it is thriller based on the crook stealing the diamonds and he is up against James Bond, then this same scene could take ten minutes to ratchet up the tension.
This is a non linear digital process allowing the editor to put pictures and sound together in any order and in any way he or she chooses.
There are a huge number of video effects that can be used, and because everything is in the digital domain Computer Generated Images (CGI) can be added.
Editing is exciting and very satisfying when you see the finished product, but it does take a lot of time. Look for the basic cut between two shots, a fade also known as a dissolve where one picture dissolves in to another and a video transition where one picture changes to another picture via a transition effect.
In a traditional non-CGI television drama, such as Hollyoaks (C4) or Robin Hood (BBC), the editor has to create the film from the shot material using dialogue recorded on location. The director will have covered most scenes by shooting them several times using different camera angles and shot sizes. This gives the editor, working with the director, various options to create meaning from a scene.
The juxtaposition of shots is particularly important for storytelling and the connotation of the whole piece. A quiet intimate romantic scene of two people together may be followed by a harsh cut to a fast moving car or other dramatic action. The pace and rhythm of a film or episode are decided in editing.
Editing can play with time...
Some scenes are cut out and many scenes are shortened to keep up the pace.
A crook drives up to a house in his Hummer and in the next shot he is on the roof, and in the next he is breaking into the safe. Or if it is thriller based on the crook stealing the diamonds and he is up against James Bond, then this same scene could take ten minutes to ratchet up the tension.