CHAPTER 5

Production Values

• Amount and quality of human and physical resources devoted to the image determines a film's overall style • Partly determined by a film's lighting style • Certain genres have distinct lighting styles • Source, quality, direction, and color work together with other elements to determine the overall mood and meaning of a scene

What Is Mise-en-scène?

• French for "what is put in to the scene" • Pronounced"meez-ahn-sen" • Mise-en-scene means literally"staging or putting on an action or scene" and thus is sometimes called staging. • In fact, the term originated on the theater stage. • A film's mise-en-scene is every thing we see in every shot: every object, every person, everything about their surroundings, and how each of these components is arranged, illuminated and moved around. • And very little of this is left to chance - virtually everything on-screen was carefully chosen and placed there by the filmmakers for a reason. • Over all look and feel of a movie • Sum of what we see and experience

Lighting

• Preproduction - designers include an idea of the lighting in their sketches • Production - the cinematographer determines the lighting once the camera setups are chosen • Lighting shapes the way the movie looks and helps tell the story • Lighting is a key component of composition

Composition: The Rule of Thirds

A convention that takes the form of a grid pattern that, when superimposed on an image, divides it into horizontal thirds representing the foreground, middle ground, and background planes and into vertical thirds that break up those planes into further elements Helps achieve onscreen distribution and balance, and visual continuity between shots

Design: Costume, Makeup, and Hairstyle

Actor Charlize Theron brings a great range And skill to her performances. Her characterizations are further enhanced by Costume, hairstyle and make up.

Composition: Kinesis

Kinesis: movement on-screen Kinesis - movement Movement of objects and characters within the frame Apparent movement of the frame itself The kinetic quality of many movies is determined by their genre Perception of kinesis may be influenced by many factors, such as the use of music in a scene without any physical movement

Composition

Organization, distribution, balance, location, and relationship of actors and objects in each shot

Design

Production Designer • Works with the director and director of photography • Responsible for the overall design concept • Supervises departments that create a movie's look • Creates visual continuity, balance, and dramatic emphasis

Mise-en-scène: Composition

Questions to ask yourself while watching films: • How are shots framed? Where are figures and props placed in the frame? • How does the film use movement? Are frames open or closed? How do the figures move? • How do the composition choices make you feel? • What do they make you think about? • How—and why—do the filmmakers do this? Remember! Nothing in a film's mise-en-scène is ever accidental; it is all designed to help tell the story.

Design, Part 2

Questions to ask yourself while watching films: • What are the elements of design in this scene? • How do the design choices make you feel? • What do they make you think about? • How—and why—do the filmmakers do this?

Composition, Part 2

Design and lighting function as elements of mise-en-scene. But what really makes mise-en-scene Work is how those visual elements are arranged within each shot. A shot's composition is the organization, distribution, balance and general relationship of objects and figures, as well as light, shade, line, color, and movement within the frame.

Italian Neorealism

Developed during World War II Influenced both narrative and design worldwide Nonprofessional actors, handheld cameras, shot on location Concerned with humanism and social conditions

What Is Mise-en-scène?

Every movie has mise-en-scène—they differ in their use, power, and purpose. Even animated films have setting, props, costumes, makeup, and lighting that are drawn, sculpted, and/or modeled on a computer as in this example from DreamWorks Animation's Trolls (2016).

Design, Part 3

How the look of the setting is determined • Set design • Décor • Prop selection

Design: Lighting

Illumination and shadow affect the way we see and interpret settings, makeup, and costumes, so during pre production, most designers include an idea of the lighting in their sketches.

German Expressionism

In German expressionism, highly stylized sets added to the radical look of films, as in this icy blue tinted drawing that conveys the the sense of unease of the town of Holstenwall in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Robert Wiene, director. • Gave objective expression to subjective human feelings and emotions through the use of design elements • Heightened reality of nonobjective elements - symbols, stereotyped characters, and stylization • Created a unified mise-en-scène for emotional impact • Extremely stylized mise-en-scène • Shot in the studio even when the script called for exterior scenes • Deliberately artificial lighting, emphasized deep shadows, and sharp contrasts • Actors externalized their emotions to the extreme

International Styles of Design

Just a few examples: • German Expressionism • German Realism (Kammerspielfilm) • Italian Neorealism

German Realist Cinema (Kammerspielfilm)

Kammerspielfilm, the German realist cinema, made innovative use of the moving camera and the subjective camera. • "Unchained" the camera, freeing filmmakers from the limitations of a fixed tripod • Subjective camera eye functioning as the eyes of a character • Intensified the audience's involvement in events onscreen • Extended the filmmaker's vocabulary to tell and photograph stories, influencing the conception and construction of sets

Composition: Kinesis, Part 2

Kinesis: movement of figures in the frame Figure - anything concrete within the frame (object, animal, person) Blocking - planning the positions and movements of the actors and the cameras Ordinarily, close physical proximity implies emotional or other kinds of closeness; this convention can be challenged.

What Is Mise-en-scène? part 5

Mise-en-scène has two major components: • Design (Set Design, Décor, Properties, Costume, Makeup, and Hairstyle) • Composition

Design: Soundstage

Soundstage: a windowless, soundproofed, professional shooting environment Using small-scale models and artificial fog, the filmmaker tricks our eyes into perceiving the trees and windmill in the background to be much farther away than they really are.

Design: Lighting, Quality

The quality of light used in any situation falls somewhere on a spectrum between hard and soft light. Hard light is direct, soft light is diffused.

Lighting: Direction

Three-point system (key light, fill light, and backlight) - Low-key lighting - ratio between lights and darks is harsh - High-key lighting - very little contrast between darks and lights - Lighting ratio - the balance between key and fill