Mise en Scene

Mise en Scene- What's in the scene?

Everything in front of the camera for the audience to help them work out what is going on.
It is Made up of 5 elements:

• Setting and Props
• Costume, Hair and Make up
• Facial expressions and body language
• Lighting and colour
• Positioning of characters/objects within a frame

Setting and Props:

• It can determine a genre e.g. Haunted house = Horror
• Can manipulate an audience expectation e.g. combat = action and violence
•  Particular props are found in particular genre's e.g. high tech gun = Sci-fi
• Time and day e.g. evening = horror

Costume, Hair and Make up:

• Indicates characters personality, status and Job e.g. scruffy clothes = less paid worker
• Where the film is set and society and culture it centres around
• Certain costumes can signify certain people e.g. school clothes = student

Facial expressions and body language:

• Indication of how someone feels and acts e.g. angry = scrunched up face
• Types of relationships between characters how they feel and look towards each other

Lighting and Colour:

• Highlights important characters e.g. most light on most important
• Insight to what characters could be like and their mental state e.g. dark = villain
• Low key Lighting, created by background lights and a sharp constrast e.g. horror/ or film noir
• High key Lighting, more lighter lights used, brightly lit e.g. Rom-com

Positioning of characters/objects within a frame:

• Important characters e.g. more likely to be centred
• Relationship between people e.g. far apart shows weakness and not close relationship
• Distance of camera