Balancing Mise en scène

 Mise en scène

Mise en scène is the contents in a film, this includes the staging and arrangement of the environment. The main elements that help a viewer's focus include: Color, Contrast, Frontality and Size. Everything you see in a film is part of this rule except, the camera movements and angles that is cinematography. In Today's Blog we will look at examples of stills from film and make some of our own.

Stills From Films:

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001
This image represents Size.

In this scene even though the camera is zoomed on the ring in the snow this I personally think would be Size. In the frame it-self the ring takes up the majority of the screen creating the illusion of size importance or power. This is what the ring is in the story, the dark power and importance the key to victory. Wanting you to abuse its power to tempt you.

Wall-E 2008: This image represents Frontality.

In this still from Wall-E is a good representation of Frontality. When used in a fill it creates more emotions, and empathy makes you recognize the scene and its importance. I pick this scene especially for the romance it tries to do. But it also shows the loneliness from both of them. One filled with life and another out of this world but not really there.

Indiana Jones: The Raiders of the lost Ark. 1981
This image represents Contrast.

This still from the beginning of Indian Jones is a great representation of Contrast. The muted green and brown background then the leather and gold, the shiny materials all create contrast through color. The natural colors verse the unnatural colors. The Idol and Indiana Jones also have the contrast of reflection. They reflect the light. Like a coin in a empty basin. That shine attracts the eyes.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back 1980

    In this still from a film Star-War Episode:5 is an amazing representation of Color. The iconic coloring of the red and blue draw your eyes in to show the center conflict. This is a fight of two opposing primary colors; this is a form of visual color. The character is blacked out to show they are the key focus of the overall action. Other blacked out parts are visual cues to help focus the action or leading lines.

My attempts at Mise en scène:

This picture shows color.

This image shows size. 

This picture shows contrast.

This picture is my attempted at frontality.

My personal challenges using Mise en scène: 250-300

The most difficult picture to make almost 75% pure to the ideologies of Mise en scène was color and contrast. Why you ask? It is easy, because they share similar principles. Color is about contrast of colors with it being brighter or darker than the environment while contrast is the lighting, texture and different colors in the environments. I kept using color over contrast which the final picture because the lighting department off, so I had to relied on natural lighting from the sun and textures to make it fit all together. The add on with the color book was to show more contrast between the books. This challenge forced me to re-do multiple ideas and the movie stills along with that. The contrast picture with the books, heavily relies on breaking up a pattern by a new selection of books that has a different spine than the rest. So, I learned to use textures and breaking patterns over abusing color to get variety. 

Furthermore, all the other categories (size, frontality and color) had slight nick picks that took me awhile to get a photo I was satisfied with. The black and white picture of size was difficult because the lighting was not working with the scene, so I decided to go to black and white to create that more imposing feeling I was going for. 

The picture of the frontality I made was just a cliche romance but the flowers in the background where way to overcrowded when I first made it but afterwards and keeping it simply made the frontality stick out more. 

The color was quite the easiest. To encapsulate the points made contrast is the thing I struggle with the most in my opinion.