Approaches to Cinema 1: Film Language and Form Week 7: mise en scene (2)
Dec 08, 2014
Approaches to Cinema 1: Film Language and Form
Week 7: mise en scene (2)
elements of mise en scene
week 5 week 7
looking at setting and decor
what is the role of the production designer?
do they try to reflect the real world?
is the set design invisible or visible?
or do they invent a new world?
can the setting be considered a character?
key functions of set design
expresses emotionalstates
connotes fantasy
recreates the past
reinforcescharacterisation
generatesatmosphere
location shooting
location or studio?
location as marker of authenticity
Italian Neorealism
French New Wave
Contemporary TV crime drama
cinematic landscapes
landscape and national identity
landscape and genre
cinematic cities
city as labyrinth
city as territory
city as freedom
studio as landscape: the matte shot
a matte shot is wheredifferent areas ofimage are photographedseparately and combinedduring post-production
colour and film stock
first Technicolor film:Becky Sharp (Mamoulian, 1935)
first Eastmancolor film: Royal Journey (Bairstow, 1951)
Soviet film stock
colour and realism
unlike sound, adoption of colour was a gradual process
colour was ‘inauthentic’ and connoted excess and spectacle
interpreting colour
depends on cultural context
meaning is unstable
filters used to create a melancholycolour scheme colours can evoke
the past
colours createthematic contrast
functions of costume
constructs character
signals transformation
creates contrastbetween characters
costume and identity
fashion and identification costume as ‘spectacle’