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’