What the heck is mise-en-scene
I would say it was basically the way the actors are arranged in a scene within the frame. Tarkovsky’s Stalker is the best example of brilliant mise-en-scene I can think of.
I don’t know what it is exactly and I’m not sure if many people could give an exact definition but I think it’s a combination of how the actors are arranged like Rumplesink says, camera angle, placement of props, etc.
What he said.
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Everything that’s in the frame.
http://www.imago.org/fotos/65c71905cb9310c783bf8f78cf6eb723.jpg
that would be the angle of the camera, the width of the frame, the colors of the glass, the angle of the glass in her head, of the bars in her chest, the amount and shape of the shards, the blood spatter near and far away. basically, as fredo said, everything
A fancy word for direction.
A fancy word for…visuals?
Basically how a director composes a frame visually (characters, setting, how they are placed and move within a frame)
I’m sorry but most of the definitions above are only partial, and that may be why it’s difficult for Jazzaloha to understand mise-en-scene. Everyone is trying to simplify the concept of mise-en-scene and it’s not a simple term.Yes, in the theater, it literally means “put in place” and usually refers to character blocking within a proscenium stage setting. But cinema is more complicated, in part because the camera can move, shift focus, and attract the eye in different ways than on stage (through shot scale, angle, lens choice, framing, and other devices).
Perhaps the best definition of the term as used in film study is in Louis Giannetti’s textbook Understanding Movies, and it takes 5 pages, with an example of a shot from Fritz Lang’s M. That’s because he systematically breaks down mise-en-scene into fifteen (15) separate elements all rolled together in every single shot in a film. Those elements can be summarized as follows:
1. The dominant. Where is the eye attracted first? Why?
2. Lighting key. High key? Low key? High contrast? All of the above?
3. Shot & Camera Proxemics. What type of shot (LS. MS, CU)? How far away is the camera?
4. Angle. High, low, or eye-level? What effect does this have?
5. Color values. What is the dominant color? Are there contrasting foils? Color symbolism?
6. Lens/Filter/Film Stock. How do these distort or comment on the scene?
7. Subsidiary contrasts. What are the main eye-stops as taking in the dominant.
8. Density. How much viual inofmration is packed into the image? Stark, moderate, or highly detailed?
9. Composition. How is 2-dimensional space segmented and organized? Is there an underlying design?
10. Form. Open or closed? Is the frame a window or a proscenium arch?
11. Framing. Tight or loose?
12. Depth. How many planes are in the image? Does the background or foreground comment on the midground?
13. Character placement. Center? Top? Bottom? Edges? WHY?
14. Staging positions. Which way do the characters look vis-a-vis teh camera?
15. Character proxemics. How much space is there between the characters? What does that mean?
The first assignment in my Intro classes is for students to pick any shot from any film and break it down according to these 15 elements, each time analyzing what effect the technique has on the meaning, mood, or characterization. This shows that Style is also Content. (I was going to post a sample student paper, but couldn’t master posting the image, which was the famous dinner scene from American Beauty.
1. The set
2. Lighting
3. Props
4. The actors
5. Blocking
Basically it refers to the aesthetic arrangement of elements within the frame…including the things Christine mentioned above, as well as composition and movement.
Frank: So, a fancy word for visuals? And what they represent?
I understand Jazzahola’s frustration. It always did seem like a strangely blanket term to me, seldom applicable. Any time a person compliments mise-en-scene, it only raises a plethora of more intricate questions.
Placement on stage.
Nice analysis from your student, Frank. Thanks for sharing. Here’s the shot in question to go along with the essay:
I think I get the hang of what mise-en-scene is, but then I always wonder, “So, what is the cinematographer’s role in mise-en-scene? Do he and the director have to agree? Who gets to be in charge?”
I’m very drawn to the visual makeup of film shots (I’m currently fascinated with Assassination of Jesse James) and I’m trying to learn all I can – The above is a question that I find myself asking, and I haven’t known where to go to get a good answer yet.
I still like my definition, and here’s why.
Since mise-en-scene is a French term, I’d like to approach it on French terms a little. Sometimes – not always – the billing above the directors name in a French film says "mise-en-scene. Unless the intention of this billing is to specifiy that Jean Renoir (for example) excluded himself from all dialogue development and the editing table, then mise-en-scene is being used to indicate all directoral responsabilities.
Beyond this is how the term is often emplyed by writers. Unless a writer is examining a precice point in the mise-en-scene, the term often comes off as being fairly general. It’s as if to say that we only look at movies, and do not hear them. The definition that Frank has provided might serve well during the silent years, but it doesn’t seem so now, because, as we all know, a movies audio comonents (including spoken dialogue) are almost, if not just as, important as the visual components. No one “reads” a frame of film with just their eyes.
The above paragraph is sort of debatable, I know, because there are instences when writers do employ the term as a way to refer only to the visual apscts of a film (but even that gets sticky, because of the cuts). But, since the term belongs to the French, I’ll let them define it.
I usually think of mise-en-scene as directon, or how a movie is organized.
Frank’s post should be very helpful. What helped me to conceptualize it was to contrast it to editing.
Take any given shot/frame. Everything you can see within the frame, the nature of everything you can see within the frame, actors, props, lighting, everything Frank/Giannetti mentions—mise-en-scene.
What film has that isn’t mise-en-scene is editing, this temporal aspect to the medium. Cuts and all that.
@FRANK: Love that book by Giannetti. My copy is worn-out and dog-earred from all the hours I’ve spent reading and re-reading it.
I’d say it pretty much covers mis-en-scene as well as anyone could in those 5 pages.
What Rumplesink said :)
I think what I’d add to Frank’s definition, which is a very good one and the way I understand it, is movement—movement of both the elements captured and the camera itself.
—PolarisDiB
@ Michelle: It’s been my experience that there’s no set way that a director works with the cinematographer (or set designer, for that matter). Hitchcock used to storyboard every shot, so that he claimed he never looked through the camera’s viewfinder while on the set. He just told the D.P. to shoot what was on the storyboard. Other directors leave the choice of lighting, camera angle, etc. entirely to the D.P. Some provide general instructions (“Keep it low key”), while others are much more explicit (“Use an inkie on the actress’s eyes and a 10K on the background; use a 25mm lens and pan left to right…”).
@Nathan M.: As a short-hand definition, equating mise-en-scene with direction is OK, although direction is something that applies to the WHOLE film, not just the individual shots. Direction also includes direction of the performers, including their vocal intonation, posture, gestures, line delivery, etc. — all of which is not usually covered under mise-en-scene. Direction also includes supervision of the editing, music, special effects (if used), script development, etc. — all of which are not usually part of the standard definition of mise-en-scene.
Yes, the French often use the term in credits for the director but they also use “réalisateur.” Truffaut made a sharp distinction between the auteur and the mere metteur-en-scene, who did not have a consistent vision or style. Nonetheless, it’s easier to call mise-en-scene directing, or shot composition, or blocking, or placement on stage (closer to the literal French definition) than it is to memorize 15 separate categories!
@Brian: You’re right. Direction often entails editing (or supervising the editing) and that process adds immeasurably to the overall look and pace of a film. In fact, it’s difficult to study the mise-en-scene of a quickly edited movie unless you freeze-frame the individual images. The dance numbers in Moulin Rouge, for instance, or the chase scenes in the Bourne films are not renowned for their mise-en-scene but for their editing. Mise-en-scene tends to privilege the single shot.
@PolarisDIB: I would agree with you. Giannetti should add 1-2 elements to mise-en-scene to include character and camera movement, both of which can dramatically change the mise-en-scene. (Think of the openings of Touch of Evil or The Player.)
From Rosenbaum:
“Mise en scène literally means “place on the stage,” making us aware that it is the director who places the actors, the décor, and the camera in relation to one another. It is the stage of filmmaking that takes place after the writing of the script, during the shooting, and before the editing, and because the commercial Hollywood cinema tends to break up these three activities according to a strict division of labor, the importance of mise en scène as a creative concept is that it is distinct from both of the other processes.
But there is another French term, in some ways an even more important one, that has never crossed the Atlantic to enter common usage in the U.S., in part because the concept behind it is a little more difficult to grasp: découpage. In terms of its popular French usage, it has three separate but interlocking meanings: the final form of a script, the breakdown of a film into separate shots and sequences prior to filming, and the basic structure of a finished film. (The verb découper means “to cut out” or “to cut up.”) The term découpage implies that there is a continuity between script and editing—a continuity imposed not by a writer, director, or editor, but by a filmmaker who carries the project through from beginning to end—and that mise en scène becomes a means toward an end in this continuity rather than an end in itself."
Decoupage seems like the more important term to describe what film artists do.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, one super complex French term at a time, Tex! Just when I thought I was getting the hang of mise-en-scene, you gotta mess me up. :)
Frank,
Breaking down a shot by those fifteen elements is appealing and daunting to me at the same time. I definitely don’t watch (or even analyze) film with that level of detail. Can you ever get to the point where you’re analyzing all fifteen elements simultaneously while watching a film?
Also, even with those fifteen elements, it still sounds like the term mise-en-scene essentially means “composition” and some of the shorter definitions people have contributed. The wikipedia definition includes intention—that is mise-en-scene implies the filmmaker using “everything that you seen in the frame” to give a certain tone to the film or communicate something about a character. Do you agree with this connotation? To me, it would justify the use of the term as that definition has a different flavor than simply saying composition, etc.
Btw, did you post your student’s paper and then retract it?
To everyone,
Thanks for the comments. It’s been interesting and helpful.
“A fancy word for direction.”
wow,the French language is fancy?so what if there were an Arabic term?
Since mise-en-scene is a French term, I’d like to approach it on French terms a little. Sometimes – not always – the billing above the directors name in a French film says "mise-en-scene. Unless the intention of this billing is to specifiy that Jean Renoir (for example) excluded himself from all dialogue development and the editing table, then mise-en-scene is being used to indicate all directoral responsabilities.
The French use of the word does not include all directoral responsibilities because most of the Hollywood auteurs the French coined the term to defend did not have final say over script and editing. Mise-en-scene is that which was inviolate against the studio: what is onscreen between the cuts. The billing of the director with “mise-en-scene” was more of a fad that you rarely see anymore.
Frank gave a very excellent breakdown of mise-en-scene, although I think it needs to include acting and camera movement.
“Can you ever get to the point where you’re analyzing all fifteen elements simultaneously while watching a film?”
As a temporal medium, it is the job of the director to draw your attention to the most important information, and a good and wary film watcher will be able to understand what is being said, plus nuances. However, there is an anecdote from this one movie critic (I do not remember whom) who said, “I used to bring a notebook to movies so that I could write down every aspect of the film I could think of—and learned that by doing such, I missed a lot of what the movie actually was expressing.”
In a way, one of the main reasons the art/entertainment debate continually arises here is that it is the job of an entertainment director to state things very simply, whereas the artist director (couldn’t say “art director” because that’s a crew member) tries to add nuances, subtlety, and ambiguity. Like most dichotomies, this is a false one, but serves a useful distinction for some people.
—PolarisDiB
“Can you ever get to the point where you’re analyzing all fifteen elements simultaneously while watching a film?”
The more one watches, with those concepts firmly grounded, it becomes purely reflex. It’s also why revisiting movies is so rewarding. Yeah, we’ve had this discussion a bunch, but it’s nonetheless true that that second look pays off, especially in more rarefied and complex kinds of work.
Personally, I think cinematic mise-en-scene transcends a shot-by-shot reading, because films are not read that way. No one talks about the mise-en-scene of a shot, they talk about the mise-en-scene of a movie, or perhaps a scene. In regards to cinema, mise-en-scene is a sum total or gestalt.
That’s right, Daniel. E.g., it’s almost impossible to read Hou, a most holistic filmmaker, in terms of shots. Have a look at Flowers Of Shanghai. Andre Bazin put considerable work into examining and stressing the importance of depth of field. Conversly, he was quite hard on the mere effects of “classical” editing. The simple geographically and psychologically logical (dramatic) cutting within a scene does not add anything to the intent of a scene, only adding emphasis. So why bother? If the scene has only one simple meaning why insult the audience’s intelligence with needless and obvious close-ups? Contrarily, if the scene is complex why presuppose only one meaning? (Donato Totaro) Stressing the unity of space and relationships of objects was Bazin’s project.
that second look pays off, especially in more rarefied and complex kinds of work.
Anyone who watched The Mirror more than once, tell me what was added by re-watching.
Jazzaloha
Even after looking up the definition of this term countless times, I always struggled with a clear understanding of this term (although the wiki-pedia definition was helpful). How is it different from the term staging? What would be great if people could give examples of scenes that illustrated the concept.