Re: what is mise-en-scene

From: "Penina Wiesman" <[email protected]>

Hi Mike,
My breakdown of the visual element is the same as yours: mise-en-scene
(shot composition), cinematography (camera placement and movement), and
montage (arrangement of shots).  I understand these three elements part of
a hierarchy of meaning, from the filmmaker's perspective, with
mise-en-scene playing the foundational step in the process.   Yet I've
always found mise-en-scene to be a particularly difficult concept for
students.  In part, this is because it really is such a huge concept with
so many different elements.  Included in my definition of mise-en-scene are
all the different components of a shot's design, including set, appearance
(makeup, costume, etc.), shot composition, and lighting, as well as
staging, and even some elements of performance.
But another reason mise-en-scene is so tricky for them could be that they
simply place more emphasis on cinematography and editing, I suspect because
these are the more glamorous elements of filmmaking, and the things that
make producing a film different from producing a play.  From their
perspective, then, most films will have one or two token "symbolic" choices
in composition, whether it's through color, lighting, a recurring prop, or
whatever, but otherwise, mise-en-scene is simply understood as the part
where all the creative details and cosmetic finishing touches are put in to
make the movie "look good".  So when we talk about mise-en-scene, many of
them seem to just tune out, as if this will not be something they trouble
themselves with when they make their own movies, but instead is something
to be delegated to others while they work on the "real" filmmaking.

To break them out of this misconception, I have a number of exercises I
like to use, right at the start of the topic.  There are any number of ways
to teach mise-en-scene, but I think the most important thing is to get
students into the proper frame of mind from the start, and to get them to
understand film as a communication medium first, and an art form second.
Understanding how film communicates information lets them recognize that
there are very few things in a movie that are haphazard; that a director
can choose to do nearly anything s/he wants when putting together a film,
and so virtually everything we see (and hear) is the result of meticulous
planning and, most importantly, *serves a purpose.  *When examining a film,
therefore, it is the students' (and our) responsibility to be perpetually
asking "why did the director choose to do it that way, and not something
entirely different?"
Now, this is an important lesson for any film student to learn, and
applicable to every element of film form, but for mise-en-scene, I like to
start by comparing it to a medium they're much more familiar with: written
text.  Mise-en-scene is essentially the visual equivalent of verbal
description one might find in a novel.  Putting together a scene in writing
is infinitely more difficult, since the writer is using a non-visual (and
non-aural) medium to describe things that we normally consume and process
with our eyes and ears.  It therefore requires exceptional skills to
effectively combine word selection and sentence construction in order to
effectively and engagingly describe appearance, surroundings, actions, and
sounds.  So filmmakers (and those in the theater) start at a huge
advantage, as their medium is audio-visual.
To highlight the importance of this function in both media, I always start
my discussion of mise-en-scene by having students read out loud a block of
descriptive text from a novel.  I try to choose something they are not
likely to have read (or maybe something they would have read in school but
either don't remember well or probably read the cliffnotes) nor seen the
movie/TV adaptation.  This is so that their imagination is initially guided
only by the author's words, not by their previous movie-watching
experience.  So Harry Potter is a no-go, but British film and TV are full
of adaptations of not-so-famous (at least, as far as the American school
system is concerned) literature.
After reading the text out loud, we discuss the picture the text has formed
in their minds.  We talk about how an author needs description because it
creates the space in which the narrative takes place (here I get to
introduce the term "diegesis"), which is necessary in order to draw the
reader into the story.  Next, I show them a still image of the same scene
from a movie/TV adaptation of the text, and have someone read the text out
loud again.  I explain that the mise-en-scene performs the same function as
an author's description, only in strictly visual terms.

Another trick I like to use (and not just when explaining mise-en-scene) is
to show examples of techniques that were done poorly.  Since the typical
objective of narrative film form is to make it invisible to the viewer,
relying only on great examples of filmmaking isn't always effective in
illustrating the importance of any given technique.  Instead, I firmly
believe that the best way to show students the importance of any element of
film form is to also show them what happens when a film does it really
poorly (My two go-to films for these kind of examples are always *Plan 9
From Outer Space* (1959) and *The Room *(2003), but I'm always finding new
examples in my journey through my netflix queue). Comparing the great
examples to the poor examples is perfectly suited for highlighting the
importance of mise-en-scene.

Finally, just like cinematography and editing, mise-en-scene can convey
multiple levels of meaning, both explicit and implicit.  Implicit meaning
always receives a lot of attention, but I feel like explicit meaning is
often overlooked because it just seems obvious to us.  And in many ways it
is.  Explicit meaning imparts key information to the audience so clearly
that we don't even think about how we know what we know about a story.  It
just seems "obvious".  But in order to really understand how film
communicates information, we have to force our students to take a step
outside their comfort zone and really look at how film communicates
information through showing rather than telling.  And mise-en-scene, which
specializes in subtly conveying tons of important information about our
story and its characters, is really a prime avenue for cultivating this
perspective.
To do this, I like to show a random shot from a nameless (that is, I don't
tell them the title) movie or TV show, and ask students to tell me what
basic information they get about this story, based solely on this still
image.  The objective is to force them to slow down and analyze a process
of communication that they go through every time they watch a movie, but
usually occurs so quickly and in the background that they take it for
granted.  So, for example, a shot of cars tightly crammed onto a three-lane
highway indicates traffic, and also tells us we're most likely looking at a
scene taking place in the second-half of the 20th century (the decade is
estimated based on the model of cars), either on a major interstate or
within 50 miles of an urban area; a light gray sky indicates daytime; we
might conclude the traffic is the result of either morning or evening rush
hour, construction, or a major accident.  There are any number of details
that convey all sorts of information and suggest all manner of narrative
paths, and having students scrutinize them really does give them
perspective on the communicative power of the visual, and the narrative
importance of mise-en-scene.

I hope I've helped, and not thoroughly confused you.  I didn't get much
sleep last night, so the above all makes perfect sense to me, but for all I
know, my carefully worded explanations could have just come off as jumbled
rambling, so feel free to ask any questions.

Best of luck!
Penina Wiesman

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