Mise-en-scène
"You know so much, and you don’t know anything" (1:03:59).
Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957)
Points
for Reflection
John Harrington's A Rhetoric of Film, chp. 2
- What key element of a film scene is not encompassed by the concept of mise-en-scène?
- What does mise-en-scène convey or capture? John Harrington opens discussion with the word “aura.” What does he mean?
- The expressionism of German directors like Fritz Lang sometimes employed radically non-realistic mise-en-scène in order to convey what?
- What significant abilities of the human eye does a camera lack?
- What focal length for a 35mm camera approximates that of the human eye?
- Which type of lens dramatically extends the focal length—assuming the camera remains the same distance from the subject its recording—and which type contracts the focal length?
- Which type of lens makes it easier to distinguish the relative size of objects contained within the frame, a wide-angle lens or telephoto lens?
- What is the primary reason filmmakers employ lenses other than a 50mm lens?
- What types of emotional and physical effects does each lens type offer?
- Which type of lens offering greater depth of field, and which other type more easily allows for rack focus?
- Do you think scenes allowing for deep focus, a very deep depth of field, require more or less effort and attention on the part of the viewer? Why?
- Why might a director want the primary subject(s) in a scene to be out of focus?
- Which type of focus technique would you employ when trying to capture the first-person point of view of someone who was just hit over the head and is having difficulty bringing her/his surroundings into focus?
- If you wished to convey that the perspective of a lover currently looking at a subject through (in figurative terms) rose-colored glasses, what type of focus technique would you probably use?
- Can you recall any movies or TV shows that rely heavily on colored filters to create a particular tone, to indicate a shift back to the distant past, or to make a scene feel otherworldly?
- Does the common use for different types of film stock listed by John Harrington at all intimate which would be cheapest, and which most expensive?
- Which type of film stock creates a grainier, less precise image: “slow” and less sensitive film (e.g. 100 ISO), or “fast” and more sensitive film (e.g. 800 ISO)?
- What size of film stock would Lars von Trier have used when making low-budget movies on his own as a kid in the 60s? (It’s the same used by other budding filmmakers in their youth, including Steven Spielberg and J. J. Abrams.)
- Consider Tim Burton’s movies Batman (1989) and Alice in Wonderland (2010) with the assistance of stills from either film online. Which relies heavily on desaturated color, and which on saturated color?
- Towards which does the portraiture of modern still photography gravitate these days, overexposure or underexposure? Why do you think this is?
- What type of angled shot does action director Jerry Bruckheimer rely on (quite heavily), to grant his heroes an exaggerated sense of power and authority: low-angle or high-angle shots?
- Why might a director employ a “bird’s-eye” or “God’s-eye” shot from directly above a subject?
- Do you think the shaky cam, found footage style which takes “subjective camera” perspective to the nth degree, and which has infiltrated horror movies in the last two decades, to be more effective at creating anxiety in an audience than a style that relies on less kinetic camera movement?
- What types of natural light customarily characterize different times of day?
- What type of lighting conditions do you prefer when taking a selfie? Do you think about the direction and the color of lighting sources as much as you do when taking a pic of a friend? Do you like to ensure a fill light, do you seek out low- or high-key lighting, and do you rotate yourself or your subject to ensure the light strikes at a flattering angle?
September Track (1989)
Poul Anker Bech
Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu
