What is Mise-en-Scène

Everything that communicates to us within the frame is part of the Mise-en-Scène. This is A French term meaning what is put into a scene or frame  and is constituted by all the visual information in front of the camera and is able to communicate essential information to the audience. The Mise-en-Scène is an essential part of the director’s creative art.

The Mise-en-Scène made up of various elements which all help to convey the message wanted by the director.

Elements of Mise-en-Scène

1. Settings & Props: very important in the visual conveyance of information to an audience. They work to convey the story. Props are an essential tool to the character’s action and to the narrative of the character: most characters have some elements to distinguish them and they do become important depending on how much they interact with it. Settings help the viewer to understand where the character is in the frame or in the location. It actually assumes as much importance in the total film as the action, or events (e.g. Manhattan in Woody Allen films). The set may represent exactly a particular place or it might be deliberately constructed to recreate the possible, improbable or even impossible location: they contribute the dramatic impact and add to the meaning to the film’s narrative orienting the viewers. The settings’ ability to enhance the narrative is also accompanied by props which are also part of the control that directors dictate in film art: selecting and arranging elements of setting is a very creative ability.
2. Costume, Hair & Make Up: they can be instant indicators to the audience of a character’s personality, status or job. For instance, the costume of the character of Cruella Deville reflects her evilness in term of colours and shapes. Costume and make up accuracy is necessary for period pieces so that the illusion created by the narrative e is not spoiled: verisimilitude concerning historical reality is indispensable to establish authenticity.
3. Facial Expressions & Body Language: characters can speak volume through body language before even speaking: it may also indicate how a character feels towards another character or it may also reflect the state of the relationship between two or more characters. These elements are used by directors to support the narrative as well as helping to develop the thematic unity of a film: figure expression refers to the facial expressions and posture of a n actor, while the figure movement refers to all other actions of the actors including gestures. The appropriateness of expression of the actors and the control that the director has over the actor’s movements are two essential elements in films: actors are used by directors as vehicles of expression.
4. Lighting and Colour: even if they are part of the same element this two aspects should be considered separately. Lighting can be used to achieve a variety of effects: it can highlight important characters or objects within the frame; to convey characters personality by making them look mysterious, for instance, by shading sections of their face and body; it can also reflect a characters’ mental state and hidden emotions. We can identify different types of lighting: Low key Lighting which is created by using only the key and back lights: it produces sharp constants of lights and dark areas; High key lighting where more filler lights are used. this lighting is natural and realistic to our eyes it produces brightly lit sets or sunny days; High contrast lighting typically employed by noir and black and white films lighting became part of the framing: the light is used as an aesthetic; Natural Lighting where the lighting obey the rules of physics (e.g. paper man with natural lighting and hazy lights in the distance). Instead, the primary types of directional lighting (which helps to define the setting of a scene by manipulating it) are five: frontal lighting, used to eliminate shadows from a scene; side lighting, causes the features of an object to cast sharp shadows; back lighting illuminates only the edges of an object which is ideal for a silhouette effects; under lighting coming from below the object or character and tends to distort the features and shape of the object; top lighting shines from directly above the objects in the scene. colour, on the other hand, is used in association with emotions, however it differs from culture to culture. Some films have a consistent and distinctive colour palette such as “Amelie” ochre, browns and warm colours. Colours in films can also disrupt our eyes creating depth and create a contrast.
5. Positioning of characters/objects within the frame camera positions are able to convey the action and progress the narrative: from the way a character, or object, is positioned within the frame, the viewer may be able to tell about their status, their intention or relationship to another character or to the frame itself. Films can be considered as a sequence of frames, so it can be helpful to apply some guidelines to position characters, or objects within the frame, such as the rule of thirds, which divides the frame in three vertical and three horizontal lines creating four sweet points that attract the viewer attention. The position of the camera creates a visual effect. Part of the Mise-en-scène is also what is in focus or not: the distance from the near to the farthest that objects are in focus is known as Depth of field. We can have a deep focus where everything is in focus, which means that there is a use of the camera lens and lighting together so that both close and distant planes are shown in sharp focus, which helps to emphasise a character or object that appears far away. The shallow focus, instead, brings the main subject in focus, making the audience look directly at the character. The effect will change depending on how close or how far away the camera is from the subject. The following are some shot length:

Extreme close-up: which gives us very little informations, we can only see the character, bringing us very close to a person experience for instance.

Close-up: which gives the audience a bit more of Information but still limited and still tells to focus on that moment which is useful to create a feeling of intimacy.

Medium shot: still relatively close shot, usually showing a character from the waist up. A medium shot is used to emphasize both the actor and their surroundings by giving them an equal presence on screen.

Long shot: a view of a scene that is shot from a considerable distance, so that people appear as indistinct shapes.

Extreme long shot: a view from an even greater distance, in which people appear as small dots in the landscape if at all. No expression is visible and the characters get overwhelmed by the environment.

The camera within a shot can also move:

Pan shot: the camera is mounted on a non-moving base. The camera pivots on its axis along the line of the horizon pans left to right.

Tilt shot: The camera can move up or down while fixed on its axis.

Travelling shot (dolly shot): the camera can move forward or backward while fixed on its axis on a track.

Crane shot: The camera can move in and out and up and down while fixed on a mechanical crane.

The framing of a scene can be Onscreen, the space image is the one that is contained within the borders of the screen; or Offscreen, where the space is a suggested, by the character usually, image that is left to be imagined by the viewer.

ELEMENTS of MISE-EN-SCENE By Gail Lathrop and David O. Sutton (Article Summary)

Research Activity 1

Research Activity 2

Anomalisa. Charlie Kaufman 2016

 Research Activity 3

                 Hitchcock, A. Rebecca (1940)

Research Activity 4

The Elements of art are the basic components of art-marking. It is impossible to create a work of art without using at least one of the seven elements of art. Artworks can also be analyzed according to the use of the elements in a work of art.

The Elements of art are stylistic features that are included within an art piece to help the artist communicate.

Form: every three dimensional object, which has a length, width and height, has a form. We can Identify two different types of forms: the Geometric ones and the Organic forms. The Geometric forms falls into a specific category and are typically man-made; some examples are the cone, tube, sphere or cylinder. On the other hand an organic form does not have a specific name associated with it since they are compared to naturally occurring forms. An artist goal is the one of recreating the illusion of a down form and he or she can accomplish that by observing how light reacts on the specific object in real life. There can be different elements to identify: highlight – the area where light is hitting the object directly-, midtone – the middle value of the local colour of the object-, core shadow – area shaded on the object-, cast shadow – areas shaded on the surfaces surrounding the object itself because the object blocks the light from it, reflected highlight – area on the object that is lighter because of reflected light off of surrounding objects.

Colour: in Art has a very important role and features, it has an effect on our mood and behaviour and refers to reflected light. In Art and films too colour has the ability to subtly manipulate the audience, affecting them physically (altering mood and feelings since it affects the centre of emotions in the hypothalamus), has a psychological effect (colours have a different impression of weight and size). the theory behind colour is split in three parts and each part is built upon the previous:

• The colour wheel, theorised by Isaac Newton which offers a visual representation of the colours separating them into a spectrum found in prism they are arranged in a circle and the primary colours (yellow, red and blue) are equally spaced; the colour wheel is composed by Primary, Secondary and Tertiary colours. Primary colours (yellow, red and blue) can only be created through the use of natural pigments and are used to create the colours on the colour wheel. Secondary colours (orange, green and purple) are generated by mixing equally any of two primary colours so the combination of yellow and blue would create green, or mixing red and blue creates purple and red plus yellow is equal orange. Tertiary colours (red-purple, red-orange, blue green, yellow-green, blue-purple, yellow-orange) are, instead, created by mixing equally a primary colour with a secondary colour.
• The colour values, a value of a colour determines the darkness or lightness of it. A hue, pure colour, can be affected by adding white, producing a tint, or black, producing a shade, to it.
• The colours schemes, which are patterns with which colours are put together an a clever way. The monochromatic scheme represents none colour with its shades and tints. The analogous scheme, shows colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel. The complementary colour scheme, showing colours found directly across from each other on the colour wheel and offers great contrasts. Three colours found on the colour wheel which are equally spaced apart from each other are part of a colour triads scheme. Warm colours scheme is associated with warm things and cool colours scheme is associated with cool things.

Space: in art space can be the area around, above and within an object. An artist accomplishment can be recreate the illusion of space in his or her artworks. There are several techniques to achieve so: overlapping, positioning closer object and one prevents the view of the other creating the illusion of depth; placement, for example, an object placed higher within the picture it will appeal further away; size, smaller object will appear further away from the viewer; detail, having less detail on an object further away is more realistic; colour and value, further away objects tends to be cooler in temperature and lighter in value the closer they are the warmer darker in value they appear; perspective, a drawing created using linear perspective using lines to create the illusion of space on flat surfaces, all the parallel lines (orthogonals) in a painting or drawing using this system converge in a single vanishing point on the composition’s horizon line – we can identify 4 major types of perspective defined by the number of vanishing points lying on the horizon line: 1 point perspective, 2 point perspective, 3 point perspective and multi-point perspective; positive space, in the shapes or forms of interest; negative space, which is the empty space between the shapes or forms.

Texture: alludes to the way an object may feels to the touch or looks as it may feel if it were touched. A texture can be: Visual, 3D surface imitating a real texture; invented, 2D pattern created by using lines and shapes repeated; rough texture, which reflect light unevenly; smooth textures, instead reflect light evenly; matte, a surface that reflects a soft, dull light (shiny surfaces are the opposite); impasto, a painting technique in which the paint is built up on the surface to create a texture. Values are very useful in revealing the illusion of texture.

Line: the most basic element of art: a moving dot that controls a viewer’s eye it can describe edges it can indicate form as well as movement. Such techniques are hatching and cross hatching which are linear drawing techniques that can be used to create texture, value, and the illusion of form and light and is mostly used to create a full range of value. Contour lines help showing where an object ends. Line quality refers to the thickness or thinness of a line helping create the illusion of form in a drawing. Vertical lines move up and down without any slant, whereas horizontal lines are parallel to the horizon. Diagonal lines are lines that slant and zigzag lines are a combination of diagonal lines. Curved lines change direction gradually. A line variation helps adding interest to the lines. Lines can also be long or short and wide or skinny but also rough or smooth (texture).

Shape: when a line is enclosed a shape is created: they contribute to the balance within a work. They have a length and a width. Shapes can be geometric, regular shapes following math rules, and organic shapes which are freeform and seem to follow no rules.

Value: deals with the lightness or darkness of a colour. Showing full range of colours in an artwork is very good where there is an ample amount of light values (called tints) and dark values (called shades). Using a value scale, helps to create a full range of value.

The early usage of animation was about exploring its potential and was really influenced by the new vision of the century: in a context full of social change and political revolution, the role of all the arts were also questioned and re-defined by their most influential exponents. Among the famous individuals who contributed to the progress of Animation we can find James Stuart Blackton who introduced animation and other important film techniques that helped shape and stimulate the development of cinematic art: one of most famous works was “Humorous Phases of a Funny Face” (1906) which can be considered to be the earliest surviving American animated film where single exposures of drawings were simulating movement where the presence of an artist is only suggested to the audience.

Blackton pioneered stop frame animation. He brought innovation in the process of production in the industrial organisation making it more efficient and effective by employing faster or simpler working methods so that he could manage multiple films at once.

“Enchanted Drawing” (the first animated sequences recorded on standard picture film) is another famous work of his, where Blackton actually interacts with its drawing making it come to life.

One of the earliest pioneers of animation, along with Blackton was Émile Cohl: he is considered to be the creator of the first fully animated cartoon: ‘Fantasmagorie’ (1908). Even if It shared a similar look with Blackton’s chalk animation, there was a notable difference between Blackton’s characters and his: Cohl’s animation was drawn on hundred pieces of paper.

in the 1880’s Cohl and Jules Levy (who was the founder) were members of the artists and journalists movement called the “Incoherent”. The Incoherents presented work which was deliberately irrational and iconoclastic, “found” art objects, nonsense humoristic sketchs, drawings of children, and drawings “made by people who don’t know how to draw.”

“Cartoons, which rebuff so ferociously painterly realism and filmic naturalism are set in a universe of transformation, overturning and provisionally”

This statement was created by modernist movements fro whom animation became an extension of their work and innovative thinking: the role of Art is defined during a time where anarchy was exploding into the cultural scene when Modernists (both a philosophical movement and an art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries) and Dadaists (art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war) also questioned the difference between high and popular culture – Art was never available to the people only for educated and wealthy to appreciate and understand it. This necessary debate arouse from the division in terms of accessibility to creativity. Animation in the midst of these polemic arguments softened the edges between his and mass forms of culture and was able to cross social and cultural divisions: from its very early stages animation was destined to be a multi-cultural, multifunctional medium fuelled by technological change. The avant – garde interest in animation is part focused upon the formal aesthetic potentials of film and animation, line and form movement and rhythm colour an d light.

There are several inventions which helped, in the1900, transforming production possibilities and facilitating assembly line production setting a path for animation:

• 1913 Raoul Barré, a French Canadian painter, cartoonist, animator of the silent film era, had invented the peg system which provided a universal registration system by creating common relationship with the background or the viewer’s point of view where the animated images shared foundation with each other.
• 1915 saw the introduction of cel: a transparent sheet used in the process of hand-drawn animation;

Mass production was priority since mass communication was a first concern, and America became land of filmmakers, immigrants coming over from Europe after the Wars in the midst of social reforms in Europe; European culture is abandoned in favour of American technology:

• John Randolph Bray (1879-1978) was a pivotal figure in the development and organisation of the animated cartoon industry in the United States: he introduced the printed background and releasing the first animated colour film “the debut of Thomas cat” in 1920; it was produced by Earl Hurd for Bray Pictures using the Brewster Colour film process.
• American animator, inventor, film director and producer, and studio founder and owner Max Fleischer was very influential in the whole process of animation. Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope, a time and labour saving device in which live-action film frames are traced as a guide for animated action. Brother Dave’s on-camera performance in a clown suit was rotoscoped into the character Ko-Ko the Clown, who starred in the “Out of the Inkwell” 1915

• Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator pioneer (he created the first animated documentary “sinking of the Lusitania” 1918). He is best known for the comic strip “Little Nemo” and the animated film “Gertie the Dinosaur”.

Audiences can be highly influenced by several media or entertainment platforms: newspapers and other kinds of informations (e.g. Television, magazines, events) have always been means of persuasion of very vast group of viewers. Nowadays these “traditional” means of information and persuasion have been sided by Social Media, Television and Web Sites.

Of course also Film and Animation can have other goals other that simple entertainment, becoming a very effective mean of influence and political persuasion: they can reach a large number of people and new technologies allow to produce more and more material capable of impressing its audience.

For this reason, in the last few decades, Print media has lost part of its importance progressively being substituted by new communication media: in particular some media platforms as social medias and podcasts have gained a great power of persuasion: when they are employed for propagandist intentions, the public can be easily manipulated due to the high sense of participation these means can usually lead to.

Also Films and Animation maintain their high power of persuasion thanks to the high number of new broadcast platforms they can use: more and more often these new platforms can mask subliminal contents that are easily dissimulated thanks to the impressive visuals they implement. The most common use of this power of persuasion is the commercial advertising: commercial communications are the outcome of thorough studies of the potential buyers and are produced with sophisticated techniques.

Nevertheless, sometimes communication media, and in particular films and animation are used to express personal struggle that the authors want to communicate to their public: in these cases these media assume their highest value because they become a way to share experiences and original points of view that can enrich the audience.

Also political persuasion makes a wide use of information and entertainment media: also politics are more and more spectacular because the new audience is used to impressive ways of communications and want to find the same modalities also in this kind of information.

Nowadays some sensitive issue are becoming more and more relevant: films and media are becoming a mean to explore and acknowledge some aspect of twenty-first century society as gender equality, race disparities, disability inclusion, ethical issues or political innovations.

All the considerations above can help to clarify how politics shapes media and communication: Cinema, Television and Documentaries have always been an important way of influence, but nowadays their transformation and progress make them more and more powerful means of persuasion.

Examples of politics affecting media in Animation:

“Wall-E” (2008)

Wall-e is an example of an animation film with a high political content well hidden behind entertainment and beautifully executed CGI. The first political message is the pointless use of Earth resources operated by mankind: the Earth where Wall-E (standing for “Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth” class) operates is full of rubbish and abandoned things that humankind left behind him when leaving the planet because all its resources have been exploited. World population is exiled on an immense spaceship where man are slaves of A.I. and robots. They have the illusion of having everything they want and build their happiness on superficial activities that distract them from the reality of facts: the movie can be considered a clear criticism over consumistic society and undiscriminated use of resources even if the apparent thread of the plot is just a robot love story.

Animated Documentaries

Animation has been mostly used to represent fiction and illustrate the non-fiction could constitute an issue: it is not conventional but has much potential. This potential, for instance, resides in its usefulness to represent what has not been reported.

What constitutes an animated documentary?

According to Honess Roe, something can be considered to be an animated documentary if it fulfills the following criteria. (Annabelle Honess Roe is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Surrey, UK. She has contributed chapters to a number of books and had articles published in Animation)

1. Has been recorded or created frame by frame.

2. Is about the world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator.

3. Has been presented as a documentary by its producers and/or received as a documentary by audiences, festivals or critics 

The employment of animation within a non-fiction context is not recent: it dates back to the early history of animation. In 1918 Winsor Mc Cay created what is thought to be the first animated documentary, “The Sinking of the Lusitania“. This work resulted from a lack of recorded footage of the incident itself: what the animator did was to recreate the events, as retold by survivors, using animation, trying to show that there is no distinction between live-action and animation in terms of their ability to show us reality.

However, the modern use of animated documentaries nourished the idea that animation’s illustrative function to be modest and discreet since it is mostly employed to clarify, explain, illustrate and emphasise.

What are the implications of using animation in a non-fiction context?

The first impression on animation is that it could alter reality of facts and by that not being completely objective, however this is one perspective on it: it can present the observable events and the world in non-conventional subjective, giving insights on the emotional and cognitive impact of a human experience, which means that it has the potential of shifting and broaden the limits of what and how we can show about reality, by offering new or alternative ways of seeing the world.

Animated documentaries can be ‘…means of accessing the now absent past, especially pasts from which the filmmakers have been ruptured due to trauma or other events that cause a disruption in the continuity of personal and collective memory.’ For example, Ari Folman’s animated documentary Waltz with Bashir explores into the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon war and it manifests his personal memories of the war through a first person narrative.

What issues arise from the use of animation in documentary?

One of the issues with animation is that whatever is in the scene can communicate something which could leads to a lack of objectivity: animation changes how documentaries are perceived, undermining the conventional but misleading perspective that they are authoritative and objective. Somebody could argue that the creative take of animation keeps it real, reminding viewers that they are seeing a subjective narration: helping us to think of animation as a viable means of documentary expression is John Grierson who refers to documentary ‘as the creative treatment of actuality’.

In other words, Animation and Documentary should work together so tightly that the facts narrated become undistinguishable from the way they are represented, and the events or the notions reported are completely merged with the mean used.

However, the power of animated documentaries to override the mere reality is undeniable: but this power is not to be intended as a lack of objectivity, as it must be used to involve the audience at a higher level, this way fulfilling the “educational” intent usually attributed to documentary itself. When this goal is reached, the animated documentaries deny the critic often moved to them of interpose a layer – the animation itself – between the reality and the audience: the viewers are engaged as well as they would be in a “traditional” documentary.

Could animated documentary potentially detract from the seriousness of the situation?

The opinion of Animated material has been changing over decades in parallel with the advance in technique and technology that relies behind it. Even if some exceptional goals can be archived nowadays in terms of “credibility”, the role of animation is far from being seen as a representation of concrete facts and events. However an important default of live action seems to be forgotten: behind the production of a documentary there is an idea, a direction that the narrative takes on in order to represent the fact, and those facts are always considered to be true by the audience; but, what if those facts are the result of a subjective perception? So, at what extent animated documentaries can really alter reality more than live action documentaries do? Sure, for animation it might be more obvious and exaggerated but isn’t it our concept and opinion over it a bit prejudiced? Or, shouldn’t live action’s roles and parameters be reconsidered as well?

Could  it prevent a direct engagement with the factual content of an animated documentary?Could this be positive?

The audience engagement with the facts reported by an animated documentary can be the same of a live action narration: animation can be able to involve the viewers on a very high level, as well as – and maybe even more – than “traditional” representation.

There is a historical attitude that animation is for children and is not suited to grown up material? How far do you agree/disagree with this?

Most of the time, in our culture context we tend to categorise things giving them a precise role and definition, so that there are no halos of doubts surrounding them. This could be the case of the idea that animation – or even comics – are “children material”, but there are several examples of animated works that adults have appreciated as much as children have, or even more due to their more experienced point of view. Moreover, the concept of synthesis of ideas and forms via animation requires innovative thinking as much as technical skills: symbols and metaphors behind the “childish” figures are in front of the viewer but somehow hidden from the sight of those who refuse to grasp them.

Could it lead to a more universal level of identification? Why do you think this might be?

I think that, even though some symbols and behaviours are not fully shared by all cultures, the animated representation of reality can help to override this differences, because it is nearer to a form of art as painting, and for this reason it tends to be someway more shareable by different societies and populations.

Mise en scène is a French term that refers to what is put into a scene or frame, it constitutes the visual information in from of the camera: is able to communicate essential information to the audience. As mentioned in the post of week 1, the Mise en scène is made up of various elements which all contribute lead the viewer in the right direction.

Gestures and poses of a character can add on to what we want to communicate: narrative is driven by the character. A Character doesn’t even really have to move to to maybe communicate an emotion or a state of mind. The features of a character are extremely important: from the way a character is designed, we can feel empathy with it, there are certain elements in its structure such as big eyes or mouth that have a strong power of communication making a character appealing too (babies and puppies have big eyes). But we could also have an affiliation with evil characters finding hope in them. The Gestures are how we express ideas or feelings through the body; creating natural gestures makes our characters feel believable. The line of action of a character dictates the intention of the action: most of the time it is necessary to break the rules of physics a little bit to to make it look right and readable.

It is difficult to develop a cohesive storyline but there are some definite rules that directors follow that may help, since that a consideration should be applied to put together a narrative in order for it to communicate.

A narrative is defined by the following rules:

• A successful narrative must competently handle a medium to present a claim of events that engage an audience and satisfactorily conclude. A story is a chain of events that comes to a conclusion, able to make some rational understanding of what is happening overall.
• All character-based narrative require the actors to have appeal and to perform convincingly in the role. Actors and characters should be able to extract their potential communication (for characters, animators are in charge).
• It stipulates that the directors create the appeal and that they extract the potential performance of the actors to communicate the story.

Directors can make innovative films by taking the rules to the limit, since is quite difficult to completely break them; they can alter things and change the structure of the classic narrative.

The structure of narrative itself comes from Aristotle’s Poetics. In 350 BCE, Aristotle wrote that the plot structure of a drama is formed like a basic triangle:

Ethos is about establishing your authority to speak on the subject.

Logos is your logical argument for your point.

Pathos is your attempt to sway an audience emotionally.

Our traditional three acts come from this triangle.

Basic structure of a narrative

Beginning (Exposition, something to overcome or a goal)

Middle (Rising action, Climax)

End (Falling action, Denouement)

However, the need for a more detailed structure was necessary since plots become more intricate. Gustav Freytag, a German playwright and novelist, wrote a book called Die Technik des Dramas. In it, he put forth the five-act dramatic structure.

5 Acts structure structure of a narrative (more detailed)

Act 1: the exposition for the audience 

Act 2: rising action, conflicts appear

Act 3: the climax, the problem get worse

Act 4: falling action, everything’s downhill 

Act 5: denouement or resolution

Giving the previous structure, how can directors avoid the predictable element? by altering, shifting and manipulating the elements of the structure: for instance after a temporary resolution there could be a reappearing complication. Once all the the key elements are there, there are potential to start at different point in the film.

Talking about innovation in narrative Animation, even though it does share conventions (Disney Hyperrealism which is the use of normal cinema in animation or conventional cinema in animation), but it does have its own potentials such as metamorphosis which has symbolism, metaphors: somehow animation allows us to explore animation in avery different way compared to live action.