Film Art: An Introduction was written by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. It covers many aspects of film making including narrative, editing, sound, and genre. Chapters 4 and 5 cover mise-en-scene and cinematography, two of the most important visual aspects in film, covered in more detail below.
Mise-en-scene
Mise-en-scene (meaning 'putting into the scene') is all the components that go into a scene such as setting, costume and makeup, lighting, and even the actors.
Setting:
The setting in a film or TV show is where the events of the piece take place. It can be an existing location or it can be built in a studio. For example, for the German expressionist film, Metropolis (1927), a team built miniature buildings in a studio and camera angles were used to make these look bigger as if they were skyscrapers in a modern city.
Colours that are used in the setting can determine how the audience reacts to the piece as grays and blacks can signify darkness, poverty, and sadness whereas brighter colours such as pink or green, can represent happiness and wealth. However, red is more associated with the threat of violence or danger as it is usually linked to blood.
Parts of the scene can also be used as props during the narrative of the film such as the chocolate box in Forrest Gump (1994) which provides one of the film's catchphrases and also helps Forrest to build relationships with the other characters who join him on the bench at the bus stop.
This becomes a motif because it is used throughout the whole film to represent how Forrest interprets life because of his mother.
Costume and Makeup:
Costumes can be used much in the same way as settings and props but can also be used for only aesthetic purposes. They can give hints to a character's personality and even profession, like Robert De Niro's character Ben from The Intern (2015), as he wears a suit for most of the film showing he is formal, cares about his appearance, and works at a high end company.
Costume can also be combined with makeup to make actors look like figures from history, or make them look older or younger than they actually are, enabling texts to jump from present day to past or future without hiring several actors of different ages to play one part and allowing filmmakers to create biographies that explore the stories of people's lives.
Some films, such as La La Land (2016), use colour to support the change in the narrative through the costumes. Using this as an example, at the beginning, one of the film's main characters, Mia, and many of the extras around her, are dressed in bright colours to represent the vibrancy of her dream to become an actress, her youth, and the fun, carefree nature of her life as she socializes at parties .
Towards the end of the film, Mia becomes famous as she lands the lead role in a big movie and accomplishes her dream of becoming an actress. Therefore, she becomes more serious, important, and formal because of her work so her outfits lose their colour, becoming black and white.
In this above picture, the costume of Ryan Gosling's character, Seb, shows the concept of bleeding. This means the colour of his costume matches the colour of the setting closely. It can show conformity when used with crowds, make a character seem unimportant, or highlight their hands and faces by making these features stand out against the background and costume.
Lighting:
What the audience sees of a film's setting is controlled by the lighting. By highlighting or shadowing certain actions or features in a scene, attention can be drawn to the most important aspects. For example, the protagonist of a film may be spotlighted to show their significance in the narrative. Lighting's main features are its quality, direction, source, and colour.
Quality describes how bright the light is, and the direction explains where the light points to, such as top lighting which comes from above the actors as shown by the stage spotlights in this example from the film Rent (2005).
The source of the lighting is where the light comes from. The diagram shows the traditional three-point lighting used in many Hollywood films. The key light is the main source of light shining on the actor so is the brightest, usually shining on the front of the actor while the back light shines from the back and/or sometimes above. Between these lights there is a fill, helping to get rid of shadows and even out the illumination of the scene.
When both a fill and back light are used to even out the light and dark areas of a scene, this is known as high key lighting whereas low key lighting means there are big differences between the light and dark, usually created by dimming or completely getting rid of the fill light.
Colour is also important to lighting as film makers can choose to place filters in front of the white lights typical on sets. Therefore, the lighting in films can be any desired colour such as orange for candlelight or, as in Back to the Future (1985), blue to emulate when lightning strikes the clock tower.
In Space and Time:
When shots are balanced, it is said they have bilateral symmetry. Usually, the most important character (or characters), normally whoever is speaking, is placed in the center to avoid distraction from the rest of the scene. However, to make a character seem vulnerable, or to hide their reaction to something from the audience the shot can be off centered. This can also help create tension or make the audience aware something in the frame is about to alter, such as a character about to enter.
Audiences mostly notice changes in scenes when there is movement but they will also focus on what is important, such as the main character, even when they are not moving but extras or props are. The principle of contrast again highlights the significance of colour as white stands out on black, black stands out on white, bright colours stand out on dull colours and, when colours are equal, warmer colours are more prominent than cooler ones, helping highlight features of the frame.
An example of this is from the film Jackie (2016), as the main character is in the middle of the frame and made more prominent by her bright red outfit against the cool white background, showing she is central to the story's narrative.
Depth cues imply that the elements in the scene have depth and volume, rather than just being flat. This is acquired from mise-en-scene which shows the planes of a scene such as the foreground, middle ground, and background. When there are many planes, they often overlap but can be distinguished by their different colours. The most important depth cue is movement because of how it highlights depth and volume.
However, the distance between the front and back of a frame can be shown by aerial perspective (when the back planes are less clear than the ones in the foreground), and size diminution (when things are bigger in the foreground and smaller in the background). When the frame doesn't seem to have much depth, this is known as shallow-space composition, the opposite being deep-space composition, which shows a lot of depth as the foreground is usually larger than the background.
The image from Arrival (2016) below shows aerial perspective and size diminution, giving this frame a deep-space composition and highlighting the main character's reaction to what is going on around her.
Mise-en-scene can also control when an audience sees something in a frame and the period of time that something is present in a frame. If a scene has deep-space composition it can be made so that the coming action can be set up in the background before it is later present and noticed by the majority of the audience in the foreground.
This can also be shaped by frontality which is the concept that when a character is facing the front, more of the audience takes notice of them. Using this technique can highlight several characters in a scene as it can change over a scene's course. When a character is not facing the audience tension can be built by hiding their reaction to something, and therefore how they feel about it, from the audience.
All of these aspects, from the colours used to the way the performers are positioned in a shot, affect how the audience interpret, and therefore react to, the narrative of the particular scene in front of them. This is why mise-en-scene is extremely important, not only in cinema, but also in television, because it encompasses everything that is visible to an audience in each scene of a text.
Cinematography
Cinematography is all the work done on the film by the camera (position, angles, exposure) and after shooting is completed as the film is developed for exhibition (special effects, tone, speed).
The Camera:
The exposure of a shot is the amount of light that goes through the camera lens to illuminate the final cut of the scene. If an image is too dark it is said to be underexposed and if it is too light it is said to be overexposed or 'blown out' if only one element in the scene is too bright.
The amount of exposure in a frame can be edited after shooting but usually scenes are shot with the correct exposure. Like lighting, the exposure of a frame can be altered by placing a filter (a piece of glass or gelatin), into the camera lens or the printer during development. This was commonly used for the technique of day to night shooting, which used blue filters to cover the cameras during a shoot in the day making it look as if the scene was filmed at night.
Contrast is also important in cinematography as it can give a frame an emotion and make the audience pay attention to certain aspects. It is affected by exposure (lighting), filters, the choice of film stock used, how the film is processed, and the post-production work done. The most common use of contrast is pure black and white so that there is a large amount of colour in between. Technicolor is a good example of this as it made colours bold, such as in Singin' in the Rain (1952), which helped to give the film a flashy Broadway feel during the musical numbers such as The Broadway Melody Ballet.
When an image is mainly composed of white and black areas that boldly stand out so that there are not many colours in between, the image is said to be of a high contrast, the opposite of low contrast where there are no whites or blacks but colours seem to blend together.
The type of camera lens used on a shot also affects a film's cinematography as it can change a frame's perspective. This is determined by the lens' focal length which is determined as being the length from where the light rays meet in focus to the middle of the lens. This helps to categorize lens as follows:
A wide angle lens has a shot focal length (of 35mm or less in 35mm filming), meaning this makes the background look far away from the foreground blurring the sides of the picture as in the example from Arrival (2016) above.
As it does not change the depth of a scene, a lens with a middle focal length between 35-50mm is said to be a normal lens.
When a lens makes distant planes bigger and seemingly closer to the front of the frame it is known as a telephoto lens and has a focal length of 75mm or longer.
By using a zoom lens the perspective of a frame can be changed while shooting. Zooming in moves the lens towards telephoto while zooming out moves the lens further towards wide angle with normal being in between. Using this technique can also be called racking or pulling focus during a shot.
If a frame is in focus, all the textures and lines will be distinct from one other, and not blurred. This is affected by the depth of field of the camera which means that all of the components between the foreground and background of the shot will be in focus if distanced correctly. For example, if the depth of field is between 3 and 12 feet, then everything between these measurements will be in focus. A film maker can choose to focus on only one plane keeping the others out of focus, known as selective focus. Having both the foreground and background in focus is known as deep focus which is most commonly used with deep space, as this means there are components important to the film spread over many planes.
Examples of selective and deep focus are shown below from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
Selective Focus
Deep Focus
Framing a shot affects what the audience can see of the mise-en-scene on screen. This can be changed by altering the frame's aspect ratio, which is the width combined with the height of the frame (for example the Academy ratio is 1.85:1). When on screen in the cinema or on TV, films and shows do not usually take up the whole screen put instead have a portion at the sides which are black lines, from a technique known as masking. These can be used with a camera to change the shape of a frame or put in after shooting to ensure each frame fits the screen. A mask that can be used to fade in or out of a scene is an iris, which creates a round frame surrounded by black, helping zoom in on details.
The angle of the camera is also a factor of how the frame is presented to the audience as it can mean they are either looking up (low angle), looking down (high angle) or are level (straight angle) in relation to what they are seeing on screen. These angles can help show many things such as a low shot conveying a character has power or a high shot, as shown below in the frame from The Hunger Games (2012), showing that the main character is vulnerable as she seems small compared to her vast surroundings.
To disturb a frame, canting can be used which means the angle of the frame is tipped diagonally at what is known as a 'Dutch angle'. It is known as this because it was common in German Expressionist films from the 1920's/30's so Dutch comes from the word Deutsche (German).
There are many different types of shots that can be used with these angles. Taking frames from the original Star Wars trilogy (1977-1983) to illustrate them:
Extreme long shot
The characters are too small to be distinguishable, but the landscape is established.
Long shot
The frame is zoomed further in on the characters but the background is still the main focus of the frame.
Medium long shot
Characters begin to become more of the focus of the frame and are shown from the knees up.
Medium shot
Gestures and expressions are highlighted as the characters are shown from the waist up, making the background less important than their actions in the foreground.
Close-up
Brings features such as faces and hands into focus or highlights objects that are essential to the narrative.
Extreme close-up
Focuses in on a certain part of the character's face (such as the eyes), or makes small objects bigger.
Point of view shot
Shows what a certain character can see so is usually at an angle close to where their eyes would be. To make it clear whose point of view the shot is from, these are usually preceded by a frame where the character is seen looking at something.
These types of shots and angles can be combined with movements to shift the scene's perspective such as panning, where the camera moves from side to side horizontally and tilting, where the camera moves upwards and downwards vertically. In order to achieve these shots and ensure they are steady the camera being used can be placed on a dolly, crane, jib, or track as done in Jackie (2016) and La La Land (2016).
Camera dolly
Crane
After Shooting:
Many factors that affect the way a film's cinematography appears on screen can be edited after shooting has taken place. For example, the tonality of the frames can be altered by tinting and toning, adding colour to black and white images. Tinting means that the finished pictures are put into dye which is absorbed by the lighter areas of the image, while toning is when the dye is added whilst the frames are still being developed, meaning the darker areas instead pick up the colour.
The rate of a frame's motion can also be speeded up or slowed down creating fast or slow motion. Sometimes frames are even frozen to highlight an action or line of dialogue.
A frame's initial speed of motion (before any editing), is dependent on how the film is shot compared to how it is projected. Each these factors has a rate which is measured in frames per second (fps). How many frames are exposed per second depends on the rate at which the film was shot, and how many frames appear per second on screen depends on the rate at which the film is projected. If these factors are both the same, the rate of motion does not change, but is the same as if a viewer saw the filmed action sequence play out in front of them in real life.
Fast motion is created when more frames are projected on the screen per second than they were exposed, so the opposite is true for slow motion, less frames are projected than were exposed during shooting.
Special and visual effects can also be added to frames to add things that were not actually present during shooting. The most common way to achieve visual effects now is through CGI but when actors play a computer generated part in a film sometimes motion capture is used to make their movements seem more fluid than can be created through visual effects. This technique was used in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), to create the droid character of K-2SO.
Earlier special effects have included techniques such as rear and front projection. For rear projection a background is filmed earlier, outside of the studio, then projected onto a screen from behind while the actors act out the scene in the foreground. Front projection is the opposite as the frame supposed to appear as the background is projected from the foreground with the actors still being filmed in front of the screen.
Matte paintings used to be created to show unrealistic backgrounds, for example in The Wizard of Oz (1939), and were later combined with the built set and actors in post-production.
The actors were able to move around on this matte background as a plain blue background was created which their moving outline was traced onto before the filmed footage of the moving actor was added onto it around the painting.
Superimposition is when two shots are overlapped in one frame and can also be used to create unrealistic frames such as showing character's dreams or thoughts over their faces. However in Jackie (2016), it was used for the realistic purpose of showing the main character looking out of a car window at a crowd which was reflected back in the window.
This not only helped show the crowd and highlight the main character's reaction to them, but also allowed the film makers to overlap footage they had shot specifically for the film with real footage of an actual crowd from the historical period the film is set in, making it more authentic.
Cinematography is therefore equally as essential to a film or show as mise-en-scene because it affects how much of the frame is seen, from which perspective, and how much may be hidden to the viewer or highlighted to grab their attention. It can affect what the audience takes from a scene such as a meaning from a certain gesture or expression a character makes depending on how this is framed in the shot.
References:
Bordwell, D. and Thompson, K. (2013). Film Art: An Introduction. 10th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Three-point lighting diagram from: En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Three-point lighting. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_lighting [Accessed 7 Oct. 2017].
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