Mise-En-Scene

Mise-En-Scene



The term mise en scene is a french term meaning everything within the scene or frame. so this includes in a frame:

Costume, hair and make up:
For example in a western you'd expect the costume features to be wearing a cowboy hat and the western shoes.

I think the genre the use of most make up must be films such as star trek because on the features on aliens they have to use lots of make up.

The costumes Villians wear would be gothic and dark colours.

Props are used a lot in every films, for example in a superhero film like batman his props would be his utility belt and his car.

Settings are key in films to search for the exact location to set the film, so for example the setting for a western movie the scene of a shootout would be in a deserted area and old houses, to make it look like your in texas as well.

Also if characters or objects are positioned within the frame this will give a balanced feel to the shot. If the characters are positioned at the outside edges of the frame then this indicates a distance between characters.

Source Code

Source Code (2011) is an action thriller based on a soilder who wakes up  in the body of an unknown man and discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train.

Directed by Duncan Jones

Writen by Ben Ripley

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga

Trailer

The Source Code trailer is effective in many ways. the use of fast pace editing and cutting makes the trailer feel exciting and it grabs the audiences eye, making them inpatient to wait for the film to come out; grabbing the audience by their seats. The numerous rapid shots don't assemble like a puzzle piece making no sense, but it creates a vibe to the audience making them anxious to watch the film.

The shots chosen in the trailer are very unusual. We see shots of eyes, random civilians, trains... the trailer is sought of all over the place, it's like as if, you have to watch the film to put the puzzle together to understand the movie. all of these random images, make no sense at all, but it's clear that it somehow catches the audiences eyes, the speed of the images sought of makes the audiences disorientated because of the speedy editing. From this mind blowing trailer, we can see the target audience would be people who like conspiracy films, action thriller films particularly older teens to young adults. This film will be enjoyable by both gender, because of it's brilliant yet weird storyline. The trailer I think has been edited for the target audience, so they find it appealing. The use of fast pace editing is used to show the action. There is use of shots where particular aspects are highlighted. For example when the drink is spilt in the trailer, the sound and motion is highlighted greatly. This is done to show their importance. In the trailer there are various thrilling scenes which are edited fast paced. 

Phonecall Scene

In the trailer they show some emotional scenes to convey the thriller film. In the emotional phone call scene we experience the main character witness the train scene whilst wired up to the  machine. We see him on the phone to someone important to him whilst he is actually going back in time to witness peoples death. This scene has an eerie chill, also in my view a emotional ending. We realise how hard this situation is and the pain and strugle he'd been through whether his a soldier and the emotion, because solider are trained to deal with their emotion. When the women opens the machine, then we get a shot of his actual body creates a freaky and sad feeling to the scene.

Psycho

What makes it such a good thriller?

Psycho has remained high even years after its release in 1960 (especially its famous soundtrack).  Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin and Janet Leigh, Psycho has created a heritage so huge it has spawned three sequels, a remake and a documentary. Anthony Perkins himself has appeared in all of these features and has remained a central heart of psycho phenomenon.

The story begins with office worker Marion Crane (Vera Miles) who is fed up with the way life has treated her. The only she can ever see her penniless boyfriend, Sam (John Gavin) is in their lunch breaks, and due to their lack of income, they won’t be able to afford a bright white wedding. One Friday, Marion is trusted with $40,000 to bank for her manager, but seeing the opportunity to take the money and start new life, Marion leaved town and heads towards Sam’s California store. Tired from the long drive, Marion gets off the main highway and pulls out into the Bates motel to get away from the storm;  this where it all goes wrong and the story starts to begin.

At first from an audiences view the bates motel looks like a normal innocent shack to stay for the night from a long, hard drive, with nothing sinister to look forward, except the creepy, abandoned like house next to the motel, which changes the peaceful scenery. The motel is managed by a quiet, fragile man named ‘Norman Bates’ (Anthony Perkins) who makes dinner for Miss Crane, although something seems slightly wrong about him. He is heard having arguments with his mother who shouts at him about his hospitality to the girl and runs out of the house looking highly annoyed. When Marion tells Norman that she doesn't feel peculiar to eat and returns to her room to have a shower, something tragic happens.

What we seen next in the screen, of a classic Hitchcock move, the plot of the film is twisted in such way that we as the audience have no idea what will happen next. It’s rather shocking, of course when we witness the main character is killed off.

Marion is killed, by a dark figure, in what has to be the greatest movie scene of all time, and this is why psycho is still all around the best thriller/horror film, in the scene we see, the figure takes position and appears with a sharp knife slashing poor unexpected Miss Crane, fulfilling Hitchcock’s desire to let the blonde girl suffer once again. We, however only see Marion screaming in the shower, the figure thrusting a knife, and a dark substance at the bottom of the bath that is of course Marion’s blood. The camera never shows us the knife making contact with flesh.

Even with a lack of gore, people at the time thought Psycho was extremely graphic as no film had ever gone as far as to show a naked lady getting murdered in a shower. The people of the 60’s had never seen this kind brutal gore on the big screen before, so Hitchcock could be seen a pioneer, being the first film maker who dared to do something different on the film industry back in the day.

As the plot about Marion & Sam turned out to be another McGuffin, so Sam & Lila (Marion’s Sister) launch an investigation into her mysterious sudden death, with Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) sent to investigate the innocent Bates Motel and the creepy house next to the motel. As Mr Arbogast climbs the stairs to the upper floor of the house to investigate, the camera seems to zoom away from the floor and into Arbogast at the same time, also the camera goes into a high angle shot making Arbogast look small and weak, this implies that something gory is about to happen. This is Hitchcock’s clever technique to build tension and highlight Arbogast awaiting doom. Suddenly as Arbogast reaches the top of the stairs, chilling violin strings plays and we see an old lady running out of her room and slashing Arbogast repeatedly until his dead.  As the audience we all have figured out what the poor & weak inspector could not, that the murder is Bate’s mother… but where is Norman to stop his lunatic mother?

When Mr Arbogast never returns from the investigation, Sam and Lila go out to the Bates house themselves to find answers in their own hands. When Lila hears footsteps, Lila goes to hide in the cellar where she finds the preserved corpse of Mrs BATES!?! But we thought the whole time Mrs Bates was alive and ready as we seen her slash those two victims or was there more victims flying into the mouse trap??? However continuing on the scene we see at once Norman appearing from the door with maddened eyes, dressed in his mother’s clothes, ready to kill Lila to prevent her from discovering his psychotic behavior or more. However our hero comes to the rescue and knocks out the psychotic fool.

Norman Bates was the murder the whole time, driven insane after killing his own mother, Bates began to pretend his mother was still with him to comfort him, instead of getting treatment by a psychiatrist, he played dress up as his mother and went on a killing spree and pretended to have full conversations with his ‘mother’ (yeah right) when in reality he was talking to himself. He had taken this so far that he had become a mother. There was now more Mrs Bates in him than Norman Bates! Whenever Norman was in a state of heightened emotion, such as when he met Marion, his mother’s side would take over and something horrific, just like the Green goblin in Spider man, Norman’s mother side would lead to the deaths of many innocent people, not just Marion or Clumsy Arbogast. In the end, Norman was sent to a mental asylum, where he could hurt no more, however, a plan was already forming in his (Mrs Bates) head to take revenge.

To conclude psycho is a great thriller, it creates suspense and questions are mind to think what is possible and makes us grab our seat, when we hear the blood curdling string of the violin. We don’t find out the villain until the end, which makes us question even more (like in Scooby-doo).

The Birds

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Year: 1963

Actors: Rod Tayler, Tippi Hedren, Suzzane Pleshette

Narrative

The bird is about carnivorous birds feasting on human flesh, as a wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues for her love interest in a small northern California town that slowly takes a huge turn for the weird and bizarre, when the birds start to attack and feed on the humans.

Suspense and Thrill:

In this movie and trailer there are multiple elements of thrill. There is a lot of fast pace editing and cuts, to show the birds ravenous attacks and even shocking scenes of a mans eye pecked out by a bird. This scene is disturbing and horrific creating tension and masses of thrill, even making us as the audiences afraid of these harmless animals, when we walk out the cinema/home. this creates a great creepy atmosphere to the film, making us somehow involved in the film. 

At the beginning of this shocking scene, we see the wife return to her loving home, to sight that all her cups had been smashed into pieces and, when she tries to call for her husband, he doesn’t respond, this creates an enigma code, making us as the audience to question what happened to her husband if his asleep or dead, or what had occurred, when his wife wasn’t in the house. We are the shown with a man (husband) in the corner of the room with his eyes pecked out, dead on the floor. This scene creates a shocking eerie atmosphere through out the film.  

North By Northwest

North By Northwest



North by Northwest is a 1959 American spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason.

North by Northwest is a tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization who want to stop his interference in their plans to smuggle out microfilm containing government secrets.

In this Trailer of North by Northwest it creates a tail of suspense to the audience, building levels of drama and putting the iconic scenes in the movie to grab, the audiences attention making the audience intrigued to the trailer, this trailer will appeal the audience because it's very intriguing and thrilling for the audience, which will make them watch the film and find out, what happens to Cary Grant the main actor in the film.

North By Northwest is categorized as a thriller genre because of it's frequent fast paced action , because in a thriller there's always fast paced action involved frequently just like in my last post about thriller on North by Northwest...again. In North b y Northwest involves a resourceful hero  attempting to thwart the plans of a villain who is many times more powerful than him/herself. North by Northwest follows a plot of a innocent man Cary Grant who had been framed as a mysterious agent and had other sinister secret organisations after him who believe his on their case as this agent called "George Kaplan",Little do they know, a 'Mr Kaplan' does not exist and was completely fabricated by the CIA to protect their REAL agent on the case, Miss Kendal (Eva Marie Saint).

In my opinion the films confusing to understand but somehow Alfred Hitchcock keeps his audience intact to their seats because of the intense frequent action and constant music in the background which also gives us hint when there's a mysterious or unsatisfactory scene about to happen, the music starts to build like a block of legos and when it rises as the audience we can tell what might happen, keeping us in the edge of our seats. Aside from the other dramatic devices used in the film, the idea of a cliffhanger is most evident with the characters literally hanging off Mount Rushmore at one point. The cliffhanger in the film starts to make the audience contribute to believe if the characters will live or die especially people who have started to watch Hitchcock films for the first time such as myself making as wonder if the writer will cut off a character and destroy his/her life especially if the audience have started to gain feelings for the characters in the last two hours of this anticipating thriller.

In Alfred Hitchcocks Fabulous film north by northwest the best scene shot in the film, would be the crop duster scene, where we see our hero facing a machine, which is trying to rip our beloved hero, especially this scene starts get us; as the audience question if the hero will survive through this next obstacle or will he perish death. also this scene is very exciting as they used this exact scene on their posters, which would attract, audiences to watch the film and find out why Cary Grant is running away from the crop duster. this one particular scene would be the most thrilling in the film because it makes the audience sit in the edge of their seats, making them think if 'Thornhill' will survive this trap.

Red Herrings are used in the film. It turns out that the villains are pursuing to smuggle a microfilm out of the country, so it must be important if some characters are actually prepared to sacrifice themselves for this mysterious equipment. Turns out this is only one of Hitchcock's "MacGuffins", a device simply used to move the plot along. What we really care about the film is whether poor Thornhill (Cary Grant) will get himself out of trouble or not. North by Northwest is a film typical of the thriller genre, making audiences question a lot about who lives? or dies?!



Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock is a famous director majorly for his films he had made which are "Psycho" , "birds"... etc

he was born in Leytonstone he had made nearly 52 movies out of these 52 movies only one was 'lost' due to the use of celluloid because celluloid is a very expensive product to make, however it can be damaged very easily, this film was called 'Mountain Eagle' and was his second film to be released. Hitchcock will appear a lot on my blog due to his extensive work in the Thriller genre.

Macguffin

Macguffin is a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction". The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are  willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is. In fact, the specific nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot. Common examples are money, victory, glory, survival, a source of power, or a potential threat, or it may simply be something entirely unexplained.

Macguffins are commonly used in thrillers, for example in North by northwest the macguffin was some  potential threat to the enemy, but no one cared about the macguffin all we cared about was if Roger Thornhill survived and if the villians would get our hero and if our hero will rescue his damsel in distress.

Thriller Recipe

Thriller is an immense genre, which involves various sub genres. Thrillers are categorised based on their conventions of fast pace, attention grabbing, thrilling narratives of protagonist and antagonist.

Thriller Devices:

Thrillers have multiples devices that help to add to the thriller genre to make the film anticipating and amazing, such as suspense, cliff hangers (North by North west), red-herrings and McGuffins.

•   Red-herring:  a red-herring is like a false peak of suspense. For example we see a person dressed smart in a suit looking like a hit man spying on someone, they reach into their pocket, and we as the audience suggest he / she will pull out a gun; however he/she pulls out a different object for example a chocolate bar. That is the wicked red-herring device.
•  McGuffin: the McGuffin is the aspect in the movie, which creates the conflict, it might not be important to the story line but it helps to set up the story line and the awesome conflicts. For example a precious jewel.
•  Cliff-hanger: Cliff-hangers are in a scene, when something thrilling is involved, but then… the scene changes therefore we don’t see what has happened, making us disappointed, sad, but eager to maybe view the next sequel of the film. For example in harry potter and the deathly hallows part 1 the cliff-hanger at the end when, lord Voldemort has obtained the elder wand, but then it goes blank and credits roll.

Sub genres:

•   Psychological: this is whereby psychological devices are used, the villain may be psychologically challenging, the conflict may happen to end up being emotional rather than physical.
• Conspiracy: in which the hero/heroine confront an enormous dominant cluster of people, whose true extent is only seen by the hero.
• Crime: crime thrillers are a combination of thrilling plots based upon maybe sometimes true crime, which has been witnessed.

There is many more thriller sub-genre these are the little selected few.

Thriller conventions: within thriller movies there are conventions, convention are the rules of the thriller, so it’s used to classify a film if it’s a thriller or not. This ranges from typical camera work, editing, sound, characters, props, etc… 

Chiaroscuro

The term chiaroscuro is an Italian word the means light (chiaro) & dark (scuro); this where the light and, dark are contrasted sharply within one another.  for example this image the light and dark is contrasted.

This effect can be very scary within thriller films.

Lighting Exercise (Includes video)

Lighting

Lighting in movies is used a lot of times, but first you have to know all the key lighting used in films, which include: 

• Key Lighting; is the brightest and most influential.

• Back Lighting; helps counteract the effect of the key light or creates an outline or silhouette.

• Filler Lighting; helps to soften the harsh   shadows that the use of key and back lights create.

• Under Lighting; is when the main source comes from below the subject. Used in thrillers and horrors, also in my opinion creates more suspense.

• Top Lighting; is when the main source of lighting comes from above - high lighting the features - used to create a glamorous look.

• Back Lighting; is when the source is behind the subject. If no other lighting is used silhouettes are created.

• Low key lighting; is created by using only the key and back lights. This will produce a sharp contrast of light and dark areas on the screen as very deep, distinct shadows are formed. Also known as Chiaroscuro (from the italian for kight - chiaro and dark - oscuro)

• High key lighting; more filler lights are used. Lighting appears realistic.

Our Lighting Exercise

 We used key lighting and you can see how bright it is because half of his face is all bright while hte other is dark but he also is still visible.

The back light creates a outline round him you can see the light reflect on his back.

 The filler light you can see it covers all his face and makes it really bright and his face isn't that visible.

The under lighting is used here and you can see in the background the massive shadow of her also her mouth isn't visible because of the under lighting and mostly you can see only her hair making a effect that she doesn't have a mouth.

The top lighting is used here to make the person look more glamorous.

In this bit we used the key light and back light which creates distinctive shadows and produces sharp contrasts of light and dark on the screen.

The high key lighting used here creates a affect that the person here has no face at all because the light nearly covers up the whole face and his face not clear at all, also loads of fillers are used to make the light appear realistic.

That was our lighting Exercise.  

Lighting Video

Sound Exercise (Video & Evalution)

SOUND

In our Sound exercise we used a varieties of sounds in our films such as sound on/off screen, sound bridge, etc...

To capture the sound in our work we used a extra microphone to catch the sound, because the sound in the camera was poor quality, with the microphone we used it effectively by capturing on/off screen sound which was in the beginning of the video you can hear someone scream but you can't see them because it's the off screen sound the on screen sound which you can see is the person who's coming through the door which is the inspector.

We used Digetic and Non - Digetic sound usefully and you can tell by that there is Non digetic sound because during near the end of the film in the flashback you can hear non digetic sound we put this in to show suspense and create an atmosphere of a flashback also we made my voice sound like an echo because we made it follow on for a while, until the soundtrack of music came in which was the non digetic sound and you can clearly differentiate the non digetic sound which's my echo of me saying it was 'him'... Also we tried using a sound bridge from my echo we tried it to follow on to the flashback on what happened in the video.

Overall the positive elements in our sound film was that we used the sound effectively and we tried to use some sounds we found difficult but we achieved well I think. To improve our work we should try use more sounds such as try to use the sound bridge better and use a bit more non digetic sound.

Sound

Sound is always used in films to emphasise scenes, and to bring a realistic feeling or to create a uneven atmosphere for the audience, for example in psycho the knife going inside the women and the creepy soundtrack, when she's being murdered. In this post I'll be giving the definitions of sounds used in films.

Diegetic sound is sound which refers to the sound around you, for example music in a car, radio, TV, screams and dialogue.

Non-diegetic sound is the sound which isn't in the scene but is everything outside the world or scene, such as voiceover, soundtrack, captions, titles, subtitles.

On Screen sound is the sound the audience can see the source of sound
Off Screen sound is the sound the audience can't see the source of sound. off screen sound enables an extension of the diegetic world.

For example in this scene from The Good The Bad The Ugly, you can listen to the On/Off Screen sound being established.

Parallel Sound is the sound which matches the sound of the action, for example fight scenes.

Contrapuntal Sound is the sound which doesn't link with the action.

a Sound Bridge helps to create a smooth transition between from one scene to another, so the sound links two scenes together, like a glue.

Camera Exercise (video & evalution)

Camera Angles Movie/ Evaluation 

In this clip of our short film, it tells the story about two people going lesson, but one of them have  argument with a student, and the girl tries to break it up.

In the film we used a wide range of camera angles to make our movie better, such as high angle shots, low angle Shots, close up, long shot.

Long Shot: In the beginning of the film we are introduced to the two characters and the setting so we are shown the long shot to identify that they are in a school building.

Over the shoulder: In this shot we are seen that the two people are having a conversation and the over the shoulder shot is used to get two of the characters, which was used perfectly in my view.

High angle: In this shot we used a high angle shot to show that they're going up the stairs, also it makes them look like that they are underpowered and weak. It makes the audience presume that something bad is going to happen making them stay on their seat.

Low angle: This shot used to show, again they are travelling up the stairs, also making the audience intrigued on what will happen, when they reach the top of the stairs.

Close Up Shot: This shot is used to show the mysterious character tying up his shoes. this shot was used well i think because it would make audiences intrigued and suspicious on who the mysterious phantom is?

Medium Shot: This shot is used to show the two fellow characters have reached to the top of the stairs and now walking on, this was used well two show both of the actors clearly.

Extreme Close Up: This shot is used to show that something has happened and there might be conflict involved, also it tell us that there is anger in the atmosphere and rage.

Over the shoulder: This shot is used to show them talking, also this is when the conflict begins.

Match cut: this is used to show that there's action involved.

Overall aspect in our film I think the positive elements were most likely to be our wide ranges of shots, and cuts I think we used them well, however we could have majorly improved on using a bit more shots, like high angles more and less medium shots, and also experiment with the shots and edit the film out properly instead of rushing it out.