This chapter asks you to analyze mise-an-scene (meaning "putting into the scene"), which is used to signify the director's control over what appears in the film frame. It includes the setting, lighting, costumes, and staging (including acting and movement), which combine together to create a specific system in every film. Mise-en-scene can be analyzed according to unity, disunity, similarity, difference, and development. In controlling the mise-en-scene, the director stages the event for the camera. Usually judged by standards of realism, mise-en-scene is not a standard of value, because it contains the powerful ability to transcend normal conceptions of reality.

After reading this chapter, you should be able to understand:

1. The four areas of mise-en-scene are setting, costume and make-up, staging (movement and acting), and lighting.
   
   
2. Setting can shape how an audience understands the story action and can be controlled in many ways, including color and props.
   
   
3. Costumes play important motive and causal roles in the narrative. Any portion of a costume may become a prop, in addition to a costume. Often coordinated with setting, costume and make-up help pick out the characters.
   
   
4. Much of the impact of an image comes from its manipulation of lighting. Lighter and darker areas within the frame help create the overall composition of each shot and guide our attention to certain objects and actions. Lighting can also articulate textures. There are several features of film lighting: its quality, direction, source, and color. Lighting is characterized by its use of shadows.
   
   
5. The staging of a scene is affected by the action and the camera's distance from it. An actor's performance consists of visual elements and sound. Acting cooperates with other film techniques.
   
   
6. Actor's faces, bodies, and gestures become the essential tool kit and the most important task facing an actor.
   
   
7. Mise-en-scene affects audience attention by drawing attention to change and guiding the focal point of a shot. This is often accomplished through the manipulation of spatial and temporal factors. Our attention is often drawn by changes in shape, light, movement, and other visual qualities of the image. The depth of field (flatness or three-dimensional-ness) of the frame is also a component of mise-en-scene.
   
   
8. The filmmaker uses mise-en-scene to guide audience attention across the screen, shaping the sense of the space represented, and emphasizing certain parts of it. This is done through changes in movement, color, differences, balance of distinct components, and variations in size.
   
   
9. The filmmaker determines how long a shot will remain on the screen. Within the confines of the shot's duration, the director also controls the rhythm of time as it unfolds. This rhythm involves a beat or pulse and a pattern of accents. Time can also be adjusted by figure placement of the shot.