Chapter 3: Mise-en-Scène

Chapter Overview

Mise-en-Scène, the subject of Chapter Three, is a notoriously slippery concept to define or explain.  Although you should pay attention to the subtleties of the discussion throughout the chapter, the most fundamental thing you should remember about mise-en-scene is that it is comprised of two major visual elements: design and composition.   In popular understanding, mise-en-scene is often equated solely with design—with costumes and set design especially—and often only with elaborately designed “costume dramas”.  But as Chapter Three makes clear, design is only one part of what makes up a movie’s mise-en-scene and every movie, not just elaborate costume dramas, has a mise-en-scene.

Most of the elements of design—costumes, hair, makeup, setting and decor—will seem self-evident to you.  Make sure, however, not to overlook that lighting is also an important design element, and is almost always carefully controlled by the filmmakers to achieve certain effects.  You’ll learn more about lighting in Chapter Four (Cinematography).

Composition, the second major visual element of mise-en-scene, is itself composed of two major elements: framing and kinesis.  The discussion of framing in the text is relatively straightforward, but make sure that you acknowledge and understand how offscreen space functions as a dynamic variable in composition, and how open and closed framing differ from each other.  When movement is added to static composition, as it always is in movies, the space outside of the frame becomes an important part of our viewing experience, and thus an important part of mise-en-scene.