Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theater or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or telling a story—both in visually artful ways through story boarding, cinematography and stage design and in poetically artful ways through direction. Mise-en-scène has been called films criticisms "grand undefined term."
Key aspects of Mise en scène
- Décor
- An important element of "putting in the scene" is décor, the objects contained in and the setting of a scene. Décor can be used to amplify character emotion or the dominant mood of a film.
- Lighting
- The intensity, direction, and quality of lighting have a profound effect on the way an image is perceived. Light (and shade) can emphasise texture, shape, distance, mood, time of day or night, season, glamour; it affects the way colors are rendered, both in terms of hue and depth, and can focus attention on particular elements of the composition.
- Space
- The representation of space affects the reading of a film. Depth, proximity, size and proportions of the places and objects in a film can be manipulated through camera placement and lenses, lighting, decor, effectively determining mood or relationships between elements in the story world.
- Costume
- Costume simply refers to the clothes that characters wear. Using certain colors or designs, costumes in narrative cinema is used to signify characters or to make clear distinctions between characters.
- Acting
- There is enormous historical and cultural variation in performance styles in the cinema. Early melodramatic styles, clearly indebted to the 19th century theater, gave way in Western cinema to a relatively naturalistic °style.
