Prof. Lori Landay

Film Analysis Mise-en-scne Literally "what has been put into the scene," mise-en-scne is a French term for how space is organized and perceived in a film. It refers to what is put before the camera--everything that happens within the frame, including the frame itself. Auteur criticism assumes that the director has control over mise-en-scne. The elements that comprise mise-en-scne are: lighting, frame composition, setting, relationship between foreground and background, costumes, and the actors or objects photographed. What effects are achieved through the kinds of focus, framing, and lighting chosen? How do costumes contribute to our understanding of characters? Of setting? Of mood? How do body types and body language contribute to a film's mise-en-scne? Camera How are camera angles, placement, and movement effective in conveying situations and attitudes (of both the director and the characters)? Do close-ups predominate, or long-shots? When, where, and how does the camera move? Is there smooth and floaty steadicam technique, or the choppier movement of hand-held camera? What does the camera distance let us see and what does it keep hidden? Why? What effects do the camera angles, distance, and movement create? Do they call attention to themselves or do they fit into the "invisible style" of classical Hollywood cinema? Editing Is the editing an example of continuity editing, the invisible editing style of Classical Hollywood cinema? Or did the editing call attention to itself with interesting matched cuts, romantic dissolves, cheezy wipes, dramatic fades, or startling jump cuts? How is time compressed or lengthened? How does the editing within scenes, sequences, and acts create tension and release? How are shots taken from different camera angles, distances, and positions intercut? How are different locations, characters, or subplots connected through editing? How about sound editing? Sound Is the sound diegetic or non-diegetic? Does the sound call attention to itself, or does it follow Classical Hollywood conventions? What is the relationship between sound and image? Is there contrapuntal sound? How would you characterize the sound mix? The score? What does music contribute to the film experience? How does sound create or disrupt continuity? Characters How are the characters developed through camera treatment, costumes, gestures, and dialogue? Since the characters are "bundles of traits" they can be described in terms of those traits. The traits will be conveyed through how the characters look on screen, how they act, what they say, and how they react to or interact with other characters and situations. What traits do the characters have? How is this information/understanding conveyed?

Narrative How is the story told? Are any framing devices, such as flashbacks, used? Does the plot move forward in a consistent chronology, or are there jumps forward or backward in time? What pattern of development is used as the narrative moves from beginning to middle to end? Are the cause-and-effect sequences logical, absurd, magical, ironic, or random? Are the characters and actions credible? Are parallel characters, situations, or events used to help organize the story? Is the film an example of Classical Hollywood Cinema, or does it deviate from, parody, or revise those conventions? Is the plot structured to create suspense? Character development? Action? Are there several subplots that are interwoven though editing techniques like parallel action? Compare the first scene of the film with the last scene. What has changed? What stays the same? Themes What ideas does the director endorse, defend, belittle, or satirize in the film? How does she or he present his or her particular point of view? Consider characters, camera technique, dialogue, music, story development--all of these are used to convey the underlying ideas of a film. Motifs What visual or aural situations, pictorial details, words, effects, gestures, designs, or objects are reiterated for the purpose of giving unity to the film and leading us to a greater understanding of character, a theme, or the story structure? Genre Does the film fit into one of the major genres? What is the setting? The tone? Audiovisual style? What stock characters are present in the film? Iconography? Plot? Resolution? Themes and concerns? At what stage of the genre arc does this film occur (primitive, classical, revisionist, parody)? Are there intertextual, intragenre meanings developed in the movie? Point of view (p.o.v.) From whose (or what) point of view do we experience the film? Do we follow the action from one or more points of view? How is point of view created and sustained through plot, mise-en-scne, and sound? Are there subjective shots? Are we limited to what a character or group of character experiences, or is there a more omniscient point of view? How are external reality and internal reality related? How does sound establish point of view? Are there techniques of expressionism or subjective distortions? What effect does point of view have on our perception of the character or on what action we see? Audience/spectator Is the audience invited to put themselves in the place of the characters? To experience the same emotions they do? Or to distance themselves from the characters? How does the director accomplish this? Does the director appeal more to our emotions or to our intellect through his or her presentation of the characters? What different theoretical issues arise from thinking about audience (the group of people who see the film) and spectator (the individual person)? Think about social, economic, historical, national, technological, psychological, and political factors as well as aesthetic and cultural ones. How would you go about researching how audiences respond to film? Or why and how spectators make meaning out of film?