Class 1: Mise-en-scene

It was a pleasure to meet you all today. A few links to follow up on things we saw in class 1.

Things to remember:
1. Form a group of 2 with a fellow classmate to tackle Tasks 1 and 2. (The question arose - should your individual storyboards be based on the same story? Yes.)
2. Take a look at the Film Style clips and the reading handed out for our week 2 class. (See your email for the dropbox link to that clip).
3. Look at the reading from Katz on Storyboards, and the chapter from on mise-en-scene.

The documentary Touch the Sound (our first example) is actually entirely viewable on youtube. (That can't be great for the film's acoustics, but it's a start.)

If you want to see more of Lumiere and Company (which contains the Lumiere exercises of 40 directors, including David Lynch, Peter Greenaway, Michael Haneke), large sections of it are viewable on youtube. (Type 'lumiere and company' into google video.)

The elements of imagery we explored today: line, shape, colour, tone, depth, texture, space. You could add 'movement' to that list as the main difference between still frames and live action.

We talked about a few qualities images could have:
* Balance / Lack of Balance (this is where symmetry, the rule of thirds, the golden ratio all come in - see links below)
* Open / Closed frames (see link below) - Spike Lee's film was an open frame, the Lumiere frame was a bit more closed
* Finally we talked about a couple of ideas about how to use images over a story. One was an image motif - a repeated frame whose features are echoed in some way throughout the film. (Remember the image from The Conformist.) The second was a visual arc - where some visual quality (e.g. a horizon, a costume, a colour) changes over the story as a way of expressing what's happening. (Remember the arcs in Her, or in Manhunter.)

Some readings on mise-en-scene: an accessible article, and a denser chapter from a book.

On open and closed forms, and how they apply in film. (No pictures here, but still good points.)

On the Gestalt principles: this and this will give you a good start. (Both come at it from more of a flat art / graphic design perspective, but the ideas are clear.)

On the Golden Ratio and composition: this and this.

Lastly - all those stills we saw in class. What films were these? A lot of films were in there, including Manhunter, Persona, Mauvais Sange (Bad Blood), Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom, The Conformist, Moving, The Mirror, Under the Skin, Frozen, Her, Broken Embraces, In the Mood for Love, Rear Window, North by Northwest, The Red Balloon, A Zed and 2 Noughts and, for Monday's class, Infernal Affairs.