MIS EN SCÉNE
Mis en scene, according to what I learnt in year 12, is something like an all-encompassing term which describes the composition of a frame. From my memory, it is French for ‘to put into frame’ or something similar, and so it involves whatever is seen on screen such as set design, costume, make up, and actors’ blocking. I remember we used the acronym ‘CAMELS’ to help us remember the production elements of film, and mis en scene fulfilled the ‘m’ in the acronym.
C – Cinematography, A – Acting, M – mis en scene, E – editing, L – lighting, S – Sound
It is not exclusively about aesthetics, nor production elements, but somewhow fuses these two and combines them with aspects of the narrative to create meaning or symbolism.
So that’s my take on mis en scene, now I would like to explore how others think of it. In my research, I hope to gain some deeper insight into what mis en scene involves since currently I have a relatively ‘shallow’ idea/memory of what it is.
Allan Rowe and Paul Wells describes mis-en-scéne as the ‘visual aspects which appear in a shot’ (2003, pp. 63). They make a note of how some theorists limit the elements to those which are shot by the camera, and not the camera itself. Mis-en-scene would include props, lighting, costume and makeup, setting, and performance. The concepts was developed by thinkers who were interested in autership, and the role of participants – particularly directors – in the construction of meaning. This is because directors usually have only a small role, if any, in production and post-production, and so their style will predominantly be delivered through the mis-en-scene in the production stage.
Elements of Mis En Scene
Setting – produce authenticity: help audience to realise where? what period/age? what time?
Costume/makeup – subtle changes in costume and makeup usually signify something, a develop in relation to the narrative
Props – used by characters, may have significance in narrative
Performance and movement – ‘coded’ quality to this. The nuances in speech, body language, and expressions of performers convey things not outrightly stated
Lighting – enables depth of vision, when used in addition to a smaller aperture, enables camera to record over a number of fields of action (>André Bazin argued that this form of shooting was more ‘realist’ because it resembles the eye’s to recognise objects across a wide depth or adjust their focus)
Camera and camera movement – this part is contested. Some may exclude this from mis en scene refer to it as ‘mis-en-shot’ instead. Bordwell and Thompson state that the original use of the term ‘mis en scene’ was in reference to the direction of plays and therefore involves the components of stage theatre which overlap with film (2013).
Mis en scene, from what I’ve read, is defined quite concretely. In any case, it has to do with visuals, whether cinematography is included or not.
MONTAGE
A montage is a series of several images edited into one sequence. They can be used to depict multiple situations occurring concurrently or the progression of time, like a time lapse. Though I do remember studying this at some point last year during the Editing Media unit I did last, year I don’t remember much of it.
The word montage is French for ‘to edit’. A montage involves arranging parts of footage to create one whole (Joyce, 2003) and was adopted by Soviet filmmakers. They realised the cinema’s ability to link unrelated material into something coherent – or at least something that makes sense to the viewer.
There are four types of film montage:
– Intellectual (dialectical montage or discontinuity editing): shots are ‘conflicting’ and audiences have to be active in interpreting two images and making connections between them
– Linkage editing (constructive editing) – a scene is fragmented and the parts are used to ‘build up’ the scene
– Hollywood montage – a quick succession of events over a period of time
– Fast cutting: to build suspense or tension, usually used in action scenes
The Kuleshov effect illustrates how edits can change how audiences interpret things. In one instance an actor may look displeased, and in another, he may look hungry depending on what image he is juxtaposed against.
Sergei Eisenstein pushed his theory ‘montage of attractions’. He believed that he could shock the viewer with every cut that juxtaposed one image with another. Audiences have to fill in the gap and make assumptions about what has happened from one shot to the next or interpret how they are associated.
If a montage is merely a piece of work which has been produced by the assembly of smaller parts, it seems as though anything which has been edited could be regarded as such.
DECOUPAGE
I don’t recall much of what decoupage consists of, all I remember is something about images not being arranged side by side, but being mounted on top of one another. When we close our eyes and see an ‘image’ and then we close it again and see another, it is similar to a cut in film. We don’t arrange these images we see horizontally, they are mounted (?) on top of each other.
After doing a bit a research I discovered that I seem to have the wrong idea of what decoupage is. In film, it is regarded as a break-down of a shot. I looked through a couple books in the AFI centre but couldn’t find much on decoupage, so I took to the internet. On a website called Caboose, I found a short discussion on decoupage. It is commonly confused for, or rather, replaced by editing. There is also mention of mis en scene and how it affects the piecing together of footage. Actually, there is mention of a lot of other things. Decoupage is kind of a mystery.
UPDATE: DECOUPAGE
So the last time I did a database search on decoupage at RMIT Library and in the AFI, I could not find much so this time I changed up my technique. I google searched ‘decoupage in film theory books’ and it brought me to some blogs on the net which spoke about how decoupage was discussed in different texts. I then searched those texts in the AFI database, and voila, I finally got some hits.
In film production, decoupage refers to either the ‘shooting script’ that precedes filming, or a realism editing style that emerged during the advent of sound cinema.
Bordwell (1997), differentiates the decoupage editing style from the earlier montage style of the Soviets. Soviet filmmakers marked realism in the locations and non-professional actors, but their editing techniques came to “define the most artificial aspects of montage” (Bordwell 1997, p. 51). They cut in abstract, poetic ways to convey ideas and created scenes from cutting separate details at a time that may have never occurred during the same time or space.
Decoupage may be considered the opposite of this as it conveyed spatial and temporal continuity in fragments. A normal shot list of a conversation between two people may comprise of: 1. an establishing shot, ‘plan americain’ style framed from knees up, 2. a medium two shot, 3.cut back to establishing shot where more drama plays out, 4. medium shot on one character, 5. reverse medium shot on the other character. In all shots, continuity is honoured.
Some writers like Astruc argue that it is more theatrical. I would have to agree that decoupage compared to montage, it is more telling and ‘simple’.
But Burch (1969) goes into more detail in ‘Spatial and Temporal Articulations’ and decoupage becomes a bit more complicated. He describes decoupage as being the ‘underlying structure of the finished film’ which is made of two ‘partial decoupages, one temporal and the other spatial’ (p.4). In the discussion following, he describes the ways a certain scene could be played out through different cutting techniques, and all are merely spatial/temporal articulations. He mentions continuity and discontinuity but does make note of whether they are integral to decoupage discussion. Instead, it appears as though the unfolding of time and space within the film is decoupage, regardless of of whether there was realism-defying treatment of footage involved (like time reversal, repetition, ellipsis or omission).
Barnard, T 2014, ‘Montage, Découpage, Mise en Scène: Essays on Film Form’ <https://www.caboosebooks.net/montage-decoupage-mise-en-scene>
Bordwell, D 1997, “Andr Bazin and the Dialectical Program” in On the History of Film Style, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England.
Bordwell, D & Thompson, K 2013, Film Art: An Introduction, 10th Ed., McGraw-Hill, NY.
Burch, N 1969, ‘Spatial and Temporal Articulations’ in Theory of Film Practice, Martin Secker & Warburg Limited, UK.
Nelmes, J 2003, An Introduction to FILM STUDIES Third Ed. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, London.