This week’s reading is on Mise En Scene and the film we watched in order to analyse this was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. I’m a fan of Wes Anderson and even more so of the French “put in scene” to which Mise En Scene refers to. I’d already seen The Life Aquatic, along with several other of Anderson’s quirky films. Like The Grand Budapest Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom, the aesthetic and cinematic beauty of The Life Aquatic is enough to draw you in. Personally, The Life Aquatic is not my favourite of his – storyline wise – but I was a fan of the Mise En Scene, luckily.

Year 12 Media taught me quite a bit about Mise En Scene, so even though I’ve done the readings, this is stuff I’m already pretty familiar with. In my own words, it’s basically everything within the scene from props to character’s position that create meaning. In The Life Aquatic, this stuff is pretty crucial.

The readings actually gave the example of George Melies (who we discussed all the way back in week one), and I can’t help drawing a comparison between Melies’ artistry and Anderson’s The Life Aquatic. I wouldn’t be surprised if Anderson was inspired by Melies, notably his A Trip to The Moon. Though generations apart, both utilised decretive sets and fantastical costumes to create a dreamy quality.

For example, the obvious set of Steve Zissou’s ship as we follow characters through the separate rooms is reminiscent of the cardboard space ship within Melies’ film. Other elements such as the puppeteer looking fish and aquatic animals that are stylistically similar to the props and sets within Melies’ film.

Okay so ‘mental’ is the political incorrect way to describe the short films for this week, but at least it was punny. This week’s Cinema Studies was a little different. Instead of a 2 hour film, we watched a bunch of experimental short films. It’s interesting to watch something with variety, each film different from the one before it, and even more so interesting to find out what my peers felt about it. My personal favourite (I’m using ‘favourite’ loosely, considering I wasn’t a fan of the other shorts showed) was the third, ‘La Jetee’ by Chris Marker. I thought it was both incredibly absurd and clever to use only photographs and a narrator to tell a story.

The readings spoke a little bit about why a film maker might use experimental themes to create their film. The most obvious being of course, to tell no specific story, instead to create something abstract – like the first short we watched ‘Ballet Mécanique’. Although that was very interesting cinematic wise and historically (considering how far it dates back for the genre), I never find it the most engaging. I’m a fan of the story-telling type of film making, even in something so eccentric as experimental film.

The form of Avant Garde films is an interesting concept, considering things like narrative are often abandoned. The function, too, is hard to pin point in many of the films we watched today. What I did notice a lot across the board though, was the use of repetition and similarity. For ‘La Jetee’ it was the bookending both in plot and cinematically of the Dock scene and the character’s death. For ‘Ballet Mécanique’ it was simply repeated footage of things like the lipstick wearing smile and so forth. The other films included these themes a lot, too, which I thought was interesting. I think it definitely added to my feeling as a viewer, of disorientation and confusion – dream like almost.

Yesterday I had my second Cinema studies seminar, which I’m starting to think is my favourite subject. I really like that it’s the last class at the end of the week, because it just feels more relaxed. I also feel like I kind of know what I’m doing, in terms of film analysis, plus I’m enjoying the discussion about my childhood favourite ‘the Wizard of Oz’. This class we were talking about film form, which has a number of different identifiers (function, similarity and repetition, difference and variation, development and unity or disunity) which manipulate the audience to feel or think a certain way.

We re-watched 2 short clips of the movie and tried to see it from a different perspective, as well as being split up into groups to think about 3 major things – patterns, feelings and meaning. My group was allocated feelings – how did the film evoke emotion and what kind of ‘feelings’ did the characters portray? We all agreed on a number of main points. Firstly, the acting is so theatrical that you’re basically being told flat out what to feel. None of the characters experience complex emotions, only jumping from devastation to joy. Other signifiers were things like costume and acting, especially in regards to the Wicked Witch. With the knowledge that ‘only bad witches are ugly’, we are then introduced to the terrifyingly bad witch of the west. Things like her green complexion, her hunch and long fingers, iconic laugh and even the instrumental theme that tells us how to feel toward her as a character.

The technicolour versus b&w also came up in conversation – with feelings, meaning and pattern. Firstly, feelings because the bright and vivid colour in Munchkin land evokes a positive emotion, while the dark shadows of the Witch’s castle makes you feel uneasy and scared. Patterns occurred when the start is b&w and then it returns to that, (meaning: it’s also symbolic of reality versus dream) bookending the story. The sepia also could represent the Great Depression, and reflect how Dorothy feels about each world (home was dull, while Oz was colourful and exciting).

I could go on for days trying to pick apart this classic, but I’ll end it here!