Did You Mise-En-Scene?
If mise-en-scene frames the narrative of the film in a vacuum, then George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Deadencapsulates the tone and theme of it in the introductory scene of Barbra and Johnny visiting their father’s grave. Immediately, the audience arrives at a graveyard introducing the central motif of death. The two are alone yet not quite—assuming that the bodies around them count. Throughout the film, Romero teases the audience of solitude and desolation, only to be surprised that the characters are not so alone after all. The graveyard captures this recurrence—what is below and above ground is alive or dead
Mise en scene can be described as the arrangement of scenery and stage properties in a play /the setting or surroundings of an event/action. Referring to the way actors and scenery props are arranged; as its usage expanded into other narrative arts. These certain scene stood strong with a purpose and is used to put emphasis on certain parts of the play. Some choices they made were to have the house, graveyard , and nature relating to the current traditional lifestyle. The Film stages a narrative which mimics the countercultural social life within time of production, giving off a massive horror-like, fear-inducing challenge to normal life in the form of an assault by the infected.
The most important stage was acquired in the early twentieth century. It becomes a kind of language with which the director speaks with the audience. Actors must stand on the stage in accordance with the scenery, as well as the plot, which at the moment should be played on the stage. In addition, theatrical lighting begins to play a role in staging. It contributes to the creation of a certain artistic effect, and also helps the actors to get used to the role and more realistically transmit the events of the dramatic work.
Lighting: Throughout the movie the lightning gives the zombies a low-key lighting that isn’t as intense and is sifter in order to make the zombies look darker and portrayed as negative and the true monster. Whenever another character was killed off, the lighting on them would also become softer and less intense with more shadows to represent that they transformed into a zombie.
Costumes: zombies wore raggedy clothes to represent how they had risen from the dead and the fact that they wore old corpses. Those who were alive wore clothes that represented middle class ordinary citizens.
Setting: The setting takes place in a cemetery which is where the dead arise from as well as a barn where the protagonists take shelter from the living dead.
Thus, the Mise-En-Scene is intended to serve as a connecting chain between the actors, the spectator and the plot of the production.
Great Movies with Mise-En-Scene
* Songs from the Second Floor (2000) – Roy Andersson
* Paths of Glory (1957) – Stanley Kubrick
* Ulysses’ Gaze (1995) – Theo Angelopoulos
* Tokyo Story (1953) – Yasujirō Ozu
* Playtime (1967) – Jacques Tati
* Throne of Blood (1957) – Akira Kurosawa
* The Conformist (1970) – Bernardo Bertolucci
* Rules of the Game (1939) – Jean Renoir
* Stalker (1979) – Andrei Tarkovsky
* Vertigo (1958) – Alfred Hitchcock
Three Sources:
3) http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2018/10-great-movies-with-the-best-mise-en-scene/
This is a nice post about the role of mise-en-scene in the films. I do agree with you in that Mise en scene can be described as the arrangement of scenery and stage properties in a play /the setting or surroundings of an event/action. This is not hard to understand because all visual elements embraced in the scenes can make a difference to the tone and emotions of the story.