With the continuous progress and development of modern media, film and television works play a more and more obvious role in improving people's spiritual enjoyment. According to the content and arrangement of the work, the director can arrange the actors and the camera properly, so as to obtain the best shooting effect and greatly enhance the appreciation of the art work.
In this paper, we will discuss the content of mise-en-scene from the respects of form and function. What’s more, the significance of mise-en-scene in the whole film will be revealed by some exact samples.
Key words: Mise-en-scene
1 Introduction
1.1Mise-en-scene
Mise-en-scene, meaning "in place" or "in the scene". Guidance of, at first, the word is only applicable to stage play to the location of the actors on stage performing activities change process. It is one of the most essetial performance measures and the rehearsal stage. The term is now also used in film production because of the commonality between film and drama in artistic processing.
1.2Form and function
When cited to the film art creation, the content and nature of mise-en-scene is different from the stage, it is not only related to actors, but also involves the camera scheduling. In the scheduling of movie scenes, the organic combination of actor scheduling and camera scheduling is complementary to each other, both of which are based on the character behavior logic determined by the development of the plot, character character and character relationship.
2 Mise-en-scene Analysis of some specific works
Firstly, let’s have a look at the plot of the clip in Pride and Prejudice that Jane Bennet went to the Netherfield Park to visit Mr. Bingley’s sister Caroline. Since Jane went by horse, she was caught in a heavy downpour on the road and unfortunately caught a severe cold, being forced to stay at Netherfield for several days. As a consequence, Elizabeth walked there for the reason of looking after her sister while Mr. Darcy and Caroline were staying at Netherfield. Begin with costume and make-up, when Elizabeth showed up at netherfield, six inches of her dress was deep in mud, her cheeks were rosy and glowing, and her hair was a bit of messy, all of which are indicating that she trekked to arrive there. The details of her costume and make-up are in line with the plot. Then comes to movements and figure expression, Mr. Darcy had no sooner stood up nervously than Elizabeth came into his sight. When Elizabeth asked Caroline where her sister was, he answered her question immediately with his eyes fixed on her. He kept standing and looking in her direction even when she left the room. All of these subtle movements are telling us that Mr. Darcy was attracted by Elizabeth.
Besides, here is an another example of animation. Steins Gate is a well-known Japanese animation that has been highly rated. It is supposed to be discussed say something about this movie with mise-en-scene analysis on the aspects of sounds and angles of the camera. The movie starts with a close-up shot of the face of protagonist. In a fixed scene, the protagonist of shaggy beards shakes his head to various angles, the director gives especially detailed shots of his movement of opening his eyes wide and looking into the TV in front of him. His exaggerative behaviour as well as his chunibyo-like soliloquy gives audience an impression of a strange and funny guy. When the protagonist is speaking, the only sound except his voice that audience can hear is chirping of cicada.
3 Conclusions
Many film works are adapted from classic literature, such as Pride and Prejudice. There are at least nine versions of the film adapted from this work, with similar plots and minor differences. The most prominent difference may come from mise-en-scene during the shooting process, which is the director's complete interpretation of literary works.
As Chekhov once said , “ As long as a gun is mentioned in a story, someone must die.” Writers choose to describe certain objects and characters in certain ways by using certain language due to their own purposes and connotative meaning between the lines, including stream-of-consciousness writers. To some degree, the theory of Chekhov’s gun shares the same essence with mise-en scene analysis. Various elements of a scene have their own meanings and we should learn to read the messages or meaning behind those elements or scenes.