What is the importance of mise-en- scene and or sound in creating meaning and generating response in the film you have studied?

What is the importance of mise-en- scene and or sound in creating meaning and generating response in the film you have studied?

The mise-en-scene in the films i have chosen is incredibily important in creating meaning, especilly in the film city of god. an exmaple is a scene where lil-dice is sat on top of a pile of bricks, basically sat on the building blocks of the city, (favelas.) not only is this forshadowing the fact that lil-dice is going to be on top of the city but also expresses the poverty that the people in the favelas live in, the only thing they have to sit on is bricks, they dont have anything that they can go and do. the mise-en-scene in really important becasuse it helps express the urban story themes of power, poverty and conflict.

Another scene weree the mise-en-scene is important in city of god is the story of the apartment. This is a montage sequence of the decay of the apartment. im my opinon this scene is a reflection of the regression of the favelas. the sound is also important in this scene as the voice over from Rocket gives it a scense of versimilitude. in the scene you also see the degression of the character Carrot, this scene again reguritates the idea of power, (people taking over the apartment) poverty, (the state of the apartment degressing) and conflict, (Carrot shooting Angleo) Carrot looks away when he does this, this empthysises the idea that you cant leave the favelas and that everyone is desdined for the same fate, this is later proven when Steak and fries shoots one of the runts and looks away as he does it, and again when benni looks away and shoots into the sky as lil-ze shoots someone. It really does emthisie the power struggle and the vicious circle that they are all in and cant escape.

I think that one of the most important scenes for creating meaning through mise-en-scene in city of god is the nightclub scene, in this scene the charaters are really empthsised through the use of mise-en-scene, half way throught the scene there is a two shot of Benni and Lil-ze, in urban stories these shots are useally used to show conflict between characters however i think that it was done to eexpress the charaters emotions dueing the scene, the two characters apeare to be split by light, Benni is all in the light where as Lil-ze is surounded by darkness, this reminds me alot of western films as there is the theme of polar opposites this one being good and bad. just after this section in the scene Lil-ze leaves and he is surrounded by green light, this instantly gives you an idea of what the charater is feeling, greed, anger, sickness. this then gives you an idea of what the character is going to do, and this is why the mise-en-scene is really important in creating meaning.

Another film that i have studied where mise-en-scene is important is La Haine. One of the scenes that I think really emphasises the whole westernisation of the community that the three main characters, (vinz, said and Hubert) live in, is the scene were a man is mixing music from his window, (this sound is diegetic), I think that this really generates meaning because the songs that he is mixing are, fuck the police by NWA and Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien by Edith Piaf. The first songs is an American song and is very with the plot, (I think that it is with the plot because Vinz was to kill police man), however the other song is a famous French song, this was done I think to show the influence of Americanism with in the community. While this is happening there is a bird’s eye view shot of the neighbourhood, this then allows the audience to see the whole area as the camera travels, the community looks a lot like a maze and I think that this gives a lot of depth and meaning, the maze like structure could indicate that the people who live in it are trapped. This theory is greatly emphasized when Vinz, Said and Hubert go to Paris and there is lots of space where there isn’t in the place that they are living in now. Later in the scene the mise-en scene shows Vinz seeing a cow walk past him, this shows a lot about Vinz in the sense that he is dreamer, were as all Said wants to do it go and find Hubert, this also shows a lot about Said, it shows brotherhood, this is a big thing throughout the film, there is a theory that each of the three characters is a word in the French motto, liberty, equality and fraternity.

Another example of when the mise-en-scene and or music was important in the film for me was the train station scene. Before this scene it showed vinz being on his own and being separated from the other two, it also showed him seeing violence on screen and in a boxing ring, he seems completely desensitised by this however shortly after it shows him witnessing real life violence and he doesn’t know how to handle this. The scene starts with Hubert and Said missing the last train. There is a two shot of Hubert and Said and the background is blurred, Vinz then walks into sight, this depth of field shot shows a lot of meaning, because you couldn’t see him in the background even though he was there, I think that it shows him coming back to reality and is re-joining his friends after being distant, it’s also important I think because he left them but waited for them anyway, it is the first time in the film were Said hasn’t been the peace keeper. When the scene continues it shows the three of them walking in a line together rather than having one person lead and I think that this shows that they are all equal rather than any of them being dominate. I think that the mise-en-scene is important in this scene and is significant because there is a sign in the train station that says, “Change” it is significant because there is a lot of change between the relationships of the characters and the way that they act individually, this really becomes apparent within the next scenes.

The other film that i studied was Chuncking Express, this film was very different to the others as not all the urban stories themes where established however the mise-en-scene is still really important for example when mai is cleaning the police mans apartment, she hides when ever he come back and cant tell him how she feels, this scene uses similar techniques to the other films as it is done in montage and is a lot like the story of the apartment in city of god, however is shows the progression of the apartment rather than the decay in this film. the mise-en-scene in this scene does empthesis one of the themes which is power. mai has no power and she cant do anything about it, there is no escaping it. The sound is also really important in this scene, mai listens to a song called American dreaming, this again shows the westernisation of Hong Kong, westerniation is something that is apparent in all of the films i have studied and wouldnt be recognised without the use of sound and mise-en-scene.

Reflective Analysis

Reflective analysis

I have made a low budget experimental film; the film is titled Vitae. While making the film I have attempted to incorporate as many techniques from my influences as I could. This is because I thought that this would make my film more appropriate for my target audience, which is channel 4's 3 minute wonders. This is a programme for budding new directors to make films to be broadcast. This is why I have chosen the viewers of this program as my target audience. A lot of the 3 minute wonders were experimental films making my film appropriate for this target audience.    

When planning what I was going to do with my film I decided that I was going to have a simple car journey in which it shows different destinations that I believe are important in life, I decided to do this to show the life cycle and the order that people are expected live in, almost like a continuous loop with repeated destinations. Although life is supposed to be beautiful my intention was to show that no matter what you do in life everyone lives through the same things, you're born, you learn, you reproduce and you die. 

This relates to my target audience as perhaps they prefer films that aren’t mainstream because of their interest in channel 4's 3-minute wonder festival. Because of this I think that they would prefer avant-garde films, because my film has no linear narrative and isn't conventional to mainstream cinema then the audience may understand the reasoning of my piece and appreciate the meaning behind it better.   

One of my main influences is film maker Godfrey Reggio, I have watched many of his films, one of which influenced me the most, that film is Naqoyqatsi, and I was mostly influenced by how he took different everyday images and incorporated them into his work, this is what I tried to do with my piece but instead of piecing together the images to make a narrative I decided to have a montage sequence in the background in different points in time/ different points in life.

The setting of my piece would be different destinations that I believed important or almost cliché to human life. The destinations I chose were a maternity ward, primary and secondary schools, college, the justice centre, a work place, a place for a date, a church and then the first 3 are repeated and finally a funeral parlour. I chose these places because I thought the mise- en-scene would portray to the target audience the meaning of the piece. Godfrey Reggio also influenced this. In a lot of his films he uses past, present and future, this idea helped me to understand the meaning of his films so I wanted to incorporate it into my own so that my target audience could interpret my piece better. I planned my film like this as it is very specific to my own life, my piece is the things I have done, the things I am doing and the things that I could potentially do one day.

In the background of each destination was an event that could happen, I took different moving images from the Internet and incorporated them into the film, I did this because I was able to show more explicit things, like childbirth. The main influence for this idea was Simon Pummel's Body song, this is a montage film which uses found footage from the last 100 years of film to show the different stages of life. I decided to incorporate this idea into my own film by having life events in the background of each destination, I changed the opacity of the images so that the audience could see the destination and the event at the same time to show that the images corresponded. 

Another thing that I have used in my film is the use of black and white, some sections of my piece are in black and white and some are in colour. I believe that some parts of life are more important than others and therefore they are in colour, whereas others aren’t as important or they are things that people don’t consider really relevant, therefore these images are in black and white. This is a technique commonly used by Godfrey Reggio, I found it very effective in his films and thought I would apply it to my own.

In all of Godfrey Reggio`s films the music comes from a composer called Phillip Glass, this music is very dramatic but can also be very ambient. I didn’t want to use Phillip Glass’ work in my piece because his work is very specific to Godfrey Reggio`s films and emphasise his films, however I was inspired by his work and I still wanted to use the dramatic and ambient themes, so I decided to use the music piece Sudden Throw by Ólafur Arnolds, This piece is very ambient but dramatic at the end, I chose it because it wouldn’t distract attention from the images but will engage the target audience, I found that this piece corresponded very well with the montage sequence making it more interesting to watch.

Although the concept of the film was good I think that I could have made the film considerably better, for me there could have been more images so that it was more interesting to watch. I also think that the cinematography should have been improved to be more visually pleasing, I think that I should have used a tripod or driven slower to make the footage smoother, Because the quality of footage isn't a very high standard I think that it makes the film appear very rushed and amateurish and not aesthetically pleasing, which I don’t think would appealed to the target audience