MISE-EN-SCENE:

When applied to the cinema, mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before the
camera and its arrangement—composition, sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting.
[2]
Mise-en-scène also includes the positioning and movement of actors on the set,
which is called blocking

Key aspects of mise-en-scène

• Production Design: sets, props and costumes

• Colour (present in both production design and lighting)
• Lighting
• Actors’ performance (including casting and make up) and movement (blocking)
• Framing including position; depth of field; aspect ratio; height and angle (but not
movement)
• Diegetic sound (that is, sound that emanates from the scene and is not extraneous
to it, such as the music that is not being played within the scene or a voice-over)

MOBILE FRAME

the effect on the screen of moving camera, a zoom lens, or special effects shifting the
frame in relation to the scene being photographed.

5 GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN FILMS FORMAL SYSTEM

Meaning in a film is patterned; we speak of such patterning as a film's form. Form can
be defined as the total system of relationships at work in the film. These relationships
are ones between parts and elements, be they stylistic or narrative entities.
Form involves:
--expectation,
--preknowledge and convention,
--feeling and prejudice,
--meaning, from the referential-explicit to the implicit-symptomatic, i.e., from the obvious
to the concealed and repressed.
Films are not random collections of signifiers, but rather dynamic sets of relations.

Five general principles are at work in a film's system:

1. Function: What is this element doing there? What other elements determine (i.e.,
motivate or justify) its presence?

2. Similarity/repetition: Here we concern ourselves with motifs, i.e., significant elements,

ithat show up repeatedly in the course of a film, be they objects, places, gestures,
prominent shapes, bits of clothing, lines of dialogue, pieces of music, etc.

3. Difference/variation: Elements do not only recur, they also demonstrate variety and
function to contrast with other elements. Differences, for instance, in tonality and
texture. Different motifs (scenes, settings, actions, objects, and stylistic devices) may be
repeated, but they seldom will be repeated exactly.

4. Development: To be aware of similarity and difference is to look for principles of

development. Development = the patterning of similar and different elements.

5. Unity/disunity: If elements cohere strongly, we speak of a "tight" (and sometimes

"closed") structure. There often remain, though, elements that stick out. Some films in
fact make a systematic or structured use of disunity.

MEANING IN FILM FORM

Referential : what the episode is about:
This is basically a plot summary

The explicit meaning: what the explicit message of the film is:

The implicit meaning: what is being suggested by the film at a more abstract level:

The ideological meaning: what the film suggests about the society in which it plays,
about its position within the debates of its time:

NARRATIVE, STORY, AND PLOT

Story

The story of a film comes from a collaboration of both the information directly presented
to the viewer by way of what is seen and heard in the film and the inferences made by
the audience after viewing and listening to the information that has been given (1).
Although not all aspects of the story are inferred. You may use story interchangeably
with narrative but the main difference is that story is the sequence of events used to
describe the narrative(2).

Plot
The term “plot” describes all the aspects of the film that are visibly and audibly
presented to the viewer (1). This description of plot includes the story events and
both diegetic and nondiegetic elements of a film (1). The plot can also be described as
the events that take place to work towards some sort of emotional or artistic goal
relating to what the story is based on such as the characters or conflicts that occur in
the story. Some stories may use something called a plot device. A plot device is
something that has only one purpose and that is to advance the plot. Some call this bad
writing unless the plot device has several other purposes other than just advancing the
plot.
In Classical Hollywood narrative, psychological causes tend to motivate most other narrative events.
Time is subordinate to the cause-effect chain. The plot will omit big chunks of time in order to only show
events of causal importance.

Tends toward fairly unrestricted narration.

DIEGETIC SOUND

Sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present
by the action of the film:
  voices of characters
 sounds made by objects in the story
 music represented as coming from instruments in the story space ( = source
music)

Diegetic sound is any sound presented as originated from source within the film's world

NON-DIEGETIC SOUND

Sound whose source is neither visible on the screen nor has been implied to be present
in the action:

 narrator's commentary
 sound effects which is added for the dramatic effect
 mood music

Non-diegetic sound is represented as coming from the a source outside story

space.

180-DEGREE SYSTEM
a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and
another character or object within a scene. An imaginary line called the axis connects
the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the
scene, the first character will always be frame right of the second character, who is then
always frame left of the first. If the camera passes over the axis, it is called crossing
the line or jumping the line.

SHOT/REVERSE SHOT (or REVERSE ANGLE SHOOTING):

A conventional pattern of editing and camera placement in sequences showing a

conversation between two (or more) people. The camera alternates between shots of
person A and shots of person B, taken from opposite ends of the axis of action. The
camera must move at least 90 degrees between the two shots (in order to move from
person A's end of the axis to person B's), while staying on only one side of the figures
(that is, one side of the 180 degree line).

EYELINE MATCH:

eyeline matching
A term used to point to the continuity editing practice ensuring the logic of the look
or gaze. In other words, eyeline matching is based on the belief in mainstream cinema
that when a character looks into off-screen space the spectator expects to see what he
or she is looking at. Thus there will be a cut to show what is being looked at:
 object
 view
 another character
Eyeline then refers to the trajectory of the looking eye.
The eyeline match creates order and meaning in cinematic space. Thus, for example,
character A will look off-screen at character B. Cut to character B, who-if she or he is in
the same room and engaged in an exchange either of glances or words with character
A-will return that look and so 'certify' that character A is indeed in the space from which
we first saw her or him look. This "stabilising" is true in the other primary use of the
eyeline match which is the shot/reverse angle shot, also known as the reverse angle
shot, commonly used in close-up dialogue secenes. The camera adopts the eyeline
trajectory of the interlocutor looking at the other person as she or he speaks, then
switches to the other person's position and does the same.

MATCH ON ACTION
Cutting on action or matching on action refers to film editing and video
editing techniques where the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches the
first shot's action. Although the two shots may have actually been shot hours apart from
each other, cutting on action gives the impression of continuous time when watching the
edited film. By having a subject begin an action in one shot and carry it through to
completion in the next, the editor creates a visual bridge, which distracts the viewer from
noticing the cut or noticing any slight continuity error between the two shots.
A variant of cutting on action is a cut in which the subject exits the frame in the first shot
and then enters the frame in the subsequent shot. The entrance in the second shot
must match the screen direction and motive rhythm of the exit in the first shot.

OPTICAL PRINTER (1930)

An optical printer is a device consisting of one or more

film projectors mechanically linked to a movie camera. It allows filmmakers to re-
photograph one or more strips of film. The optical printer is used for making special
effects for motion pictures, or for copying and restoring old film material.
Common optical effects include fade outs and fade ins, dissolves, slow motion, fast
motion, and matte work. More complicated work can involve dozens of elements, all
combined into a single scene.

ZOOM LENS (1932)