Mise-en-scene Activity

Its the first day back at St Hildas school, where laptops are used freely in the school day. Annie K just got a new mac for her birthday so she decided to take it to school to show her friends.

Before the school day starts Annie K checks her e-mails and facebook status.

Izzy notices that Annie K has a new mac and her friends ask her about it.

As Annie K tries to show Izzy some of the new features, the evil laptop closes on to her finger as Annie K reaches for the trackpad.

Painful and bloody, Annie K's finger was almost severed by her new computer. She is shocked and scared that her mac would turn against her.

Annie K, Izzy and Ruby huddle in the corner as the evil mac closes in. Scared, they try to defend themselves but they know they have no hope against the evil wrath of the computer.

The three school girls lie dead and dying on the floor, the laptop proving to be evil and corrupt, ready to terrorise other school children.

A few definitions

Mise-en-scene: comprised of lighting, setting, acting and props.

Cinematography: the elements related to cameras. e.g. camera movement, camera angle, focus, exposure, speed.

Sound: noises made in the scene

SFX: Artificially created sound inserted into the scene

Editing: Creating sequences by manipulating shots from the camera and adding SFX as well inserting other features.

Assignment

Over the past few weeks, I worked on an essay. It involved choosing a sequence and analysing it based on mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound and editing. There were many sequences from a variety of genres to choose from. Although all the clips had many excellent examples of the film elements, I narrowed my choices down to Psycho because the shower scene could be analysed in depth, Memoirs of a Geisha because the film was beautifully composed and the cinematography was stunning, Titanic because I love the movie so much and I felt that it could be well analysed and House of Flying Daggers because the camera focus was excellent and the characters were well defined despite the lack of dialogue. I ended up choosing House of Flying Daggers because I rewatched it several times and found that it was the most interesting. Also, the characters were well defined and I found that the scene was quite climatic.

The sequence was of the wuxia action genre and included a wuxia martial arts fight scene between the girl and the captain. After researching the action genre, I found that the sequence was a perfect example of the action genre: 'where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_film

'one or more heroes (the blind girl) is thrust into a series of challenges (echo game) that require physical feats (correctly interpreting which drum the rock hit and performing a complex dance move to hit it), extended fights (wuxia) and frenetic chases (girl tries to hear captain's movements)

I felt that House of Flying Daggers was an excellent example of the wuxia action genre and it conveyed its plot successfully to the audience.