Mise-on-scene is a French term meaning what is put into a scene or frame. It conveys the essential information to the audience through the camera. Everyone should act follows the narrative.
There are several elements of mise-en-scene:
- Settings and Props:
Settings play an important part in the film. To make it convey certain expectations to the audience, sets are either built from scratch or a great deal of time is spent to find a setting that already exists. A special place has specific or textual meanings. For example, An American Tail is related to America as much as the characters.
Props can identity the character, like Woody’s hat and Buzz’s wings in Toy Story. In 2D animation, we should be careful of setting props to characters because it can lead to huge work. But it doesn’t influence CGI. In some scenes, props can be simple but suggestive. For example, there is an empty chair in The Godfather, it is an indicator of the events that passed.
2. Costume, hair and make-up
Costume, hair and make-up act as an instant indicator of a character’s personality, status and job. For example, Cruella in 101 Dalmatians is an evil woman with a cigarette in her hand. Mise-en-scene is the combination of occupations, jobs and responsibilities.
3. Facial expressions and body language
We are hard-wired with facial expressions with feeling. Body language may also indicate a character’s feelings and relationship with another.
4. Positioning of characters and objects within a frame
Positioning can draw our attention to an important character or object and indicate relationships between people. If you want to emphasize something, you should put it in the sweet point.
5. Lighting and colour
Colour creates the mood. There are psychology, cultural significance and visual significance in colour. We can highlight important characters or objects, shading sections of the face and body to make the character look mysterious. Colour and lighting also can reflect a characters mental state or hide their emotions.
Low key lighting: It hit on the main character, and the background lighting is softer. It can also create a silhouette in any case.
High contrast lighting: The stop-motion animator uses traditional lighting. The essential of producing CGI lighting is to make it natural. Lighting will give a sense of reality or fantasy.
High key lighting: More filler lights are used. Lighting is natural and realistic to our eyes.
Natural lighting: The character walks a fair distance. Light is behind the camera.
Colour: The key: Near and tone react better. Sometimes complementary colours can also use together. A very bright red and very dark green. Even they are opposite on the spectrum, they will kind of look that same special illusion.
Although most part of the frame is blue. There is subtle red in the sun and clothes. If all things are blue, the environment will be lack dynamic. Splashing another colour can enhance the main colour that’s there.