The Key to Never Mis-en-scene Again

While nearly everyone knows awards such as best picture and others given by the Oscars award ceremony each year, few people understand exactly the art form that is practiced for these awards. After reading the article given for this week’s readings, it was clear to me that this art form is called miss-en-scene.

In a single movie, there can be several different types of mis-en-scene’s including tight framing, canted shots, different types of geometrical compositions, iconography, deep focus, and shallow focus. And while some movies decide to focus mainly on one or two of these, there are others that dabble with several, if not all.

In the movie Nacho Libre, tight framing is used a few times to emphasize solidarity of Nacho Libre while he was wrestling. Also, there is a time that Nacho, the main character, was alone singing to a group of people at a party. Due to the tight framing that can be seen in the picture to the right, it can help the viewer feel isolated with Nacho, just as he felt when he was uncomfortably making up lyrics to a song that he did not know in this scene. This feeling is one that I believe most people can relate to; one of solidarity and confusion. This feeling was perfectly displayed by the tight framing used.

This happens several times throughout the movie and after understanding the mis-en-scene in the different parts in the movie, I was able to enjoy the movie better and truly understand the art that went into each take. However, the subtlest form of mis-en-scene is the one I like the most. Iconography.

In Nacho Libre, I only experienced iconography one time, while there may have been more. In the scene, Nacho climbs a cliff and when he is prepared to jump off decides to spread his arms with his feet together. This pose is the same pose that can be seen in the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. It is subtle iconic references like these that take a movie from good to great to me.

Another preferred framing used in the movie is shallow focus. This is when the background is somewhat blurred in order to give definition to the foreground. In the screenshot provided tot he left, the emphasis did not need to be on the setting, but instead on Nacho. However, because the setting is still important in understanding the scene, the shallow focus provides the best solution to capture the best frame.

Throughout movies, these several mis-en-scenes can be identified. Nacho Libre is one of the movies that uses only a few different types of frames simply because it is a comedy. However, if the background would be more important, or if there were several different symbolic values that needed to be portrayed, the genre movie itself would likely change.

An example of this would be Mad Max: Fury Road where the background is vital in portraying the intensity of the movie. In this case, deep focus is used more than shallow focus and there are many canted shots to show the oddity of the movie.

After completely analyzing mis-en-scene, it is interesting to see how much the art form can affect a film. While I used to watch movies and enjoy just the story line, I will now watch with the added knowledge of mis-en-scene. With this, not only will I be able to follow and understand the storyline, but also see why certain frames are filmed how they are and enjoy the movie aesthetically as well.