Today in class we started off with Mr. Rivers reminding us to have our book ready for the summer reading bookchat tomorrow. He then told us that we will be beginning our first movie next week, No Country for Old Men, and will be watching that from Monday to Thursday. On Friday next week we will have a multiple choice test on mise-en-scene. The monday the week after we will have an open note test specifically relating to No Country for Old Men. We went on in class to analyze two images from the same scene using our mise-en-scene characteristics. The picture on the top showed a close up shot of a man in colorful clothes, showing power. While the picture on bottom showed up shot of a man in the middle of an empty room sitting on chair, wearing bland boring clothes, showing that the man was not in a position of power. We then talked about how these choices affected the narrative of the film such as showing that the setting is a boring workplace environment by using bland colors. Another mise-en-scene choice that affected the narrative was the character placement showing one man as the boss and the other as his subordinate by having one shot be of the boss in a close up view, and his employee is shown in a more loose framed view. Another element is that the room is empty showing that the boss is not an interesting character, he has one plant in the corner for decoration and a boring painting on the wall. The lack of density in the room shows the employee all alone, isolated from everything else. The last thing in class was being assigned to do what we just did to the images we were looking at on Monday and in Friday.
Very effective description of today's class, Elias. Good balance of clarity and specificity, but consider how multiple paragraphs may give you more options in terms of manipulation and delivery of information.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in terms of the second half of the assignment: where is it? Remember that this year's blogs require an EXTENSION in which you apply our learning to something that's happening OUTSIDE the classroom itself. That can be as all-encompassing as applying mise-en-scene (which we certainly examined in class) to another film by identifying those choices. It can also be as specific as examining choices of clothing (as your group does) and identifying how those choices affect some other narrative. Let me know if you're making adjustments to this for partial credit.