Monday 14 November 2011

Looking at Mis-en-scene


Straight away from the first shot of the opening scene to Saving Private Ryan, we can see that the genre is war, we are able to tell this because of the costume that the actors are dressed in. The composistion of the image is dark which creates the mood and atmosphere of the scene, which is depressing, tense and very sad. We see the solider kissing a cross in this image which tells thew audience that, he is worried and is almost praying to god for him to be okay, which makes the audience feel as though they are apart of him and are praying for him to.

From this second image still looking at Mis-en-scene we can now see a battlefield which again indicates the genre and the setting of the film. The composition of the image is still dark , however it now has a slight blue colour too it which turns the feel to being cold and isolated. We cans see and explosion which indicates that people are being killed by this violence. The sea in the background looks rough, which contributes towards the atmosphere of being fast paced and violent.


In this image there is a clear indication of death from the connotation of the use of red, meaning in this genre danger or death. It is set underwater which emphasises the colour of red making it look more harsh and dramatic. The setting has now moved to underwater and although now we have a bright dominant colour of red the colour blue is still with us again making the audience feel cold. Also being underwater creates isolation from the "outside" world.

We can see from this image the struggle of the soliders struggling with the battle, we see the mass of soilders which creates the sense of realism for the audience because soilders do come in a mass. The image is very grey which is pathetic fallacy because we as the audience know that the film is about to get worse. We also see dead soilders lying around the battle field, this makes the audience relate to whats happening and they will feel as though it is happening around them from the way they are posistioned through the use of 
mis-en-scen.

Here we get another dominant clour of yellow, it is clear to see that in this image there is an explosion, which is a common aspect of war. We still see the soilders struggling, however thorough the use of yellow it brightens up the scene. However this is ironic beacuse although yellow is seen to be a happy bright colour, it does not change the mood. But also another reading of yellow is fire which indicstes danger which is the case here.



My Film Clip

For my film analysis, i have chosen to analyse the opening scene to 'Saving Private Ryan' This is a film about war, the opening scene is very graphic and contains a lot of strong images that i will be able to analyse in a lot of depth. It is a typical war scene which brings heartache to the viewing audeince through the different micro and macro techniques used in the sence.
I have chosen to use the micro aspects of mis-en-scene and sound to analyse my clip of 'Saving Private Ryan' as i feel these two aspects are what really creates the atmosphere and clearly show the setting and the gere of the film withyin the opening of the film.
This is the full movie of 'Saving Private Ryan' but i have chosen four minutes of the clip from 6 minutes to 10 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toipOBs5oos