AN ARTICLE BY: MATHEW TSCHIRGI
READ MORE OF MY MOVIE REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS AT: WWW.MOVIEWATCHERS.20M.COM

Mathew Tschirgi's Online Film School
Part I: Mise-en-scene

You might be browsing the Articles section of Extreme Movie Watchers and be
wondering what the hell is this doing here? It has nothing to do with movie
reviews and it's not one of my celebrity interviews.

This is the first Part of a multi-part series where I pass on my knowledge
to you readers about film stuff. Enough with the intro, here goes nothing!

Mise-en-scene is a term that is only used by Film Majors in college.
Mise-en-scene is a French term. I don't know what it means translated into
English, but students have to write long papers about mise-en-scene.

To do a paper, you take any movie and pause it.

Come on, take out a VHS video or DVD, stick it in your VCR or DVD Player and
fast-forward it to any place. Press pause. Now you should be seeing a
frame of the movie. In a mise-en-scene paper, you write a paper of at least
3 pages (sometimes more) on the frame alone by analyzing it like a painting.

This is really boring and I'm not really sure what it has to do with
learning about film. Sure, there's shot composition (what goes where in a
frame), but papers? Long papers? Stephen Spielberg got to be the director
he is by making and shooting lots of short films, not writing papers into
oblivion. Honestly, Spielberg isn't my favorite director (that honor would
probably go to Tim Burton followed by Paul Verhoeven, although Spielberg is
in my top 10)-but he's probably one of the most recognizable ones.

In my Film Aesthetics and Analysis class, I got a 98 on my paper. It was on
Chasing Amy, a movie by Kevin Smith. At the end of this article is my
entire paper, which I previously posted on viewaskew.com's message board. I
am not posting this so lazy Film students can copy it when they have a paper
due in five minutes. I am posting this as an example on how to write a
mise-en-scene paper-how I write one, at least.

The most important thing to remember when writing a mise-en-scene paper is
to bullshit intelligently. Honestly, most of the Chasing Amy paper is real
stuff-except for the part on primary dominance. The primary dominance was
the red lamp, but I couldn't think of a way to defend my position on why it
was so important, so I made up a barely credible explanation. Don't write
"The primary dominance is when Jaws jumps out of the water because he has
cool teeth. Long teeth are pointy, but my teeth are dull." Write "The
primary dominance in Jaws is when Jaws lunges out of the water, placing his
teeth in frame."

That Jaws example is pretty awful because I don't really like the movie Jaws
and I haven't seen it in four years.

Here is my Chasing Amy mise-en-scene paper. Any questions about film-making
or mise-en-scene papers, send me an e-mail at magus@mindspring.com.

Tschirgi 1

Mathew Tschirgi

FILM 1010/T-TH 9:30-10:45 A.M.

4/3/2001

Mise-En-Scene Analysis of Chasing Amy

In 1997, Kevin Smith wrote and directed Chasing Amy, a film about a man who finds out the woman he's in love with is a lesbian. Chasing Amy is different from Kevin Smith's earlier two films, Clerks and Mallrats, because of a more dramatic tone underlying much of the humor as opposed to the straight out comedy of his earlier films; this increased dramatic tone and its location on the list of films that may be used for this project make Chasing Amy a decent choice for mise-en-scene analysis. Chasing Amy uses the mise-en-scene elements of dominance, proxemics, form, and depth in a scene that not only works as the first plot point of the film, but also demonstrates the main characters' relationships with each other through much of the film.

Kevin Smith utilizes primary dominance in the frame in an odd way; although the frame is a long shot containing three main characters and a minor character (Alyssa, Banky, Holden, and Kim) sitting in a booth around a table, the viewer's eye is directed towards a bright red lamp in the middle of the table. Perhaps the bright glow around the red lamp symbolizes Holden's frustration towards Alyssa for being a lesbian; in the film, Holden is not mad at Alyssa for being a lesbian- his frustration looms from a desire to have a romantic relationship with her and the feeling not being reciprocated because of her sexual preference. In the frame, Holden's eyes look at Alyssa in disgust; his line of vision is lined up directly towards Alyssa and the red lamp is between Alyssa and himself. Alyssa and her girlfriend, Kim, form the subsidiary dominance for a two reasons: they take up the upper-left hand corner of the frame and the explicitness of their "making out" distracts one's eyes from the glowing red lamp rather quickly. Presumably, the subsidiary dominance is more important to the plot of the movie because it visually spells out Holden's conflict in the film-how is Holden's friendship with Alyssa going to progress know that he knows that she is a lesbian?

Another important element that Kevin Smith uses effectively in the frame is the proxemics of the four characters in the frame. Their distances from each other describe the nature of their relationships with one another. Kim and Alyssa kiss each other passionately and sit right next to each other, defining their relationship as intimate. In the midst of their romantic passion, they are oblivious to Banky watching them nearby and Holden glaring at them from a distance. Alyssa and Kim are in their own romantic microcosm, isolated from the men at the table. Holden sits at a corner opposite from Kim and Alyssa and glares at them from the corner of his eye, defining his relationship with them as distant. Banky, Holden's friend, sits a few feet away from Holden with a beer bottle in one hand, admiring the romantic antics of Alyssa and Kim from afar. Banky's relationship with Holden is defined as casual from the few feet separating them, implying that they are friends, but not involved romantically. Banky sits at a distance from Kim and Alyssa, enjoying their romantic "show." Kevin Smith's use of proxemics in the frame further the narrative drive of the story by defining their relationships with each other merely from their distance apart from one another, allowing the viewer to know the characters' relationships from simply glancing at the frame.

A third mise-en-scene element important in the selected frame from Chasing Amy is the form. Kevin Smith composes the scene so it has a relatively closed form. The far right of the frame is closed off from the location of Holden taking up the entire right edge of the frame, while the far left of the frame is slightly open. Although there is a little bit of free space at the left end of the frame, most of it is cluttered with the edge of the table, a window in the background, and the end of Kim's body. Surprisingly, the top of the frame remains the densest; from left to right, the viewer sees a window, Kim and Alyssa kissing and groping each other, another window, the edge of the table, Banky, and a third window. In contrast, the bottom of the frame is relatively closed off, but is less dense than the other areas of the frame; only the bottom of the table and Holden's legs fill up the bottom part of the frame. A possible explanation for Kevin Smith's framing the scene in closed form is so the viewer can tell who the main conflict is between from the left and right sides of the frame: Alyssa, intertwined with Kim, filling up most of the left side, and Holden, sitting by himself, filling up most of the right side. The frame's closed form contributes to the plot by reinforcing the central conflict: Holden against Alyssa.

While somewhat related to form in terms of density of the frame, the depth is the final important mise-en-scene element in the frame from Chasing Amy. Despite the relatively cluttered frame, there is no foreground at all. A factor that contributes to the lack of a foreground is the scene being shot with a deep- focus lens. One might argue that the table is the foreground of the scene, although it never really blocks any of the characters in the scene or appears in a different field of vision. Characters and props fill up most of the midground. From right to left, the visible characters or props in the midground are the table, Kim, Alyssa, beer bottles, a lamp with a red glowing light, a plate, Banky, and Holden. Three windows provide the only background to the scene. These three windows are located at the top of the frame behind the characters. A possible explanation for the midground being full of information as opposed to the relatively sparse background and the non-existent foreground is that it works as a device to direct the viewer to watch what is located in the midground, more specifically, the three main characters of the film: Banky, Holden, and Alyssa. Kevin Smith's use of depth works to propel the story forward because, similar to the form, it focuses the viewer on the reactions of Banky, Holden, and Alyssa as opposed to any distractions in the background or foreground.

Kevin Smith's composition of this particular frame in Chasing Amy is effective because it succinctly describes the basic conflict and relationship of the characters in the film without resorting to dialogue and it manages to contain a shot that is dense without being overly cluttered. An alternate way to direct the scene would be to omit the red glowing lamp in the center of the frame, the primary dominant image in the frame. Although it looks effective from an artistic and possibly from a symbolic standpoint, its removal would make the subsidiary dominant image become the dominant: Alyssa in an embrace with Kim; this would make it more pertinent to the narrative thrust of the story without hurting the framing in place for the scene.