Introduction to Film Studies
Mise-en-scène
Make-up
• No make-up applied on the face of Renée Jeanne
Falconetti, a stage and film actress in The Passion
of Jean of Arc
• Hollywood stars are requested to get their teeth
capped, eyebrows plucked and make-up applied.
Erich von Stroheim – the first director to have made
the actor to wear no make-up.
White Queen (Anne Hathaway) in Tim Burton’s Alice
in the Wonderland (2010) with many layers of
foundation and powder finished with pink blusher.
Elizabeth Taylor plays Cleopatra with plenty of
green and blue eye shadow. Joseph Mankiewicz’s
Cleopatra (1963)
Daryl Hannah’s panda eyes in Ridley Scott’s Blade
Runner (1982)
Make-up
• Monster is created by applying heavy make-ups
• According to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, he has
‘watery glowing eyes’ and ‘flowing black lips’
• Definitive visualization of Frankenstein (1931)
with flat head and hollow eyes. Girl at pond
Make-up
• One of the greatest make-up that has ever been
applied in film. David Lynch’s Elephant Man
(1980) John Hurt played Joseph Merrick and his
make-up was based on a real-life cast made of
Merrick’s head after his death. Train station
Make-up
• Whenever disguise takes place, make-up is the
most significant way to do so.
• Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis disguise as female
musicians in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot
(1959) station
Make-up
• In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Brad Pit is born as an old man and dies as a baby.
The curious narrative requires different make-ups
are applied to Pit’s face.
Make-up
• The heavily painting make-up in The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari fits not only the characterization in
the narrative but also the other aspects of mise-enscène: lighting and expressionistic set design
Lighting
• Lighting – more than just illumination
• Lighter and darker areas create an overall
composition of each shot
• They guide attention to certain objects and
actions
• A bright patch draw our eye to a key gesture
• A shadow conceal a detail or build up suspense
• Lighting articulate textures
Standard three point lighting: key, fill and back
lighting
Key lighting
Fill lighting
3 point lighting
Lighting
• Highlight – a patch of relative brightness on a
surface
• Part of a woman’s face in Matter of Life and
Death and metal grills in 400 Blows display
highlights
• Highlight shows the texture – the woman’s soft
Lighting
• Shadows
• An ‘attached’ shadow occurs when light fails to
illuminate part of an object, because of its shape
or its surface feature
• Patches of a girl’s face and body falls into
darkness in Spirit of Beehive Frankenstein
Lighting
• A ‘cast’ shadow occurs when a source of light
projects shadows because something in front of it
blocks out the light
• Kurosawa Akira’s The Stray Dog, cast shadows of
bars between the actors and the light source.
Lighting
• Lighting shapes a shot’s overall composition
• A pool of light cast by a hanging lamp sets up a
scale of importance. The man the most clearly lit
is the prominent gangster in Asphalt Jungle.
Lighting
• ‘The proper use of light can embellish and
dramatize every object.’ Joseph von Sternberg
• 4 major features of film lighting
• QUALITY; DIRECTION; SOURCE; COLOUR
• QUALITY - The relative intensity of the
illumination
• Hard lighting (noon day, summer sunlight) –
strong shadow
• Soft lighting (overcast, winter day) – defused
illumination and soft shadows
Lighting
• Hard lighting – bold shadows and crisp textures
and edges
• Soft lighting – blurs contours and texture and
make more diffusions and gentler contrasts
between light and shade Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito
(1956)
Lighting
• The hard light can be created by a concentrated
source and creates harsh, sharp-edge shadows. It
renders the image heavy and serious look.
• Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000)
photographed by Christopher Doyle.
Relatively small light source results in a sharp
boundary between the lit and shaded side of the
object.
Lighting
• Akira Kurosawa made hard lighting even harder
by using mirrors. Mirrors reflect harsh light.
Photographer, Kazuo Miyagawa. Tajomaru
Lighting
• Soft light occurs when a light source is large
relative to and farther from the subject, and cast
diffused shadows with soft edges. It renders
images lyrical and happy feel.
• Lasse Hallström’s Dear John (2010) photographed
by Terry Stacey, love-romance/war film.
Relatively large light source results in a blurred
boundary between the lit and shaded side of the
object.
Romantic comedy use soft lighting to fit the mood:
diffused and soft edge shadows
In Film noir - post-war crime cinema, hard lighting
is the essential part of its visual style. Dark and
tragic film ending with the self-destruction.
Lighting
• DIRECTION
• The path of light from its
source(s) to the object lit
• Frontal lighting tends to
eliminate shadows
• Frontal lighting results in
a fairly flat-looking
image
• Jean-Luc Godard’s La
Chinoise (1967)
Lighting
• The source of illumination is placed near the
camera. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia
(1999) photographed by Robert Eslwit
Lighting
• Hard Side lighting sculpts the character’s features
and the object’s contour.
• The right half of the man’s face is in complete
shadow, Carol Reed’s The Man between (1953)
Side lighting gives the image dramatic feel. Francis
Ford Coppola’s Godfather (1972) photographed by
Gordon Willis.
Lighting
• Back lighting comes from behind the subject
filmed. It can be positioned at many angles and
tends to create silhouettes
• Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949)
photographed by Robert Krasker
Back lighting gives the images mysterious or
menacing atmosphere. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner
(1982) photographed by Jordan Croneweh.
Back lighting gives the contours of the subject glow.
Final Battle
In James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta, the most of
V’s body is concealed and when it is shown, strong
backlights are used with a less powerful light
showing his face.
Lighting
• In under lighting the light comes from below the
subject filmed. In Tim Burton’s first Batman, the
low angle shot is combined with under lighting.
• It creates distorted images. Joker
Jack Nicholson again shown in under lighting. It is
frequently used in horror films. Stanley Kubrick’s
Shining
Lighting
• In top lighting the
spotlight shines down
from above. Marlene Dietrich’s face is lit from top
front in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express
(1932). A high frontal light brings out the line of her
cheekbones and create shadows in her eye sockets.
Hint of corruption and mysterious sexuality. SX
Lighting
• In Colour lighting, thin colour film placed in front
of a light gives image a universal tint.
Lighting
• In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s
Black Narcissus, their cinematographer Jack
Cardiff got scenes lit in bold colours.
Lighting
• The theatrical lighting in blue in the concluding
sequence of Nagisa Oshima’s last film, Taboo
(1999)
Lighting
• In William Wyler’s Jezebel, Bettie Davis is a
central figure and lit by the key light from top right,
by the fill light from left and by the back light from
slightly high at back. The figures in front remain
rather dark as the light do not reach them.
Lighting
• Three point lighting in a colour film
• Strong key light from left, a fill light from off right
of the camera, and the office behind the couple is
lit more dimly and softly with background light.
• Whenever the camera position moves, the lighting
positions must be rearranged.
Lighting
• Three point lighting suited to high-key lighting
• Photography with low contrast between brighter
and darker areas
• The most frequently used in classical Hollywood
cinema.
Lighting
• Low-key lighting creates stronger contrasts and
sharper, darker shadows. The lighting is hard, and
fill light is lessened or switched off.
• Light is hard and comes from right in the shot
above, The Maltese Falcon. Fill and back light
eliminated creating a dark shadow on the wall
Lighting
• The fill light and back light are significantly less
intense in Andrzey Wajda’s Kanal making the
back of the screen remain opaque.
Lighting
• Low-key lighting has usually been applied to
somber or mysterious scenes. Common in horror
films of the 30s and film noir in the 40s and 50s.
Revived in the 80s in such films as Blade Runner
and Rumble Fish