Film Elements Graphic Organizer

 

Mise-en-Scene

Mise-en-Scene in Marvel Studios' The Avengers

I chose to watch Marvel Studios’ The Avengers because I recently watched Black Widow and did not know many of the characters. I wanted to get in the loop since everyone has a favorite Avenger and I cannot even identify two of them. It is also a very exciting action film with a lot of movement and fun aspects of mise-en-scene.

The first scene of the movie has very low-key lighting. You can see a black figure and a blue light from a crystal that the figure is holding. This portrays the figure as the bad guy who is doing something bad or sneaky. They also use shallow space to show the blue crystal in detail, this signifies that it is special and of an unknown importance. The same man was seen using the blue crystal as a weapon. A few scenes later, we can see another shallow space of this blue glow, but this time it is not a solid ball. There is three-point lighting used during the scene where they show the circular set up that is holding the blue glow. This shifts most of the focus to this set up while everything in the background is darker.

There is a man at an airport where a helicopter lands. There are two people who are wearing all black that get out of the helicopter and greet the man. This wardrobe choice is important as the man is seemingly doing something suspicious since he is also wearing all black with black sunglasses in the dark. People wear sunglasses so they cannot be recognized. They then enter a lab where people are wearing white lab coats, signifying that they are doing something scientific. Which is accurate as they were experimenting with the blue crystal.

A few special effects are used during the film as well. One scene used rear projection when showing someone flying a helicopter. The man and the helicopter were shot separately, and he never flew the helicopter. This same mise-en-scene aspect was used when the building was about to blow up. Everyone was running to their vehicles and driving at a high speed to escape. They were also shooting at each other, but they were not really driving the cars or shooting at each other.

There was then a scene using offscreen space when a woman shown who appeared to be in a car garage and everything was shaking. You could also hear rumbling as if the ground was moving. You cannot see the source causing the area to shake, but you know there is something causing it.

The man using the blue crystal as a weapon holds it up against a man’s chest. The film producers use frontality to show the man with the crystal against his chest. This is done so the audience can clearly see how the crystal turns his eyes completely black and then to a blue glow like the crystal.

5 Master Edits- with Sound

 

1) Direct Sound: For the first half of my contrast clip I used direct sound, which was the music playing in the moment that goes along with the dance. It tells how the boy in the video is my best friend and portrays him as a sweet person. Direct sound is also diegetic. 

2) Voice Over: I used a voice over during the second half of my contrast clip to add excitement and explain how the boy was harsh to the other players during the football game. This helps emphasize the contrast in his personality from the first clip to the second clip. A voice over is non-diegetic. 

3) Direct Sound: I used direct sound for each of my simultaneity films to show each of the different sounds going on at the same time. All of the clips were taken at the same time, but you heard a different sound in each film, showing how many different things were going on at once. This is a form of diegetic sound.

4) Music: I decided to use music during the symbolism portion. The music I used is usually correlated with a soldier or a person preparing for a challenge. This helps symbolizes how our mascot, the trojan, is a tough person ready to overcome any challenge, which is placed everywhere on our school. The students call themselves "the trojans", so this shows how we can overcome any challenge as our mascot would. Music is non-diegetic.

5) Sound Bridge: I also incorporated a sound bridge into the symbolism clips. The same music keeps playing through each of the different clips of the trojan mascot. It shows how all trojans, even if they look different, are tough and have the same will power.

6) Offscreen Sound: I used an offscreen sound throughout my leit motif films. You can see the football players on the field in the film but you can also hear people chanting "I believe that we can win" during the film. You cannot see the people chanting but this offscreen sound suggests that they are present during the clips.

7) Sound Bridge: I used another sound bridge on the last two clips of my leit motif section. This sound bridge shows how people continuously use this chant throughout the football game, especially when it is a close game and they need motivation. This is what football players hear and boosts their motivation during the entire game.

8) Voice Over: I decided to use voice overs during the different clips in the parallelism section. This portrays how each parallelism clip paired together has a similar action going on since they also have similar voice overs. These voice overs further increase the emphasis on the parallelism between the clips as it explains what happened in each clip. This is a non-diegetic sound.