Notes on opening of first extract

1. Mise en Scene Notes – I Am A Crisis
As a model, here are some notes on the first ten seconds of the first extract - ‘I Am A
Crisis’. The focus here is on mise en scene – I've talked about some other things here as
well as I go along, especially cinematography, because the two inevitably work with each
other. (Yes, yes, everything works with everything else but some things seem to come
in closer pairs).
• Opening setting- wide landscape shot – twilight – dark hooded figure almost
silhouetted in the gloom, walking towards us. Not a ‘natural’ pastoral landscape,
the background is dominated by an electricity pylon.
o SO – pathetic fallacy (using nature to express human emotion and create
mood and tone) suggests the coming of night, worry, danger, anxiety. The
figure is presented as a threat.
• Cut to close up of figure, framed to remove their identity (so we don’t see their
face) - we are looking at the dog instead – it's not a pitbull or a rottweiler but on a
scale from ‘Cute’ to ‘Killer’ it’s on the dangerous end of the scale. Lit so both
figures are still almost silhouettes.
o SO – we now have an anonymous person in a hoodie with a threatening
dog – adding to the idea of menace and worry.
• Cut to medium c/u shot of the figure who is now well framed and lit and is a
young woman. Shot in shallow focus (the background is out of focus – open
aperture on the camera) so we’re on her as she starts to talk. She looks straight at
the camera and says ‘I’ and ‘You’ - she is addressing us.
o So - having established a mood of threat and worry she becomes a direct
threat to us. This is playing with a common stereotype – the negative
stereotype of the threatening young person in a hoodie with a scary dog
doesn’t quite fit with the young pretty Irish woman.
• Cut and cut again – a tracking mid shot of her walking in the woods cuts to a c/u
steadicam tracking shot with her walking through the woods. She is taking about
things going wrong.
o So - into the woods is an obvious visual metaphor for danger. It’s
interesting that the stereotype of the threatening hoodie youth is really an
urban stereotype and this is very rural (by ‘Urban’ here I really mean
‘urban’ as in ‘town or city’ and not ‘urban’ as in ‘black’ although you could
argue that this is part of the ambiguity of the use of the stereotype here).
• Cut to mid shot of her and dog walking towards us on a canal towpath- fog in the
background, a light behind her.
o So – the fog is another obvious visual metaphor for worry and anxiety.
The tow path is a liminal place (between one thing and another – between
one ‘state of being’ and another) - which again suggests worry – change,
nothing quite settled.