Jeredie's Blog

This week we learned a very important word in the history of cinematography: Mise-en-Scène. Personally the word Mise-en-Scène was not new to me since it was in my daily vocabulary from when I was about 12 years old: French is one of the five languages that I speak fluently. In addition, for me Mise-en-Scène does not just mean "to put on stage", but also to frame someone or to accuse someone of something they did not do. This word, Mise-en-Scène, can also mean to lie. At least, those are the three definitions I can give as I try to translate them in english. However, for this class, I am going to focus on the first meaning of Mise-en-Scène: "Put on Stage". In my defense, Mise-en-Scène is not just a fancy word. It is an art of transforming scripts/stories into vivid images and sounds. Thus, each film need a good director to be successful: the director decides what the audience see on the screen. The product will come from a good Mise-en-Scène that we can break down ...

This week, we watched a classic film, Rear Window. To be honest, in the begining, I thought I was going to be bored. But I guess life is full of surprises. After watching it, I learned to embrace it, even though the first act was very slow and somewhat boring. Eventually, the film got to its pic and I couldn't help but watch till the end of it as a murder mystery was being solved. Briefly, in Rear Window, a 1954 mystery thriller film by Alfred Hitchcock, L.B. Jefferies, a professional photographer with a broken leg. Jefferies watches his neighbors through their open windows until one day he realizes that one of his neighbors, Lars Thorwald, might have murdered his own wife. In this film, Jefferies is struggling to convince Lisa Carol Fremont (his girlfriend), Stella (his nurse), and New York Police Detective Tom Doyle (his friend), that he witnessed a murder. Luckily, in the end, Jefferies is able to convince everyone that Mr. Thorwald killed his wife own wife, and the vil...

I have always been fascinated by film narrative structure. Like many others stories in our lifes, films follow the same pattern as any normal story: Breakfast-Lunch-Dinner, Beginning-Middle-End, Birth-Life-Death, or Morning-Noon-Night. In film though, the script is written in three acts each act playing its own role in the progression of the story. Those three acts are: Act I (The step up), Act II (the obstacles), Act III (the resolution) Act I has been always fascinating. This is where we get to have an idea of who are the major characters, know the nature of protagonist(s) and antagonist(s). If I don't like the first part of the movie, the odds are I may not like the rest of the movie. Act I is supposed to get my attention. However, some trailors do a great job in introducing a movie even though the audience might not like the introduction of the film. Which means a good introduction and/or a good trailor might motivate many people to watch a particular film. In Act II majo...

  The embedded YouTube video shows how the history of filmmaking is fascinating. It reminds me to appreciate the advancement of the film industry. I can only imagine how it felt for someone who had never seen a video or a film before to sit in the cinema and watch a series of moving pictures. I would have been scared and maybe would have run away or maybe would have screamed a lot. It is fascinating how we moved from black and white pictures to pictures in colors and from black and white videos to videos in colors. Also this video talks about how editors literally used a pair of scissors to cut out the frames they did not want. It is amazing to see the advancement in technology over the last few decades. Now, films are well preserved in (a) digital storage(s), but before people used to keep enomous amounts of tapes in literally a storage room. This class is really helping me to appreciate and to give respect to all producers and editors from decades ago. They really did a grea...