Mise-en-scène (Film Studies)

Mise-en-scène is a French term which means, literally, "put in the scene." For film, it has
a broader meaning, and refers to almost everything that goes into the composition of the shot,
including the composition itself: framing, movement of the camera and characters, lighting,
set design and general visual environment, even sound as it helps elaborate the
composition. Mise-en-scène can be defined as the articulation of cinematic space, and it is
precisely space that it is about. Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe
the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or
"telling a story" both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage
design, and in poetically artful ways through direction. Mise-en-scène has been called film
criticism's "grand undefined term".
When applied to the cinema, mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before
the camera and its arrangement—composition, sets, props, actors, costumes, sounds, and
lighting. The “mise-en-scène”, along with the cinematography and editing of a film, influence
the verisimilitude of a film in the eyes of its viewers. The various elements of design help
express a film’s vision by generating a sense of time and space, as well as setting a mood, and
sometimes suggesting a character’s state of mind. “Mise-en-scène” also includes the
composition, which consists of the positioning and movement of actors, as well as objects, in
the shot. in French film credits, the
director's title is metteur en scène, "placer on scene."