3.

Visual Language: Shot, Scene, Sequence, Montage, Mise-En-Scene and Continuity

Visual Language: Using Language as Cinematic Structure

Cinema uses shots, shot sequences, scenes and dramatic sequences to communicate an idea in the
same way that written language uses letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. Using language as
an organizational structure can give your video greater narrative impact and broader appeal.

The language of cinema starts with the shot. In film and video, a shot is a series of still image
frames that runs for an uninterrupted period of time. Like a letter in written language, the shot is
the smallest piece of visual language. However, a shot is closer to a word because it
communicates much more than a single letter can.

Depending on its elements, a shot can tell the entire story or just a tiny piece. These elements
include the shot’s duration, camera angle and movement, sound, lighting and all the visual
design of the production that comprise its “mise-en-scène.” If an actor or actors are in the shot,
their physical performance and emotions can also communicate more than dialogue.

A shot sequence is a collection of shots that communicate an idea, just as a collection of words
form a sentence. A sequence can be long or short, using many shots or a few, sometimes using
only a single long take. Just like the order of the words matters in a sentence, the order of images
is important in cinematic syntax. Film scenes often start with a wide shot to establish the location
before moving closer to the talent or action. But this isn’t always the case.

 Just like the order of the words matters in a sentence, the order of images is important in
cinematic syntax.

CONCEPTS-

I-Mise en scene
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. These are all
the areas overseen by the director, and thus, in French film credits, the director's title is metteur
en scène, "placer on scene." Andre Bazin, a well-known French film critic and film theorist,
describes the mise-en-scene aesthetic as emphasizing choreographed movement within the scene
rather than through editing.
For some film critic, it refers to all elements of visual style—that is, both elements on the set and
aspects of the camera. For others, such as U.S. film critic Andrew Sarris, it takes on mystical
meanings related to the emotional tone of a film. The term is sometimes used to represent a style
of conveying the information of a scene primarily through a single shot—often accompanied by
camera movement. Mise en scene is nothing other than the technique invented by each director to
express the idea and establish the specific quality of his work.
In German filmmaking in the 1910s and 1920s, one can observe tone, meaning, and narrative
information conveyed through mise-en-scène. These films were a part of the German
Expressionism movement in the 1920’s, and were characterized by their extreme sets, décor,
acting, lighting, and camera angles. The aim of these films is to have an extremely dramatic
effect on the audience, often emphasizing the fantastic and grotesque. Perhaps the most famous
example of this is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) where a character's internal state of mind
is represented through set design and blocking. The sets involved stress the madness and horror
of the film, as expressionist films are meant to do.

Set design:
An important element of "putting in the scene" is set design—the setting of a scene and the
objects (props) visible in a scene. Set design can be used to amplify character emotion or the
dominant mood, which has physical, social, psychological, emotional, economic and cultural
significance in film.

Lighting:
The intensity, direction, and quality of lighting can influence an audience’s understanding of
characters, actions, themes and mood. Light (and shade) can emphasize texture, shape, distance,
mood, time of day or night, season, glamour; it affects the way colours are rendered, both in
terms of hue and depth, and can focus attention on particular elements of the composition.
Highlights, for example, call attention to shapes and textures, while shadows often conceal
things, creating a sense of mystery or fear. For this reason, lighting must be thoroughly planned
in advance to ensure its desired effect on an audience. Cinematographers are a large part of this
process, as they coordinate the camera and the lighting.

Space:
The representation of space affects the reading of a film. Depth, proximity, size and proportions
of the places and objects in a film can be manipulated through camera placement and lenses,
lighting, set design, effectively determining mood or relationships between elements in the story
world.

Composition:
It includes the organization of objects, actors and space within the frame. One of the most
important concepts with the regard to the composition of a film is maintaining a balance of
symmetry. This refers to having an equal distribution of light, colour, and objects and/or figures
in a shot. Unbalanced composition can be used to emphasize certain elements of a film that the
director wishes to be given particular attention to. This tool works because audiences are more
inclined to pay attention to something off balance, as it may seem abnormal.
Costume:
Costume simply refers to the clothes that characters wear. Costumes in narrative cinema are used
to signify characters or to make clear distinctions between characters.

Makeup and hair styles:

Acting:
There is enormous historical and cultural variation in performance styles in the cinema. In the
early years of cinema, stage acting and film acting were difficult to differentiate, as most film
actors had previously been stage actors and therefore knew no other method of acting.
Eventually, early melodramatic styles, clearly indebted to the 19th century theatre, gave way in
Western cinema to a relatively naturalistic style.

II-Shots (close up, medium shot, long shot)

A close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used
regularly with medium shots and long shots. Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not
include the broader scene. Moving in to a close-up or away from a close-up is a common type of
zooming.
Close-ups are used in many ways, for many reasons. Close-ups are often used as cutaways from
a more distant shot to show detail, such as characters' emotions, or some intricate activity with
their hands. Close cuts to characters' faces are used far more often in television than in movies;
they are especially common in soap operas. For a director to deliberately avoid close-ups may
create in the audience an emotional distance from the subject matter.
Close-ups are used for distinguishing main characters. Major characters are often given a close-
up when they are introduced as a way of indicating their importance. Leading characters will
have multiple close-ups. There is a long-standing stereotype of insecure actors desiring a close-
up at every opportunity and counting the number of close-ups they received.
An example of this stereotype occurs when the character Norma Desmond in Sunset
Boulevard, announces "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up" as she is taken into
police custody in the film's finale.
Close-up shots do not show the subject in the broad context of its surroundings. If overused,
close-ups may leave viewers uncertain as to what they are seeing.

A medium shot is a camera angle shot from a medium distance. The dividing line between "long
shot" and "medium shot" is fuzzy, as is the line between "medium shot" and "close-up". In some
standard texts and professional references, a full-length view of a human subject is called a
medium shot; in this terminology, a shot of the person from the knees up or the waist up is a
close-up shot. In other texts, these partial views are called medium shots.
(For example, in Europe a medium shot is framed from the waist up). It is mainly used for a
scene when you can see what kind of expressions they are using.

A long shot (sometimes referred to as a full shot or a wide shot) typically shows the entire
object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings. It
has been suggested that long-shot ranges usually correspond to approximately what would be the
distance between the front row of the audience and the stage in live theatre. It is now common to
refer to a long shot as a "wide shot" because it often requires the use of a wide-angle lens. When
a long shot is used to set up a location and its participants in film and video, it is called an
establishing shot.
A related notion is that of an extreme long shot. This can be taken from as much as a quarter of a
mile away, and is generally used as a scene-setting, establishing shot. It normally shows an
exterior, e.g. the outside of a building, or a landscape, and is often used to show scenes of
thrilling action e.g. in a war film or disaster movie. There will be very little detail visible in the
shot, as it is meant to give a general impression rather than specific information.

III-Editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. The term film editing
is derived from the traditional process of working with film, but now it increasingly involves the
use of digital technology. The film editor works with the raw footage, selecting shots and
combining them into sequences to create a finished motion picture. Film editing is described as
an art or skill, the only art that is unique to cinema, separating filmmaking from other art forms
that preceded it, although there are close parallels to the editing process in other art forms like
poetry or novel writing. Film editing is often referred to as the "invisible art" because when it is
well-practiced, the viewer can become so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the editor's
work. On its most fundamental level, film editing is the art, technique, and practice of
assembling shots into a coherent sequence. The job of an editor isn’t simply to mechanically put
pieces of a film together, cut off film slates, or edit dialogue scenes. A film editor must creatively
work with the layers of images, story, dialogue, music, pacing, as well as the actors'
performances to effectively "re-imagine" and even rewrite the film to craft a cohesive whole.
Editors usually play a dynamic role in the making of a film.
With the advent of digital editing, film editors and their assistants have become responsible for
many areas of filmmaking that used to be the responsibility of others. Film editing is an art that
can be used in diverse ways. It can create sensually provocative montages; become a laboratory
for experimental cinema; bring out the emotional truth in an actor's performance; create a point
of view on otherwise obtuse events; guide the telling and pace of a story; create an illusion of
danger where there is none; give emphasis to things that would not have otherwise been noted;
and even create a vital subconscious emotional connection to the viewer, among many other
possibilities.

Chronological editing - editing that follows the logic of a chronological narrative, one event
follows subsequently from another, and time and space are logically and unproblematically
represented.

Cross-cutting or parallel editing - the linking-up of two sets of action those run concurrently
and are interdependent within the narrative.

Montage -is based on the theory that conflict must be inherent in all visual aspects in film, the
principles of which include a rapid alteration between sets of shots whose signification occurs at
the point of their collision, fast editing and unusual camera angles; also used for spectacular
effect. It is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence
to condense space, time, and information. The term has been used in various contexts. It was
introduced to cinema primarily by Eisenstein, and early Russian directors used it as a synonym
for creative editing. In France the word "montage" simply denotes cutting. The montage
sequence is usually used to suggest the passage of time, rather than to create symbolic meaning
as it does in Soviet montage theory. From the 1930s to the 1950s, montage sequences often
combined numerous short shots with special optical effects (fades, dissolves, split screens,
double and triple exposures) dance and music. They were usually assembled by someone other
than the director or the editor of the movie.

Continuity Editing is the predominant style of film editing and video editing in the post-
production process of filmmaking of narrative films and television programs. The purpose of
continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to
establish a logical coherence between shots.
In most films, logical coherence is achieved by cutting to continuity, which emphasizes smooth
transition of time and space. However, some films incorporate cutting to continuity into a more
complex classical cutting technique, one which also tries to show psychological continuity of
shots. The montage technique relies on symbolic association of ideas between shots rather than
association of simple physical action for its continuity.
Continuity editing can be divided into two categories: temporal continuity and spatial continuity.
Within each category, specific techniques will work against a sense of continuity.
In other words, techniques can cause a passage to be continuous, giving the viewer a concrete
physical narration to follow, or discontinuous, causing viewer disorientation, pondering, or even
subliminal interpretation or reaction, as in the montage style. The important ways to preserve
temporal continuity are avoiding the ellipsis, using continuous diegetic sound, and utilizing the
match on action technique.

Continuity cuts- these are cuts take us seamlessly and logically from one sequence or scene to
another. This is an unobtrusive cut that serves to move the narrative along.

A match cut, also called a graphic match (or, in the French term, raccord), is a cut in film
editing between either two different objects, two different spaces, or two different compositions
in which an object in the two shots graphically match, often helping to establish a strong
continuity of action and linking the two shots metaphorical

Jump cut- cut where there is no match between the two spliced shots. Within a sequence, or
more particularly a scene, jump cuts give the effect of bad editing. The opposite of a match cut,
the jump cut is an abrupt cut between two shots that calls attention to itself because it does not
match the shots seamlessly. It marks a transition in time and space but is called jump cut because
it jars the sensibilities; it makes the spectator jump and wonder where the narrative has got to.
Jean Luc Godard is undoubtedly one of the best exponents of this use of the jump cut.

The 30-degree rule is a basic film editing guideline that states the camera should move at least
30 degrees between shots of the same subject occurring in succession. If this rule isn't followed a
jump cut occurs and there is a risk that the audience starts focusing on the filming technique
instead of the story that is being narrated. The 30 degree change of perspective makes the shots
different enough to avoid a jump cut. Too much movement around the subject may violate the
180-degree rule.
Following this rule may soften the effect of changing shot distance, such as changing from a
medium shot to a close-up or extreme close-up. The 30 degree rule has its origin from the
beginning of the 20th century. The legendary French filmmaker George Méliès, producer of
silent black-and-white film, inspired succeeding filmmakers to heed this rule of angle when
cutting between similar or nearly identical clips. When Mèliés himself made his famous A Trip
to the Moon in 1902 he tried to edit together film clips of the same framing and with the same
angle, after changing the scene between the shots, to make it look like there was no cut at all.
It was the world’s first attempt to make special effects. The rule is actually a special case of a
more general dictum that states that the cut will be jarring if the two shots being cut are so
similar that there appears to be a lack of motivation for the cut. The axial cut is a striking
violation of this rule to obtain a certain effect.

The 180-degree rule is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a
character and another character or object within a scene. An imaginary line called the axis
connects the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the
scene, the first character will always be frame right of the second character, who is then always
frame left of the first. If the camera passes over the axis, it is called jumping the line or crossing
the line.