Mise-en-Scene Media Studies

Mise-en-Scene is a French term used in film making meaning "In the scene", and is used to describe everything on the screen at one time. This includes five elements that are; 'Setting and Props', 'Costume, hair and makeup', 'Facial Expressions', 'Lighting and colour' and 'Positioning of characters and objects in the frame'.

 In terms of colour, movies such as "We need to talk about Kevin" use the objects in shot to represent certain moods and emotions, mostly red in this instance. Red is used in "We need to talk about Kevin" because the film is primarily a thought provoking film, and is a form of 'horror' film based around the fear of being a bad parent. The story is enhanced by the mise-en-scene very well, and the section of 'Lighting and Colour' is manipulated in order to enhance the fear and thought provoking factors. Some parts of the film are shown as dark and plain in terms of the lighting in order to enhance the suggestion of the darkness of the story. As previously stated, red is a common colour in the film, and is used to represent violence and anger within the main woman and Kevin, and is often shown at times of anxiety of danger. Black and White are also common colours in the film, as they are both shown in most scenes. An example of this is during the beginning scene, where the first thing that the audience is greeted with is a POV shot of the woman walking into a white curtain blowing in the darkness of night. This would seem to be a strange opening scene, until realising that the same scene is used near the end of the film, and the other side of the curtain is revealed to cover the woman's husband and child dead by being shot by an arrow on the lawn. This can be interpreted to represent the woman life, and the curtain and the darkness are part of this. The complete darkness can represent the woman's life up to that point, covered in darkness with very few parts actually happy, shown by a small collection of illuminated objects. The white curtain can be seen to represent the safety of her happiness, and that contains her husband and her daughter. Therefore, when she peers through the curtain and sees her dead child and spouse, she is piercing through the last safety net of happiness of at least having people in her life other than Kevin.
 'Settings and Props' is also represented well in the film, as there are a handful of scenes that depict points of her life in a non-linear sequence, and one of these takes place directly after the first curtain scene, and shows the past of the woman. the scene shows her taking part of a Spanish festival known as 'La Tomatina'. The festival mainly consists of a large group of people celebrating in Tomato juice and tomatoes being  thrown at each other. Within this festival is the woman, smiling and being carried by a large group of random me. This can be shown to be the one of the last happy moments in her life, as this entire sequence just ends up being recollection in a dream. Therefore, the setting is used to spread a message to the audience, one of how sad and lonely the woman is in order to only be able to revisit enjoyment and ecstasy is through her dreams.