Mise-en-scene

The arrangement of everything that appears in the framing – actors, lighting, décor, props, costume – is called mise en scène, a French term that means “placing on stage.” The frame and camerawork also constitute the mise en scène of a movie.

Mise en scène encompasses the most recognizable attributes of a film – the setting and the actors; it includes costumes and make-up, props, and all the other natural and artificial details that characterize the spaces filmed.  The term is borrowed from a French theatrical expression, meaning roughly “put into the scene”.  In other words, mise-en-scène describes the stuff in the frame and the way it is shown and arranged.  We have organized this page according to four general areas: setting, lighting, costume and staging.  At the end we have also included some special effects that are closely related to mise-en-scène.