Reflection Week 3

CONTEXTUAL REFLECTION

WEEK 3

Class today was so intense and interesting for me because I'm kind of submerged in depth of the film process, though yes last two semesters ago we learned its basics. Sad to say I missed the week 2 class which we are explained about semiotics, mise en scene etc..

This kind of brought me back to the basics on how a single frame of a film or a setting is made.

au bout de souffle "Breathless" by Jean Luc Godard

I'm sure everyone is very familiar with this shot in Breathless, the lesson was a refresher for us to interpret a frame by explaining it in terms of its necessity.

For example, looking at this shot, I see a mirror. What does a mirror tells us? Our reflection, our identity and it could be a glass that reflects our soul, it shows our physicality and etc. So placing these features in this particular scene, a woman's reflection. So there's femininity going on, a challenge of sexes between masculinity as you can see on how the man is framed facing the woman. So there's like a tension going on, we see her reflection, does it gives us a feeling of vulnerability? it's like we're looking through her, her traits and attitude as a woman but with her facial expression and gesture, we see that she's tough and not easily fragile, so there's like a balance. I maybe getting far fetched already, but the mise en scene really plays a big role in a scene. Maybe I can give a few last points of my observations, in the reflection of the woman, there's actually a dividing line between her face and the man's. This tells me that there's a different clash ideas in here, a great divide between two ideologies or attitude etc..

look at the tooth paste and brush, is it really purposely angled that way to point at the man?

Overall it's really interesting to learn how a scene works with the application of mise-en scene, signifiers or even semiotics to interpret the effectiveness of a scene. French New Wave is a good example of this small featurettes that sometimes we overlook! So next time we will never see an object as it is literally but we personify it and we ask questions on how will it adapt to a certain placement of it in a scene!

- Kev