double-spaced with standard one inch margins, 12 pt font: MLA formatting.
You will write 6 paragraphs: a formal introduction with an argumentative thesis (“My argument is …. because ….”), a short conclusion, and four body paragraphs.
The question—your question in this essay—is, like in the poetry essay, how does this film produce meaning, express feeling and emotion, create suspense, signify thought and ideas? The answer to those questions is that these meanings are produced by the arrangement of objects in a shot.
You will include a Works Cited page listing both the film you are analyzing and the required Louis Giannetti text on film.
You must include an Appendix featuring your two, three or four shots from the film to illustrate your **”mise en scene analysis”** in the scenes. (VERY IMPORTANT)
Requirements: You must refer to (write about/apply and quote, with proper page references) four – six mise en scene terms from the Giannetti textbook, and you must refer to (write about and/or quote, with proper page references) two terms from any of the other chapters in the Giannetti book (photography, movement, editing, sound, acting). In a nutshell, you must demonstrate proficiency in writing about film with the technical terms.
Instructions:
The purpose of this essay is to analyse two or three shots in one or two particular scenes in the Film Parasite—in an attempt to understand it from an analytical perspective. In other words, the film you choose—and the scenes you choose in it—will serve as a case study for your mise en scene analysis.
The strongest essays are those which focus on specific SCENES and parts of the film: for example, an essay explaining why the use of proxemics in ONE SCENE is important—how it works, to what effect lighting is used, etc—will likely be stronger than an essay explaining proxemics, composition and depth in two scenes. The more specific and detailed, the better.
“When you analyse mise en scene in a particular scene/sequence (related set of scenes) in a film you are, among other things, determining answers to core questions, such as the following: How are dramatic and psychological effects (like tension or humour or irony, and so on) specifically produced by various spatial considerations: where is the main subject in the different parts of the frame (centre, top, bottom, edges)? To what effect is the composition (arrangement of shapes and colours, lines and textures) in the two-dimensional frame: is it classical, formal, balanced, triangular, etc? What are the dominant and subsidiary contrasts and why are they filmed this way? Is it a tightly-framed or loosely-framed shot—why? What are the proxemics patterns: the spatial relations among the characters within the frame, but especially the distance of the camera from the subject: is there a difference in psychological dramatic meaning in long shots vs close ups? Is the film closed forms—a formalist approach that structures the frame as a precise, self-sufficient mini-universe—or open forms—a more realist approach that suggests that you are looking at fragments of a larger external reality outside the frame”