Contextual Studies - homework

'The Bodyguard'

For the first part of the homework, I watched the first episode of 'The Bodyguard'.

This episode, I paid attention to the camera angles and sound as to me, these are the two of the most key elements in a tv series. I've only done the first few minutes of the episode just to give a general 

Sound:
Right away as the episode begins you hear sounds that almost sound like gunfire, sending to the audience that this is most likely another war based tv series. However, as the opening title fades, we are shown our main character waking up on a modern-day train and watching another train goes past. This could show to the audience that the man has some kind of trauma due to his sounds being confused.
The sound during the second 'camera' section is quite tense, letting the audience know that this man who walked away from the bin could be dangerous

Camera:
A few moments (within the same scene), the camera slowly pans round to the man's face, while being intercut with close-medium shots of his children - possibly showing that he has another vulnerability of protecting his kids, while also having trauma/struggles with past trauma.
It then focuses on a man outside of the train, dumping something into a bin. The camera then zooms into slightly towards our main character before moving to watch the man go.

Mise-en-scene definition:

Everything within a scene - below are the three main features of mise en scene

SETTING

The location of a scene (also known as a setting) is essential to either a TV series or a film as it shows not only the location for the specific scene, but could also give a clue to the audience about the type of characters within the scene.

COSTUME

Costume is also a key part of Mise-en-scene as costumes help to show either a certain time-era / class. For example, in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, the costume was shown to be medieval (loose garments and scruffy looking appearances), immediately showing to the audience that this film is set in Medieval times.

LIGHTING

Lighting is extremely important for storytelling in mise-en-scene. For example, is a close-up of a character shows lighting moving away from a character's face (showing the shadow moving over the face) which could show to the audience that this character has become evil.

Bordwell and Thompson – Four major lighting

Direction, quality, source, and color

Other lighting types:

Highlights and Shadows are normally patches of brightness on surfaces, or shadows which provide darkness / lesser color to a subject/piece of the environment.

Front Lighting is soft lighting on the actor’s face to give the appearance of innocence. For example, a good character may be framed in a close-up with Frontal Lightning to show that they are ‘Good’. 

Backlight can be the opposite. For example, if a bad character is framed into either a close-up or long shot, it can show the light silhouetted around the character, possibly to hide his front – this could show to the audience that he could be a bad / ‘shady’ character due to the light not showing his face.

Underlight comes from below the character or object to make it seem menacing and scary as the shadows created by the underlight usually represents darkness or evil.

Three-point lighting:

The three-point lighting system is used to create one central point – normally on a character or object. This is done through three main light placements: back, fill and key. To achieve the best shot for the lighting, the camera is normally to the right of the ‘key’ lighting.