Deconstruction - Mise-en-scene - Louise Hyam

The film opening that I am going to analyse the mise-en-scene on is The Exorcist made in 1973.

At the beginning of the film opening trailer there is a face that appears and the face is quite clearly made to be used in a horror film so it portrays the idea of a horror film from the very beginning with the use of a face appearing. The face being used as mise-en-scene at the beginning of the trailer suggests what is going to be portrayed later in the film, so this face suggests that it would be used as mise-en-scene in the film as well as just in the trailer. This helps to set the genre of the film. The face that is used as mise-en-scene is surrounded by a dark colour and the colour that the actual face is is white so it helps to make the face stand out and attracts the audiences attention. The face bing used as miss-en-scene in this trailer is good because the actual face isn't portray all of the genre it is the things such as the colour of they eyes and the colour surrounding the eyes because it is abnormal. Also the teeth on the face being part of the miss-en-scene also gives off a sense of discomfort because the teeth are rotten and this suggests that something has happened to the teeth and the audience are unsure what it is.

In the next part of the trailer there is a woman shown holding a flame, the woman holding this flame suggests that she is protecting herself from something. The flame can also be seen as a harmful use of mise-en-scene as she is obviously going to hurt someone with it. The clothes that the woman is wearing in this part of the film opening of The Exorcist suggest that she is a normal woman as they are quite normal coloured and they are fairly normal clothes and nothing out of the ordinary so this could suggest that this woman is an ordinary woman who is in need of help and we see this from what she is wearing and what she is holding in her hand.

Again in the film opening of The Exorcist the same face appears with the same makeup again. This is effective as mise-en-scene because it is helping signify something later in the film and that this is likely to appear again. As mentioned before the face stands out well as mise-en-scene because the surrounding lighting in this part of the film is dark it makes the face stand out because the face is white so it stands out as there is a contrast between the two colours.

The mise-en-scene in this part of the opening scene the props used here are conforming to the props that would be used in this type of horror film. Here there is a big house which suggest that most of the characters live here and that it is a big house. Big houses are commonly used in horror films as they can be made to look spooky and everything usually goes on within the house. This is what is being represented in this part of the opening part of the film.