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Mise High Scene Analysis

Decent Essays

3.3 Technique

Twin Peaks uses breaks of conventions of mise-en-scene frequently. In episode eight of season two, several figures of the police force are lined up and the camera has a steady angle for minutes . Gordon Cole walks from person to person, shaking their hands and thanking them for their great work. The scene looks unnatural and the steady camera reinforces this impression. It looks like someone filmed a boss from a company thanking his employees, which is what actually is happening: The director is thanking his actors for good work. The scene is unnecessary for the plot and does not relate to anything else during the story which is also an indicator that through the use of an unconventional mise-en-scene, a scene which parallel …show more content…

An example is the bar scene in episode 16 of season two. Seven uniformed men with a cigar sit at a bar, looking exactly the same and using identical, synchronic body language . The scene looks unnatural and again, has no impact to the narration at all, except for the fact that a few minutes later, when the bar appears again, and a policeman approaches the guys at the bar, they call all at the same time “Hello Frank!”. So, the scene has no further use than to drag the viewer from the plot and raise awareness, that the story being watched is artificial. This is achieved through the extreme stylization in …show more content…

Lester Nygaard is chased by the police on a snowmobile, which is a common scene in action movies such as James Bond. The picture follows the conventions of mise-en-scene, showing the fast vehicles and the tension in the faces of the characters with cuts from many different camera angles. According to the rules of mise-en-scene, a fast and action packed music would be fitting for such a chase. In its place though, the filmmakers used a slow, melancholic and cautious music. Sound and action are in contrast and the rules of mise-en-scene, which Sergei Eisenstein called “synchronization of sound” (The Film Sense 1974: 69), are again contradicted. So, Fargo works with contrasts of expected events due to certain compositions of mise-en-scene while Twin Peaks over stylizes scenes and lets the director himself explain techniques of how a picture is composed. With those different approaches, both series revise conventional use of

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