Citizen Kane Analysis

              Summary

In this project we analyzed a short clip of the movie Citizen Kane for Mise-en-scéne

Mise-en-scéne (meez-on-sen)

• 0:01 The fences, walls and no trespassing sign at the beginning show how isolated Kane and his castle are from the rest of the world
• 0:00 The rust on the sign shows us how old the castle is and that it is in need of maintenance
• 0:39 The grey colors show a grim, bleak tone (dark colors even for a black and white film)
• 0:42 The bad weather over the palm tree and the tattered golf flag on a private golf coarse show a dying paradise
• 1:31 The dwindling light (light going on and off) through the window of the how can be taken as a metaphor for Kane’s dwindling life
• 0:47 The castle is always in the right of the shot and whatever other feature of the ruins of Kane’s estate is on the left balancing the frame 
  

  Sound and Editing

  Editing

• 0:36 When there is a fade in/fade out, it shows something in the previous cut for reference such as the castle or the gate
• 1:50 the film tries to trick the audience by zooming out on the snow globe to make people think that it is a house
• 0:37 the background for all of the shots is the castle so you know that it is all the same place even if the castle sometimes stays in the same place during transitions
• 2:00 The film cuts to the snow-globe just as the sound goes up to surprise the audience
• They use slow fades for this scene because it isn’t meant to be fast paced. It is meant to be slow and grim.

Sound

• 1:32 As the lights go out the music is slowly building up and the audience gets in a comfort zone then the music suddenly stops to startle the audience
• 1:59 The music is suddenly loud when the snow globe breaks to emphesize the importance/loudness of it
• 1:59 No sound except the music emphasizes the quietness and loneliness of the castle
• 2:09 the music gets quiet at the end to emphasize loss of life (Kane’s)
• 1:55 The music stops when Kane say’s rosebud to emphisize the important of the line

Cinematography

• 1:53 The camera uses an extreme closeup when viewing the snow globe to show the extreme details and in the furture draw parallels to the cabin Kane lived in when he was little
• 2:18 The nurse is filmed in a low angle because she is more powerful than Kane because he is dead
• 0:47 they show the castle at a low angle because it is big and powerful
• 1:08 outside the castle has low key lighting to show how cold and void of life his property is
• 1:59 They use low key lighting to make it more dramatic and grim
• 2:20 Kane’s death is a medium closeup

1. Seeing the Light (9:34)
   • Lighting Ratio
   • Key Light
   • High Ratio
   • Low Key Lighting darker and more dramatic
   • Fill Light =fill in shadow ,High Fill equals high key lighting
   • Low Ratio
   • High Key Lighting
   • Hard Light=light coming from directly from source, is high contrast for tense situations
   • Soft Light=light is coming from a few different places like reflecting from some where. can come through a bed sheet.
2. Camera Angles (6:09)
3. Point of View (5:07)
4. Zoom and Moving Camera Effects (6:01)
5. The Moving Camera (4:32)
6. Focal Length (5:16)
   • The distance between the optical center of the lens and the film plane
   • Depth of field
     • Refers to the depth or space and what portion of it is in focus
   • Movement
     • Movement through depth
     • Normal lens – matches our expectations
     • Short lens – exaggerated depth effect makes it seem like people walking are covering more space than they actually are
     • Long lens – movement through depth seems slower, size changes very gradually
   • Perspective
     • The way objects appear in relation to one another in depth 

• Proxemics
  • length of the shot
  • when someone is in a closeup, they dominate the screen and seem for important
  • Extreme long shot= shows background info. character is hard to see
    • like an army marching or a group working as one
  • Full show= when a full body action is happening like an embrace or a fight
• Extreme close up= an object in f=great detail or a fraction of a face,
  • anticipated the use of an object
• Camera angle
  • height/angle of camera filming someone
  • low angle=looking up at someone. a powerful person or a noble/heroic person
  • sometimes things in the foreground are more powerful than things from a low angle
• high angle
  • makes someone look vulnerable
• extreme high angle
  • aftermath of a ransack or someone is about to be attacked
•  Dutch angle, someone with a disoriented mind
  • angle is diagonal

Narrative and Genre

Genre

• 2:17 Citizen Kane is a drama/tragedy (Kane’s death and slow decay of his popularity)

 

Narrative

• 1:32 has non diegetic element of music the whole time
• 0:41 The camera is the only narrator for this scene (Shows Kane’s property and his death)
• 1:58 The film gives us no warning of the snow-globe breaking. (it survived the fall off of the bed but broke on a small drop)
• 0:00 The camera is an omniscient narrator 
• Surprise=gives no warning/expectation
• Suspense=gives expectations of what is going to happen
• narrators person telling the story
  • Camera primary narrator
  • first person narrator= voice over narration by a character
  • third person narrator voice from someone not in the narrator
• narration act of telling the story
  • omniscient= unrestricted access knows everything
  • restricted=only knows what one character knows
• narrative =story
• diegetic elements=everything in the film that is part of the world
• diegesis=narrative or plot in a movie
• non diegetic elements
  •  text
  • voiceover narration
  • score music

Interview Video

What I learned

In this project I learned how to analyze a scene from a film in depth. About how to look for Mise en Scene in the film. I learned lot about the first scene in the film Citizen Kane and I basically learned what Mise en Scene,Cinematography, Sound and editing are because I forgot what I had learned the first time we reviewed the topics. I learned that Citizen Kane is a deep film and has multiple layers.