Mise-En-Scene Blocking

4. Staging: Blocking and actor’s performance

Much like the rest of the visual elements that have been covered above, staging, which involves the blocking and performance of actors within mise-en-scene, is also crucial to the narrative that is being told. As characters are the lens from which viewers see and understand a film, an actor’s interpretation and performance of a character can make or break a film (Corrigan and White 2009: 53).

Blocking refers to the arrangement of actors on the set relative to one another. It is crucial in determining the composition of a shot. In setting up the visual narrative, there are two types of blocking: social blocking, where the arrangement of the characters shows the relationship between them, and graphic blocking, where characters are grouped together according to their visual

What differentiates theatre from film in this aspect is that in films, figures such as puppets or digitally-made creatures like robots and monsters can also become an actor (Bordwell and Thompson 2013: 131).

There are two primary components in an actor’s performance: sound, which consists of the actor’s voice and their delivery of their lines; and visual, which consist of bodily movement such as physical gestures and facial expressions. The eyes- its expression, movement, and eye contact- are especially important in communicating a character to the viewers. They are the mirror of the soul, and in performance, they reveal the mind of the characters and sets the narrative into motion (Cohen 2011).

Amongst the different acting styles present in defining performances, the two most common ones that can be found in modern cinema are method (naturalistic) and non-method (stylised) acting (College Film and Media Studies