Mise-En Scene: Mad Max: Fury Road

Mise-En Scene

Ever since I was a little kid, i’m always fascinated on how movies were actually made and everything that went behind in making it. I always thought that some things in the movie were coincidental but in reality, they served an overall purpose in the film to convey the theme. This semester, I have found an answer to my many childhood questions. The two films that stuck out to me were Mad Max:Fury Road directed by George Miller, and Whiplash directed by Damien Chazelle. These two beautiful films had many amazing things that went into it to portray the overall theme using Mis-En Scene. Mad Max: Fury Road has a very unique theme in this day and age, which is doing anything Max can do to survive in the destroyed world he lives in. …show more content…
Most of the movie Mad Max: Fury Road was was shot in long shots or medium shots causing it to be a loosely framed film. One scene in particular exposes the theme greatly by using many long or medium shots. The scene when Joe and his people were chasing Furiosa and the wives when they were going back to their village. Max was able to move freely throughout the scene and the movie. The longshots showed the violence everyone was doing. Max was being hunted down to die, all he had to do was get back to the village alive. These long shots showed the war between these two groups of people and how they had to do whatever just to survive from each other. Survival of the fittest was upon everyone engaging in these fights and that’s when Furiosa and MAx prevailed and killed Joe. Having closeup shots in this scene would ruin the overall theme by not showing the destroyed land and by not showing the chaos happening by not just the main characters. Meanwhile, Whiplash was shot in lots up closeups causing the movie to be a tightly framed film. The tightly frame movie brought the audience a lot closer to the characters throughout the film. We could connect with Andrew throught the whole film about the evolution of his character. We could feel the struggles and sacrifices he went through in order to become the best drummer. There was a couple scenes that made the audience really connect with Andrew but one of them being one of the first scenes in the film. Andrew is practicing in his room when Terence all of a sudden shows to hear him play for a second. Andrew was trying so hard to do the best he could for Terrance but it wasn’t good enough. The close up of this scene set the plot and theme of the film up by having Andrew always trying to impress Terence to let him in his band to become the best drummer. Andrew even sacrifices his