Reveals how mise-en-scène has shaped the fields of film and television studies.
Visions in the Frame provides a detailed evaluation of the journey and status of mise-en-scène—the organization of the visual field within the frame—as a critical concept in film and television studies. The first part of the book looks at the persistence of mise-en-scène within film studies amid a series of fluctuations in theoretical, historical, cultural, philosophical, and critical approaches. The second part shifts focus to consider television studies and the extent to which mise-en-scène has remained an ambiguous element in the growth of the discipline. The third part engages in a series of close readings from a range of styles and genres of television shows, exploring the relationship between visual composition, meaning, and significance as a central critical focus. Across the three parts of the book, Visions in the Frame presents a rigorous and valuable context for understanding the contrasting position and influence of mise-en-scène within film and television studies, using this to offer guidance for its future role within both disciplines.
"This book offers an account of how a single aspect of the moving image and a single focus of moving image criticism—mise-en-scène—has developed in film and television studies respectively. Its extraordinary range and depth of inquiry into the history of these disciplines is rendered with deftness and clarity, and it offers a powerful invitation for mise-en-scène criticism to be accepted more broadly within television studies." — Elliott Logan, author of Breaking Bad and Dignity: Unity and Fragmentation in the Serial Television Drama