1. Define mise en scene. How does it differ in film as compared to the stage theater and painting? Consider film as both a temporal and spatial art form.
2. Explain aspect ratio. What's wrong with cropping for television?
3. Choose a shot from Rear Window (be sure to identify where and what it is). Study the mise en scène and analyze it.
4. How does framing function in Rear Window?
5. Consider what's left out of the frame can be just as important as what's included. Why is this significant and how is it used in this film?
6. Discuss the pecking order of the sections of the screen using a shot from Rear Window:
7. Is the central portion the intrinsic center of interest? Is the top of frame associated with power, authority, aspiration, dominance? Is the bottom of the frame linked to subservience, vulnerability, and powerlessness? Do the edges tendency towards insignificance? (Don't just answer yes or no. Explain how this functions in the shot.)
8. How does Hitchcock use the frame voyeuristically? Examples from this film?
9. Why is mise en scène essentially an art of the long and extreme long shot?
10. What are the standard conventions of classical composition and why do filmmakers deliberately violate them? Cite some violations from Rear Window.
11. What are dominant and subsidiary contrasts?
12. Find the intrinsic interest is a couple of scenes and explain how it is achieved.
13. Consider the eye tends to scan from left to right, so that the right side of the composition is "heavier"; the upper part of the composition is heavier than the lower part. How does Hitchcock solve this in a shot of your choosing (identify)?
14. What directional movements are suggested by what types of lines? What are the typical skeletal structures that underlie most visual compositions? Use the still from Hitchcock's Notorious in the chapter or a still from Rear Window to explain.
15. How does design fuse with thematic idea in Rear Window?
16. Trace how Hitchcock defines, adjusts, and redefines human relationships between the two leads by exploiting spatial conventions.
17. Identify the five basic ways an actor can be photographed and explain the effect
18. Contrast tightly framed and loosely framed shots.
19. Identify Hall's proxemic patterns and explain the camera equivalents.
20. How are the concepts of open and closed form applied to film?
21. Analyze the final scene in Rear Window. What does it 'mean' due to the mise en scène?