Mise-en-scène in eLearning

I did not appreciate Sherlock Holmes until the Benedict Cumberbatch version appeared. After growing bored of watching those episodes way too many times, I began to seek out another version of the master detective. That’s when I found Jeremy Brett’s version from the late 1980s. He was fantastic in the role and has become, for me, the Sherlock Holmes. It was not only his performance that won me over. It was the world that the series created around him - the lighting, the costumes, the Victorian-era ambiance.

​Here’s a scene from the series. Holmes is doing his Holmes thing, but it's the scenery that does the heavy lifting—the iconic pipe, the timepiece dangling from his vest, the books and paper stuffed in the cabinet behind him, the London smog coating the world outside. It is the entire mise-en-scène.

Mise-en-scène  is a film term that is loosely defined as: "The arrangement of everything that appears in the framing – actors, lighting, décor, props, costume – is called mise-en-scène , a French term that means “placing on stage.”*

Read More