mise-en-scene

I decided to comment on the mise-en-scene of the Francis Lawrence movie, "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire." I chose this movie because the Hunger Games series is one of my favorite movie series, and this one has the best examples of mise-en-scenes, especially for costumes and makeup. I wanted to show appreciation to the elaborate costumes and sets that are used to create the movie. 

After the first few scenes of the movie the main character, Katniss Everdeen, is summoned to meet with the the president of Panem, President Snow. Snow is sitting at his desk and Katniss is sitting in front of him. There is low-key lighting in the scene, which comes from a stain glass window behind Snow. This low-key lighting is meant to show grimness and seriousness, and Snow and Katniss are talking about Katniss' actions in the previous Hunger Games, and how there are major consequences to her actions. Also the blocking in this scene has the President sitting in front of an icy stain glass window, which adds irony to the scene as his name is Snow. One of the next major scenes is when the tributes from each district are being presented to the Capitol and the President. This is an elaborate Hunger Games because it is the 75th game, so all the tributes are previous Hunger Games winners. Each district had a theme, Katniss was from district 12, the poorest district, so their theme was coal. Katniss stylists and costume designer had her and her partner for the game, Peta, wear black leather clothing. Katniss had a black dress with a leather corset top and straps across her chest, and heavy black eye makeup along with a black feather hair piece. Peta had a leather vest, as to show of his muscular arms. Once they were on their chariot to be presented, the was a button Katniss pressed that gave the illusion of their clothes being on fire, because Katniss nickname is "the girl on fire."

After a few scenes, there is when the players enter the arena, this scene has high-key lighting and there is a lot of frontality on Katniss, the main focus is on her during this scene. This arena is unlike any other, the tributes start on their own little circles that are in the middle of the water. They are all facing the center cornucopia, which has survival necessities and weapons. There are twelve rock paths that connect to shore, they divide the island into sections, each section correlates to a certain time and during that time something deadly happens in that section.

Later that night, the Katniss along with a few other alliance tributes are trying to find a place to sleep, when all of a sudden this white fog comes rushing towards them. They soon find out its poisonous and start running, the shallow blocking feels like you are running for your life with the tributes.